TIG CXVII: GAME Thread:

[Blind Guardian]

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

Heck my best defense as a wolf is to pretend to be a simple cobbler Ha

Then good thing the only cobbler we had in the game was a CobblerMod!

[Loslote]

Just my two cents on the infodrops - I think one way to start balancing them would be to give them after the Ghost has left the Dead Thread. One of the best parts of this game was when the Dead knew more than the Ghost knowing more than the Living, but no way for the Dead to tell the Ghost and limited communication between the Ghost and the Living. Even with the infodrops, the Dead specifically asked GhostHuin to push for Pitch's lynch as our best educated guess, then spent the whole Day panicking about exactly that. Moving the infodumps to the start of the Day phase means the Ghost has even more outdated information, but could also open up new options that don't do much good right away but MAY have a payoff later - "Both Gifteds selected ordos", "The person the Seer dreamed got votes the previous Day", "The Ranger almost selected the wolves' target", etc.

Whatever we decide to do with the infodumps - and I think there's a lot of room for mods to change it up, but they'd have to be very careful with how they do it - the Ghost role was a TON of fun. Looking up quotes and flipping through books trying to quickly find something with just the right connotation, for me personally, was probably the most fun I've had in a werewolf game in a very long time, and it's definitely worth including in future games if at all possible!

[Galadriel55]

I was out of commission for a bit but now able to read and post again. In response to Legate's question, making the infodrops progressed from being fun to being very very stressful. I am not 100% certain, but to my memory there was no precedent to this type of thing, and this is the first game where as a mod you can influence the course of the game. It's in your hands to give info that can help one side over the other (also depending on the proportions of the alignments on the DT), clear the path or mislead completely. As the number of Living players gets smaller, and especially once the Gifteds are gone, it's very hard to come up with statements which are broad enough to remain fair game.

The "sudoku" effect is real and foreseeable, but also it's random: as the mod, you can't control which players die or get dreamed, so vaguely-put statements that become clear after 3-4 people die are, I thought, fair game. What really made it snowball was that these statements added up on top of each other. There is a way to make them even more vague, which we almost resorted to on N4 but managed to scrape out of it. You can do logic statements, and with words like either / at least / not both / and other helpful grammar you can make it so the statement fulfils itself only when all people's roles are revealed. An example: either both Kath and Greenie are ordos, or Morsul and Pitch are not both wolves, but not both. Finding out one half of the statement actually doesn't tell you anything about the other half, so long as there are still living Gifteds.

My favourite infodrop though was about the gifteds (only 1 gifted received votes), because it put Kath (who was slightly suspected for "easy votes") together in the same group as Soriman (proposed Seer at one point on the DT) and Leg&Lom (our furries who were regarded as possible gifteds and mildly protected until Kath died and fulfilled that group). I think it doesn't exemplify vagueness to the same degree as the first statement, but it was a good one for the initial confusion element.

Saying all that, I think that the infodrops are good for the DT as they make the Living respect the Dead a little more. However, they should be limited, as with this set-up I think they give too much power. For instance, perhaps the Dead could choose to have an infodrop in place of casting a vote, or in place of sending a Ghost. That way they would have to trade one power for another, rather than having it all. And perhaps the infodrops will no longer be delivered after the Seer dies - though if the Seer dies really early, that might be a bit unfair. My vote as mod is that it's a viable premise but needs to be curbed. I was too preoccupied with giving the Dead some weight, and it turned out a bit too much.

[Galadriel55]

But the real question is... Wolves, why did you kill Form after all?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

But the real question is... Wolves, why did you kill Form after all?

I see this was never answered! (Even though I think we hinted at it in several times.) It was the product of a debate of looking for a Gifted by elimination method - nobody left any Seer hints whatsoever, and in Form's case, it was at least possible that he was the Seer and dreamed of sally. We were aware that it was potentially pointing to sally, but we were like "well, and so what - if he IS the Seer, then we have to kill him anyway". Plus, we hoped that people would think that it was perhaps too obvious a connection, that Wolves would exactly not do that, it might look like somebody is trying to frame sally, etc. That kind of stuff.

Perhaps my fellow Wolves can elaborate if I misinterpreted this, or add their own perspective.