None Shall Pass 2 [Game Thread - Concluded]

[Takhisis]

 

[Internet Flea]

Even though personal goals didn't affect how the game went, at all.

I beg to differ; not only did edse's attempts to fulfill his win condition help me get him lynched, but my attempts to fulfill my win condition also caused me to waste several scries.

 

[Visorslash]

@spaceman98: I can easily work up a lot of conflict between Middle-Earth and these invaders. I've recently -unintentionally- out-nerded Arakhor.

Link to video.

 

[Buddhafish]

I actually got my PG.

@Backwards Logic - I was thinking to myself as I scanned you, "he's a great mafia player, he must have some important role. I'd better scan him" I know it doesn't work that way, but that's how I thought, and it turns out I was right

 

[spaceman98]

Yoda is a minor cha… whaaaaaat?

@spaceman98: I can easily work up a lot of conflict between Middle-Earth and these invaders. I've recently -unintentionally- out-nerded Arakhor.

Oh, trust me, I can come up with a lot of obscure LOTR Characters that haven't appeared so far, mostly on the "evil" side. The thing is, would you guys really like a game in which Suladan the Serpent Lord, Bill Ferney and Khamul the Black Easterling defend Middle Earth from its new Star Wars overlords? I mean, I'd be fine with that. These people fought the Gondorian Empire, so it only stands to reason that they would be the ones to stand against the zealot jedi! #Glorytotheallianceofthetwotowers #Sauronlives

 

[choxorn]

Why?

You looked pretty scummy to a lot of people at that point. Killing you could easily be something a pro-townie would do. I mean, even after you scanned me I still convinced the town to lynch you, didn't I?

Really, at that point, the only kill I would have had to defend was SouthernKing, and that was a random day 1 nightkill. I probably would have randomly killed someone night 1 if I was an actual vigilante.

I picked SK because he pretty much always goes inactive after a couple of days, so I figured that even if he had a powerful role it would be fairly wasted on him anyway, and I metagamed that Zack probably wouldn't want to give him an important role for that reason. As it turned out, his role was "basically vanilla townie."

I really didn't have any particular reason to kill anyone on Day 1, so I figured if I do kill someone, it might as well be the lurkeriest of lurkers.

Wow Choxorn got lucky.

No arguments there.

I'm not sure if I want to host a None Shall Pass 3, but if I do it will be different. There will be a bunch of different factions (like It's a Long Story), each with shared abilities - for example, a 5-player faction might have a kill and protect ability that they designate two players to use each night (doesn't have to be the same people from night to night, and if there's one person left they can use both actions). Would people be interested in None Shall Pass 3?

I like this idea, we haven't had any games like that since It's a Long Story. I thought TheForestAuro was going to host a similar sequel at some point (I think he still has a place in the NOTW hosting queue), but he hasn't been here in 3-4 years now.

I would agree here - reading the Vengence QT, it seemed I was finished off almost because of choxorn's PG. It seemed like there were other candidates, just that turned out to be the tiebreaker. Granted, I was dead anyway. Whether that happened that night or next in the grand scheme of things wouldn't have mattered.

Night 2, I didn't really have any reason to kill anyone else- all of the action in thread had revolved around the revelation of the empire, and I couldn't kill them.

Night 3, the Jedi and Buddha and I wondered whether you had full kill immunity or just the one-shot avoidance that I had, and we thought that your ability to shrug off a kill like that was a bit suspicious.

Night 4, I admit that my PG was part of the reason for attacking azzaman, but I also thought he was pretty scummy looking. I probably would have attacked him even if killing him wasn't part of my PG.

Now, as to my attack on JohannaK- that was motivated just about entirely by my PG, though at that point we were thinking there had to be some kind of non-town thing on the LOTR side, and since Elrond and Boromir were both Morgothians, maybe Eowyn also wasn't town?

It's interesting you bring this up. I feel the same way about my two games - the former had a few design flaws I can't overlook yet played out beautifully, and my second game was designed pretty darn well, yet was a snoozefest by end game.

Yeah, I remember that- a lot of action happened in the middle rounds, then a bit of action in the late rounds when it briefly looked like the Insurgent was going to take over the ship (and indirectly helped my team, the Saboteurs, because nobody wanted to fix the engines and get the insurgent the win, which left us stranded in the mine-infested waters for a really long time), but it was pretty much over as soon as I got lynched- everyone quickly found out who the last couple of saboteurs and the insurgent were.

Just going to say, though, that if the guy who has been killing all the bad guys says that he's on the good guys, you should probably believe him.

They didn't believe me when I said that, either! Come on town, I killed half of Morgoth for you!

To be fair, though:

also found it kinda funny that they ended up lynching him, but he did kinda back himself into a corner with the whole ring business.

I think you might have stood a chance if you had just told the truth about the ring in the first place, but once you lied about it, that made you look extremely scummy, and everyone was a bit paranoid that ring corruption might be a thing.

I think I mentioned after NSP that it always kinda bugged me that the first Star Wars game choxorn and I hosted was our most successful, since it was so much more poorly designed than all of the other games we've both hosted. I agree that there's only so much the host's setup can do, it's mostly up to the players to make a game enjoyable.

Yeah, we had some interesting stuff and some fun stuff, but we also made a ton of really poorly designed roles (Panaka and Grievous's bodyguard come to mind...), made a few minor hosting mistakes (like when I made that post in the town network QT that unintentionally made TheLastOne's fake roleclaim look more legitimate).

But hey, most of the players had fun, so there was that. I think part of it was it was just in that super-high-activity time in 2010 when all of the large games got like 40 players easily and everyone was having a lot of fun with it. And it did teach us a lot of things about how to design games better in the future.

I will quibble over the town role your game had that was both bulletproof AND killed anyone attacking him. Either of those abilities in a townie is arguably overpowered, but both!

Oh no, it is overpowered! Just no one had ever done it before, and it requires such a specific set of actions to be useful. I didn't realize how powerful it was until it happened and I saw the aftermath. Not one of my finer moments as a game designer (both games had it if I recall correctly, just the second saw its use), but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't fun to do the writeup! That said, I learned my lesson with that role. You have a legitimate gripe there!

Not to mention that the rank he started out with had a protection ability. He didn't stay there forever (or even for long) but even so, you made a bulletproof doctor that killed anyone who attacked him! Come on, man, what were you thinking?

Didn't say that, but I'm evaluating all six movies, not just Empire Strikes Back. He's only a major character in V.

I'd say he's also fairly major in III, and arguably II. Not one of the main characters, but certainly a major one.

 

[choxorn]

On another note, [shameless plug for my game]Help me come up with ideas for my next game![/shameless plug for my game]

 

[Winston Hughes]

Ha, I think that's the first time anyone has ever sung the story's praises for these games, much less called it "engaging" and "coherent"! I focused more on making it funny than anything, although I personally enjoyed the stories behind the Vengeance faction, and to a lesser extent the Empire and Jedi Order.

Entertaining as they were, I'm not really talking about the write-ups. I mean the story that evolves out of the players' actions. Here it began with the collapse of a doomed Empire, moved through the rise, corruption, and fall of a power-hungry Jedi Order, and ended in the tragedy of Aragorn, as the hapless town turned on its one true hero, allowing Jango to complete his genocide against the natives and wind up undisputed master of Middle Earth.

 

[JohannaK]

Oh, my dear Visorslash was my SW counterpart. How fitting <3

 

[Jarrema]

The story isn't a problem, but finding more characters that people actually care about will be. There's also the potential of bringing in another universe, which might happen.

I would really like to see it. What universe would you think about?
IMO, it would be great if it was another kind of universe: we have already fantasy one, and Sci-Fi one, so there could be horror, gothic, myth, or something like these

 

[Snerk]

Which makes total sense. I probably would have done the same in your shoes, unfortunately. I do wish you would have trusted me a little bit more, considering how straight I played you, but no big deal.

Yeah it was the damned ring that betrayed you. It's fascinating to see how the idea of ring corruption evolved it's own narrative based on just it's own mystery and several over-interpretations of abilities. Mainly Tak's and Riedquat's.

BSmith was remarkably helpful, and Snerk was pretty helpful too.

Despite all my efforts it's more than fair that my legacy in this game is stained by two things. One, working with the Jedi, which made perfect sense from my POV. And most of my correspondence was with Legato who is a great guy to work with and he gave me little reason to turn on him. And two, killing you Verarde. Now I wasn't the only one voting but yeah I could have steered the town in a different direction had I known that the ring was harmless.

However, I did a lot of networking, and after Sprig died the spreadsheet was pretty much project-Snerk for the rest of the game. And I fed all that info to the town QT I set up, which despite the initial paranoia, was a pure town QT until Buddha was invited the last day.

Also, my talks with Riedquat was great. Riedquat is great. He was my pressure-valve for releasing some of my frustration I got for trying to work in between the town and the jedi. Had he not been town I probably had told him too much, don't really remember what I said. Have no idea why I trusted him so much.

 

[Snerk]

@Arakhor: Keep in mind that your death was instrumental in the downfall of the order.
Yes you were killed because I told the order you were anti-jedi. But, killing you confirmed the order as an anti-town faction in mine and the town's eyes. First thing I did after that was to leak the identity of Legato and Edse to town QT and Riedquat. I pushed the issue in the unofficial jedi QT. But they were sticking with a rogue Choxorn explanation, and I saw no reason in pushing the matter further as the order was doomed by then.

 

[Jarrema]

I tried some networking in this game, but get killed so soon... In reality, I hoped to be recruited

 

[KingMorgan]

Good game all round, looks well balanced. There is no accounting for bad luck!

 

[BSmith1068]

I had fun this game, and certainly enjoyed watching it to the end. I am naturally bummed about my (and Sam2's) somewhat untimely demise, but otherwise can't really complain!

 

[Arakhor]

Link to video.

Oi!!

@Arakhor: Keep in mind that your death was instrumental in the downfall of the order.
Yes you were killed because I told the order you were anti-jedi. But, killing you confirmed the order as an anti-town faction in mine and the town's eyes.

I was only anti-Jedi because they were blatantly squaring up to kill all the LotR characters, whilst simultaneously bleating that they were pro-Town. At least I was useful posthumously, not that it makes the cavernous expanses of the Dead QT any easier to bear!

It didn't help of course that the town kept lynching townies after the early demise of the Empire and the Morgothians, or that Christos decided to become an impromptu jester.

 

[Buddhafish]

@Snerk - When you sent me that PM the first thought that went through my mind was "Oh crap, they know I'm the last anti-town" and then when I saw you invited me to the town QT, I was dumbfounded for a second. Like, this is going too perfectly.

After choxorn's untimely death, and else's lynch the next day, which both looked awful for the Jedi/Vengence team, everything went completely according to plan. Legato and I killed to gain a larger numbers advantage. Then we spun the most made up BS we could think of in Internet Flea to give Legato one more chance to kill. Then we decided to have me not kill in order to make Verarde look more scummy, which it did, and we lynched him the next day basically because of the "he can still kill, so he's a bad guy" philosophy.

In The Greater Good QT, we discuss how this game plays out a few days in advance, and I am honestly shocked that it worked out that way.

Shoutout to choxorn for being a great teammate, and to Legato Endless for the selfless sacrifice. He ended up with a defeat, but did everything he could to make sure that if he didn't win, I could.

 

[Buddhafish]

And Zack, I would sign up for a NSP3.

Actually, I would sign up for any game you hosted to be honest. You are an excellent host, and make very fun games for the players.

 

[Arakhor]

I'd sign up for NSP 3 as well. It's almost a tradition now!

 

[Takhisis]

I beg to differ; not only did edse's attempts to fulfill his win condition help me get him lynched, but my attempts to fulfill my win condition also caused me to waste several scries.

Noo! That's not true! That's impossible!

Even you are submitting to the power of this fully operational battle station!

You looked pretty scummy to a lot of people at that point. Killing you could easily be something a pro-townie would do. I mean, even after you scanned me I still convinced the town to lynch you, didn't I?

Really, at that point, the only kill I would have had to defend was SouthernKing, and that was a random day 1 nightkill. I probably would have randomly killed someone night 1 if I was an actual vigilante.

I picked SK because he pretty much always goes inactive after a couple of days, so I figured that even if he had a powerful role it would be fairly wasted on him anyway, and I metagamed that Zack probably wouldn't want to give him an important role for that reason. As it turned out, his role was "basically vanilla townie."

I really didn't have any particular reason to kill anyone on Day 1, so I figured if I do kill someone, it might as well be the lurkeriest of lurkers.

I 'looked' pretty scummy even though I'd been coöperating with the town and telling the truth all along… and had even found out you had the Ring and made you admit you'd been killing townies! Towns can be so stupid at times.

Oi!!

I know!

I'd sign up for NSP 3 as well. It's almost a tradition now!

Or for Zack mafia… what number are we ate now? Eighty-seven?