After Action report:
Phase 1: Loneliness
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The game started quite badly, with my teammate Love getting selected into the first Mark-Fight. he declared to have good chances if we just gave him 50 gp, but as the battle report proofed, this money was wasted from the get go, as the Archmage clearly hit his weaknesses.
Unfortunately together with this money vanished the last resemplance of a team. I tried to get people thinking about a scanner, but never even got an answer, and sooner or later quit trying. All in all I got 0 PMs from Splime, 3-4 from ZPV and 3-4 from RRRas, mostly when they had been voted into battle. This led me to believe, that I have at least on mark in the team, who was talking to his own alliance.
So for the first 3 or 4 days the only thing I could do was discuss the likely strength and weaknesses of the opponents with Renata and Oyzar, and hope top gleam enough info to actually gain something.
Eventually renata took a pity and let it on, that Tolis was looking for support in buying his own scanner, warning me that this would be coupled to the usuial Draconian Conditions and occasional lies. Since I did want to be at least part of the game, I went for it anyway and invested 300 gp. I think I got the grand total of 2 scans, one of them on a loosing Battle participant, before Tolis went into a unforeseen Business trip and died while inactive.
Also at this time the Merc was continously voting me into battle, which led me to aquire 2 to 3 votes per day. But luckily he was killed before to long and I could remain silent for a while longer.
During this phase I was doing actually ok in betting, considering I had no use of a scanner at all and was tehrefore located in the top third of the points scale.
By now I was seriously bored with the game, at nothing was really happening, anbd I found the whjole points scale to be a completely OOC invention, which gave me no motivation.
Phase 2: The refused Sacrifice
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On day 9 Renata was voted into battle against oyzar so the only two people I was talking to at all were going to slice each other up. Renata was talking a bit friendlier, but on the other hand she had just totally backstabbed me in MN2 so I decided too remain neutral. The betting wwent surprisingly one-sided towards Oyzar. especially hhis teammates had surprisingly bet huge amounts while they could expect ponly about 50 gp in return. So I bugged renata on and on, until she admitted that she had got asll the items she could reasonably expect, and then decided to go for broke. 5 minutes before the deadline I bet ebnough money on her to be sure to get most of the share should the surprising result happen. As should happen again and again People had overestimated the effect of having more gold to spend and I collected my winnings in the next morning.
This had catapulted me into the top 3 in standing and provided me with the enough money to be a factor in the game again. Unfortunately it did not make the game more interesting. So when my winning attracted the atrtention of the marks and I was selected into the next fight, I decideed to break the trust deadlock between me and Renata for good.
she had told me that she had 1 or 2 other players interested in buying tokens, but they all could not agree who to give it too, and whom to tell the result. So I suggested they send me another 700 gp, I spend it all on a token. They get to decide a target and I tell them the result. When I turn up dead tomorrow All involved would know that the token was bought by an innocent and therefore genuine. I was actually looking forward to turning up after the fight with the grand total of 1 gp, when the dividing of spoils came along.
I was sure the Luridus would hit 1 of my weaknesses and have at least 2 abilities more so the fight would be easy. Unfortunately it turned out he also hit 2 or 3 of my defenses and had not bought any healing, maybe because he was expecting to die himself, after his glorious display with the revalation of the Ogre. Luckily we had build in quite a few checks so apparently it was enough to convince Renata and Aramazd from then on about my innocence.
As the target they had choosen chand which proved to be a mixed blessing, as he was quite busy GMing NOTW XXV. So we had an approved innocent, but no really cxooperation came together.
Phase 3: The Alliance
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So my next order of business was to get a clarification on Renatas Status. Aramazd knew a few people who had been interested but had been trouble by the usual Problem of trust. I contacted them all an suggested that we channel the money to Chand, trying to create chain of 4 people, which vould not all be marks. Apparently it convinced Tassle and Paulus enough to agree to send money, but then soemone brought up the discussion of a Chrystal Ball instead, and we had again problems reaching Chand.
So before the Morning Update of day 12 renata contacted me and said she rather wants something to be done now, then a ball be bought in 4 days. We both talked to PaulusIII send him some money and he bought the token on Renata. Since my contact to Paulus had not gone over Renata, and he had quite genuinely promised to invest 1000 gp into Crystal ball I put him on my innocent list and just believed the result. As TAssle had done basically the same and even demanded that we use the ball on him immediately I had by now 5-7 people who I was fairly certain to be innocent and tried to gte them to work together on a common strategy to finish the game
Phase 4 The endgame
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But Cooperation was not as easy as I thoiught, as some people took the points scale more serious then me and the jockeying for position was affecting the common voting. My team had surprisingly survived almost unscathed until then, but then was wiped out within a few days, while Chand was quite succesfull in keeping his people alive. Renbata ahd managed to demand a token on BLee who held the team scanner and when Izipo paid for it, she had one assured survivor in her team.
From then on the game was solved and it onyl was a question how far people would go to maximise their points. It became important to be online at the deadline, which was not alwayxs possible for me, so I could not collect points for the Brujah and the Runekeeper. The money Spuku spent to buy his "innocence" went unfortunately to Chand, because he was proven innocent, so he could announce the result at his timing and collect the 1000 points.
At this point I was starting to think about the usage of Orbs and I wondered why Chand did not go for an Orb of Vengeance together with Paulus on the fight Bruhjah vs. Runekeeper, as this should have given them spots 1 and 2 in the ranking, as far as I could see.
During this stage I gave most of my money to other known innocents to keep them alive so when my name was called again to fight Sepuku I was back to broke. I assume I could have gotten back most of it from the people who owed it to me (mostly Renata), but since it was the fight before the last I just did not care. So I was walking into both of my fights with a grand total of 78 gp and no items whatsoever. I rued this a bit when i checked Stats with Speuku, and found that I was only one point short of victory, but apparently my Model of fioght results was still underestimating the effects of weaknesses so I woke up another morning only to find myself alive again.
Fortunately by then nobody was really trying to drag it out and I was awarded the necessary points for voting in the runekeeper to assure me of a third place finish.
PS:
I am also planing to write a few remarks to the rules, which contained a few flaws as I see them, but that will have to come tomorrow.
