Admin Thread for WWLXX: At the Prison of Ice

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

At the beginning I would like to point out that I have never been a devout supporter of these "green" movements which have become so popular especially in the last few decades. Indeed I have belonged to what you could perhaps call a "moderate" group of people, and certainly I haven't been one of those who would initiate any large-scale action on my own. But nowadays I feel obliged to speak out and press on the governments and companies to do whatever is in their power to prevent global warming. I am also afraid that it might be already too late.

The reason for my abrupt change of mind requires longer elaboration, however I will try to present it here in full to prove the necessity of making decisive steps now. Despite all contrary evidence presented by some researchers, it is a fact that the process of global climate change of our planet is going on and I am afraid of where it may lead us. The warming of the seas and the melting of polar ice caps is but first of the grievances humanity will have to face. I would like to turn even to those who deny the impact of human factor on global warming, difference of opinions aside, if there is even a slight chance that human activity can influence the process, it is necessary to take measurements to prevent the melting of the polar ice caps before it is too late.

The events I wish to report herein – events most disturbing in their nature and their possible implications – concern the Arctic expedition I have undergone along with several others during the last polar season. These facts have been this far unknown to wide public and despite my reluctance to share them, not least out of fear that especially some of them may be overlooked or attributed to charlatanry, I have decided to make a true account of everything.

***

Welcome to the admin thread for Tol-in-Gaurhoth LXX: At the Prison of Ice, which is another of the traditional series of Werewolf games which probably all of you are familiar with – although this game is open also to those who haven't been playing the game yet, if such ones appeared here. This game should be suitable also for complete beginners, as its rules will be relatively simple, basic, and without any major changes as to what is "common", except for two or three minor things, which will be mentioned below. But I hope this game will be suitable for you whether you are looking for an easy, not too stressing game with known roles or whether you wish to have something slightly untraditional there. It should be able to provide both, not wandering into completely uncharted regions of wild games with dozens of rules, but at the same time not falling into the completely "boring" routine.

The main purpose of this game, of course, is Werewolf hunting (or deceiving the innocents, if you are a Werewolf). And this is what I am aiming for. Unlike my previous games (WWXXXV: Werewolves Among the Wolf-Men and WWXLV: The Fellowship of Saruman), where roleplaying was the major factor, in this game (maybe to somebody's disappointment) there will be none and it will be just a simple game like all the others. This is partially because I doubt I could come up again with something as good as the Fellowship of Saruman was (that does not mean I would give up on roleplaying altogether, though). But my hope is that for those who wish to experience some aesthetic aspect in the game apart from the Werewolfing itself the theme will provide something like that too.

As for the game's theme, as you can see here, it concerns a rather unfortunate fate of one polar expedition. I am not going to speak on length about the theme itself here, you will soon read more on the game thread itself and also in the upcoming narrations during the game. Sufficient to say, you should not be, and I hope you will not be disappointed. As players, you can pick in-story roles, if you wish, to associate yourselves with the members of the expedition.

The summary of the rules follows below.

PLAYERS

Inziladun - meteorologist
Mnemosyne - field medic
Boromir88 - look it up below, I am too lazy to copypaste
Eomer of the Rohirrim - sea pilot
Loslote - rich funder's spoiled daughter
Morsul - federal grants lawyer
Brinn - polar bear biologist
Pitchwife - marine biologist
Nienna - navigator
Nogrod - old palaeoecologist who is perhaps archaic himself but still not archaic enough not to remember his hyper-long title, sorry Boro
Macalaure - palaeomathematician
sally - the p.w.r.c.u.w.t.p.f.t.w.t.b.w.s-d.c.b.h.p.a.n.i.a.g.p.m.a.v.b.b.n.o.a.n.a.h.u.a.s. p.m.k.e.
Thinlómien - whale expert
Nerwen - mechanic
Roa - survival guide
Bes - room/store manager
Shasta - sled dog handler
wilwa
Greenie - senior assitant to Lommy *innocent look*
tromkehra - cook/bartender

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

The game will start with Night 1 on November 28th, 9:00 PM GMT.

ROLES

Like I said, this game will be relatively classic. The roles are as follows:

# ordinary innocents – their objective is to get rid of all the Werewolves.

4 Werewolves – their objective is to survive up to the point when there are as many Werewolves as innocents. They can PM with each other every Night and each Night they choose one person to kill.

1 Ranger – she stands with the innocents, but each Night, she can choose one person to protect. She can also choose to protect herself. The protected person, if targeted by the Wolves at Night, won't be killed and there will be no kill that Night. Ranger cannot protect the same person twice in a row. The Ranger and Hunter know each other's identities and can PM each other during the Night.

1 Hunter – she stands with the innocents, and at any point of the game, she can choose people whom she is going to watch and take with her in case she dies. That effectively means that the Hunter will send me a list of three or less names (maximally up to the number of living Werewolves in game), and if she is killed during the Night and there is a Werewolf on the list, the Werewolf who is first on the list will die alongside her; otherwise, nothing happens. If the Hunter is lynched and there is a Werewolf on the list, the Werewolf who is the first on the list will die alongside her; otherwise, the first person who is on the list will die alongside her. The Hunter can change her list at any point, however, in case of her death, I am of course taking into account only the list I had in my disposition before the deadline of the current Day/Night (i.e. for example if the Hunter is lynched, then Night comes, and she sends me another list after she died, I am not going to take it into account). The Ranger and Hunter know each other's identities and can PM each other during the Night.

1 secret role – will not be revealed on the admin thread and only the chosen player will know about it.

VOTING

Each person has one vote each Day. The votes, once cast, cannot be changed by any means. The vote must contain the clear name of the player voted for with "++" before it, and be boldened, like this:

++Legate of Amon Lanc

At the end of each Day, the person who gets the most votes is lynched. In case of a tie, the person who reached the most votes as the first is lynched. Votes cast after the deadline (in posts with the timestamp "##:00" and later) will not be taken into account.

Person who does not cast any vote for two days in a row will be modfired.

The deadline for voting will be (unless I yet decide otherwise) 9:00 PM GMT. (Calculated from what should be 11:00 for us Finns. Please correct me somebody if I have miscalculated ) Game will start with a Night phase. As in every game, there will be Night and Day phases, each always taking 24 hours of real time.

SPECIAL RULES

Apart from the secret role, there will be two different special events taking place during the game. They will be secret in the beginning and will be all revealed in due time. You don't need to worry about them until they happen (which will be announced on the game thread along with the narration, also there will be a copy and a more elaborate explanation of them rule-wise posted on the admin thread at the same time). No player (including the secret role) is going to know about these two events until they are announced publicly to everybody.

Neither of the special things in this game will have any totally ground-breaking effect (i.e. nothing that will turn the game totally upside-down).

MISCELLANEOUS RULES/INFORMATION

Posting on admin thread during the game is allowed only for the purposes of announcing absence, asking about clarification on the game rules (though I hope there will be no need for it), or other urgent matters. People who have been lynched or killed cannot post on the game thread or the admin thread until the game ends.

Any communication about the game between the players, living or dead, outside the game thread (or Night-discussions, if the role allows it) is forbidden.

PMs, either sent by the mod or by your friends (Werewolves, Ranger, Hunter...), cannot be quoted on the game thread. No out-of-game posts may be quoted on the game thread.

Please try to avoid any meta-game reasoning in your posting in the game as far as possible. It does not belong to Werewolf.

Likewise, narrations are not to be used as source of reasoning for the game. The narration's function is purely aesthetic and they are made to reflect the game's happenings, however, everything that is important in the narration is always repeated in the rules or Day/Night summary. If something is not mentioned in the rules, then it has no in-game impact whatsoever. (If you are not sure what the heck does this mean, you can also see below in the note at the end of this post.)

Likewise, if something is announced in the rules, but not mentioned in the narration, it still holds.

Excessive spam-posting on the thread (posts lacking any in-game content) will be met by warning followed by a modfire. Try to make the thread readable for others with actual information related to the game.

The pronouns used on the admin thread to describe some role have nothing to do with the person's actual gender.

IN-STORY ROLES

You may pick a role you will have in the expedition, this is merely for narrational purposes. You can pick out of the professions listed here, or you can come up with an idea of your own fitting along the similar lines (anything that would make sense on such a kind of expedition). The same profession can be taken by several people, as there can be several experts from the same field in the expedition. The initial occupations could be as follows: meteorologist, hydrometeorologist, geologist, geophysicist, palaeoecologist, marine biologist, biologist, palaeoclimatology expert, engineer, mechanic, medic, sea pilot, navigator.

A NOTE ABOUT THE NARRATIONS

This is just a note of clarification about the role of narrations in this game to avoid misunderstandings. The main purpose of the narrations is aesthetic. That means, providing some background for the Werewolf hunt itself, which otherwise operates on well-known schemes. However, I won't be doing what most of the narration-writers do, that is, to try to adjust the narrations nail-and-tooth to the in-game happenings (like making it so that the innocents discover exactly three sets of wolf footprints on the very first Day, if possible next to a note addressed to the innocents and signed in blood by Fang, Grip and Wolf, predicting the early destruction of the village). Instead of making some hybrid (and thus risking that I ruin the impression of the story and at the same time fail in reflecting the game to the point that if somebody was following the narration by heart, he or she would "find" information which will completely misguide him or her in the game), I have decided to draw a strict line between the narrations and the game. In most of the games people are doing it too, but I feel it important to point out this time. That means: Your primary guide are the rules. If the narrations seem to you to imply something which is not stated in the rules, then it is not true. There are no in-game hints in the narrations whatsoever, unless it is specifically stated later in the Day/Night summary (and I WILL enclose a summary of everything happening in every narration, don't worry). And vice versa. The story has its own perspective, e.g. if it does not say how many Werewolves are around, but the rules do, of course you know how many people you are looking for, even if the characters in the story don't. The story's purpose is illustrational, and it draws from the game, but not vice versa. Since this is not roleplaying game, everybody of course says stuff on the thread which his or her character would not really say in the story. Therefore, you should not bother yourself with "but possibly my character does not know if we have a Ranger, should I talk about it on the thread?" and just talk about it. (I am stating the obvious here, but I am saying it just as to avoid confusion.)

***

[Inziladun]

I'm in as a meteorologist.

[Mnemosyne]

Field medic for me, please.

Also, considering that back in the early '90's all these CD labels told me that we only have ten years left to save the planet, I figure that we're already screwed.

Please don't make it too preachy, Legate. The 'Downs doesn't allow politics on here for good reason.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Mnemosyne

Please don't make it too preachy, Legate. The 'Downs doesn't allow politics on here for good reason.

No politics in here, Mnemo. Narrational introduction, that's all. After all, the tale reported in here is "completely fictitious and any resemblance to people or events reported therein is purely coincidental"... Or so it says...

Anyway, welcome both!

[Boromir88]

Put me down with a question mark and I would officially like to strive for the longest title, so how about Research Assistant to the Professor of Glaciology at Snowslide University?

[Morsul the Dark]

I know Double Posting Legate the First post Is AWESOME!

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

Legate the First post Is AWESOME!

Well, yes!!!

Cool indeed, in both senses of the word...

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Oh, people, thank you both. Really, as I was actually worried about the reception. Now you both have made me happy

[tromkehra]

I can be the cook/bar tender please ? Hurray chef? :3

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by tromkehra

I can be the cook/bar tender please ? Hurray chef? :3

Remember to use Invisible Mode.

User CP+ Edit Options+Check 'Use Invisible Mode', then 'Save Changes'.

[Boromir88]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Well, yes!!!

Cool indeed, in both senses of the word...

So many punny people on this forum.

[Loslote]

Ooh, brutal trip! Out past Barrow in the winter - might as well have been the inspiration for Helcaraxe. Do you know how high the suicide rate is for people who live there? Can't wait to go!

[Bes]

Hey folks. I'm new here, just posted in the new member area actually. I heard about this game from Roa, and I wanted to give it a try. The way she describes it, it sounds much more cerebral than pretty much any other game I've ever played in, and that appeals to me.

If you're still accepting new players, I'd like the character role of a stock room/store manager: The guy who keeps track of what the expedition site does and does not have, sends orders for more stuff back to wherever we came from. Food, spare clothes, tools, light bulbs, toilet paper, booze, the little necessities of life.

What do you say? Have room for one more?

[Morsul the Dark]

LEGATE I have fifteen minutes til I prepare for work!

I must know must I vote now or does the deadline expand past the 24 hours?!

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

LEGATE I have fifteen minutes til I prepare for work!

I must know must I vote now or does the deadline expand past the 24 hours?!

Copying this from the game thread...

To state it clearly, DL is the time of when the Day 1 narration was posted (the one labeled "Expedition Journal - Day 1 Entry", the third post from the top on the game thread). So you should be able to read the time from there if you are unsure. Although I think I have counted the DL time correctly (I don't trust myself in maths, ever, perhaps somebody could verify or correct me).