Would the hug box be the house of felt or foam in which we rest when we are not in battle?

Eeeeek! I had not thought it a bad idea, let alone a terrible one! I had thought it a usual thing, where the not-victims gathered around the victim, saying: "Woe is me! I did not know X was a Y!", followed by the usual accusations and recriminations.

Hmmmm. It would seem that identification is best made through creative use of abilities, and the subsequent whispered truths and untruths. Interesting...

Yeah, sorry everyone, all the cool old people left as soon as I joined. If only I knew!

Inanimate, your lengthy lascivious linguistics liberally loosed upon us lends lively lightheartedness.

[Wade McGillis]

Okay. It seems a fair assumption that with six players per side, each of the six roles is represented. Although with the peasant uprising, I wonder if there are maybe more than two pawns. But I'll assume one of each role for now.

Now, unless I am mistaken, the two Queens are the only ones whose attacks have publicly visible results. There are also two Kings able to redirect. This means that one Queen fired off an attack, and either targeted Dacke; or the King on the *same* side picked the Queen and redirected the attack *to* Dacke. So, one person out there wanted to hit Dacke specifically.

There is also another Queen out there, who either did not attack, or had the attack lost through some combination of Pawn or Rook actions, or via the King on the same side. Somebody out there might have a clue what happened, but the rest of us don't.

In any case, the Queen (or Queens) are probably shooting blind at this point. I'd say that they both probably decided to attack this turn, as cold as it would be, since from the perspective of each, there are more enemies out there than allies. Basically, the odds are with them if they attacked randomly. So, somebody probably stopped one of the Queen attacks, but the other got through.

And there are now two people out there (two Bishops) who have some basic clues on what people might be. The Knights may also have some information about who is targeting who, if they chose well. As time goes on, the Bishops and Knights will get more and more information.

Did I miss anything?

One question I'd like to ask, in public:

Is there cardflip on death, ie. do we get allegiences or roles on death? I notice that we don't know anything more about Dacke's role.

Now, in any case, with a mandatory execution on the way, we all have to pick someone to lynch. I'm going to publicly state my plan for today here: I am going to start out with a randomly chosen person who hasn't yet spoken today, and shift it to another randomly chosen non-speaking person if they speak, and leave it with them for the day. So:

Wade McGillis, I choose you. Nothing personal on my part, and I have no idea if you are friend or foe. If you speak before the end of the day, I'll pick another target who hasn't yet spoken today.

(Oh, and I reserve the right to change my plan if it becomes necessary- this is just what I plan for now)

Yes, death to the forces of the opposite colour! I think we can all agree on that.

Don't worry, I'll keep my actions in check, mate.

Wow... my head is killing me. I think I drank far, far too much. I may have hit my head, I feel a bit giddy. What a terrible hangover.

Where the heck am I?

It was definitely a wild Knight out last night.

We were out celebrating the recent promotion of one of the Pawns. Although I have to say that his promotion definitely got to his head- he started strutting about like a Queen, as if he owned the place. Still, it was fun. Everywhere you could see, someone had a drink of some sort. The pawns were doubled and barely able to move, and even the Bishops were well and truly fiancettoed, and they're the ones who usually never change their colours.

Even the King and Rook had castled more than once, and you know that nothing can get in their way when they do that.

The Queen had obviously had far too much to drink, and was all over the place, giving the Bishop and Rooks a hard time for not being able to keep up with her. But a few words from the Knight mellowed her up somewhat. We all have our talents.

I saw a couple of cute pawns en passant, and despite a quick clothing J'adoube, their minds were elsewhere. They just stood there, stubbornly waiting for me to get out of the way. I think one may have been stuck against the wall, unable to find the door. In the end, one of them put the moves on me when I stepped to the side; you can never really tell what those pawns are thinking. My gambit paid off in the end though, and I hardly broke my tempo. I had hoped to fork the two of them, but more pressing matters arose.

Anyway, it was time to pay the bar tab, and wouldn't you know it, but as soon as the check appeared the King was nowhere to be seen. You know what he's like, always letting someone else take the check or doing anything to avoid it. Anyway, I was pretty much pinned on the matter, so I just took care of it. It was a small sacrifice to make, I guess. Besides, the King's pretty helpless at the end of the day, and you know how you just feel that irrational urge to protect him?

As the evening went on, we finished off going bar hopping with the Knights.

...

Hang on a second, something's not right. There are now twice as many people here than I started out drinking with. I had expected to find myself amongst my allies: A King, a Queen, a Rook, a Bishop, a Knight, and a Pawn. That's six, not twelve. We may have gotten mixed up with the pieces from the "other" kingdom. You know the one I mean, the bad one. The one that isn't us.

I have the feeling that there will soon be the need to make a capture. I had planned to direct my attention toward a random person who hadn't yet made a move, but if we can remain silent this first day, perhaps that is for the best.

Autothysis to post and join in two.

Also, is there any reason that Bishop is holding a phallic water pistol?

- King and Rook both target A. Both are on the same side. Does the King's redirection work?

To be honest, because of this, I want to move Rook's priority right after Pawn's. Otherwise he is only good at kill prevention. If Rook targets A and Knight targets A too, Knight gets informed the same thing that he would had a Pawn targeted him - he was blocked somehow. Same for Bishop.

Yeah, it's one of those things that could sensibly go either way, and would frustrate people if they planned according to one consequence, and got another instead.

- Pawn and King both target A. Both are on the same side. If A's attack cancelled?

Could you rephrase?

Sorry, I think I got every word in that line wrong, except "the".

- Pawn B and King C both target A. A, B, and C are all on the same side. Is A's action cancelled?

- A Knight wants to target himself. Can he?

Yes. He will leanr that he paid a visit to himself, in addition to any others who did. I dont expect he would survive long

I wasn't expecting that. Here are the inevitable followups:

- Can a Queen target herself, possibly to test if someone cancels her?
- Can a Bishop identify themselves, to test if someone is redirecting or cancelling them? If nobody redirects or cancels, what result do they get?
- Can a Rook self-protect?
- Can a King command himself to obey a command?
- Can a pawn cancel its own action, leading to it being unable to cancel its own action, leading to it being cancelled, leading to it not being cancelled, leading to the board forming a black hole and sucking all the pieces into it?

- Can a King command any piece to target itself? Can a King make a piece target the King?

Huge thanks on this man, its quite helpful.

No probs, happy to help. It sucks for both the players and the GM to discover these sorts of issues mid-game, so it's best to flush out as many issues as possible early on.

- How will voting ties be resolved?

Gladiatorial event where all the tied candidates have to survive a neverending wave of invincible hungry lions, while unarmed and tied to a chair naked.^[5]

I'm in. May I be a lion?

1. Yeah, I have considered this scenario. My rationale dictates me that it wouldn't reveal his role right away, but after further consideration, a 1vs1 tie could expose fully a King. So yeah, I am considering that he does get a functional vote.

The King's role is too critical to the whole game to risk public exposure, IMHO. His vote probably won't make much difference in any case.

Neither the queen nor the rook can know if their ability is blocked or the target belonged to the other side.

Ah, cool. So it's a solid hint, but they cannot be certain.

3. Not even the target gets feedback on that his move was redirected. This includes the bishop.

Oh my. So the Bishop could potentially misidentify, without knowing, if their King redirected them. It'd be a one way to prove you are the King to a Bishop

6. Originally, the roles were swapped (hence my slip on the pawns skill description)

I suspected this might be the case.

7. As tempting as it is, the very first night would be a clsuterfuck of cockblocks.

Awww...... in how many games can you legitimately use the phrase "cockblock clusterfuck"? 

I was also thinking of suggesting that the King and Rook can together use an ability once per game, but I couldn't think of a good one.

9.I really appreciate it, thanks a lot. Thisgoes to all of you.

Happy to help.

It sounds like the whole thing would be extremely chaotic as it'd be very hard to conclusively show *anything*. This could be a good or a bad thing.

One thing I'd definitely suggest is to make a list of the order of application of abilities, to resolve any ambiguities. It might be:

- Pawn cancellations take effect. All subsequent actions that are cancelled are ignored, as if they didn't exist.
- King's redirection takes effect, if applicable and not cancelled, and target has not been cancelled. This silently modifies the target with no feedback to anyone, and is treated as if the original player chose that action.
- Rook protection applied.
- Queen smites target.
- Knight gets feedback.
- Bishop gets feedback.

I'd consider some of the weirder interactions too:

- Knight targets C. A targets B. A's target changed to C due to King. What is the Knight told?
- King and Rook both target A. Both are on the same side. Does the King's redirection work?
- Pawn and King both target A. Both are on the same side. If A's attack cancelled?
- Five players target A, including two Knights. What do the Knights learn?
- A Knight wants to target himself. Can he?
- Pawn A targets Pawn B. Pawn B targets Pawn C. Who is cancelled?
- Knight D targets A. Queen B targets A. Pawn C cancels Queen B. What happens? What does the Knight learn?

Some observations:

- The King's faux-vote may allow them to be identified, ie. if the final vote is 2 v 1 v 1, and it is announced as a tie, then one of the two votes is the King.
- Unless I am mistaken, Rooks can identify enemies via their abilities, and Queens can identify allies and enemies.
- With a vote and two Kings, that's three kills per day, unless blocked.
- How does a Queen perform the override? Do they just select the target of the target, and watch the result? Does the target know that their move was changed?
- Does the target of a rook know they were protected, does the attacker of a target of the rook know they were blocked?
- With a large number of pawns a lot of attacks might get blocked.
- Pawn shield is probably supposed to say *Queen's* override.
- How will voting ties be resolved?

Some suggestions:

- Give the King a real vote, completely indistinguishable from the rest.
- Daytime voting should be mandatory, with a no-mercy death if you don't vote, ruthlessly enforced on day one OR from day two onward. This would start the carnage early.
- Switch the King and Queen's abilities, because it gives the King the chance to identify allies, and potentially prove his Kinghood, but minimal ability to harm anyone; and it gives massive destructive ability to the Queen, but places great risk on losing her. This is a bit closer to their relative roles in chess.
- Give pawns the ability to take two actions on their first turn, just because.

I hope this helps.

EDIT:

Oh, and another suggestion. *If* you want to remove the daily vigilante role entirely, this could be done by giving *all* players the optional choice of voting blind, by PM to the GM, at night. Votes are tallied up per-team, and the highest vote count determines the target of that side. Perhaps the King gets a triple vote, as well. Or, perhaps, the King gets no vote at all, and the Queen's vote is triple. Or some other variation. Ties are resolved by the greatest ranking piece (with King on top, perhaps).

I have an idea for one, it would be veeeery loosely themed upon chess. Not usre wether to propose theidea here or a new thread.

"oh no there are werewhites amongst us!"

It is now Knight...

And that is how we get 'er done.

Cheers for sharing all of that, this extra glimpse behind the scenes makes the whole scenario all that more interesting.

Incidentally, I was thinking... a big part of this type of game is figuring out who has powers, etc etc. An interesting setup might be knowing that *everyone* has some sort of power, though its type and degree of usefulness wouldn't be known -- that'd make it so that it'd *always* be useful to try and talk to other people, privately or no, because even if you knew they weren't a werewolf or the seer or something of that kind, they might still have valuable information or something like that. Plus, it would just be fun to have everyone be completely confused. I don't know if this sounds like a good idea to you all.

I ran a game a few years back (Witch Hunt: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=2595.0 , Fifth might even remember playing it too!) where everybody could either investigate or use visions (like a light Seer) AND everyone had at least one extra power or ability too. So that was *two* abilities per person. I think it turned out nicely in the end. It *was* a lot of work to run though.

I was thinking the setting could be something like one of those Victorian era mystery novels (maybe, or especially, like The Mousetrap) because I am completely boring and enjoy them -- everyone would be some sort of detective, or a spy, or policeman or something of that sort. This would explain why they all could do various things, but not exactly what they could do or whether they were innocent (anyone can be a werewolf/demon/cultist, right?).

But I think the idea is interested regardless of setting...

I think this setting is interesting regardless of rules. You should seriously consider setting such a thing up one day.

[Demons]

The odds were stacked against the Demons, but I think some credit has to go to Team God for winning so quickly!

Agreed completely, on both counts. Many congrats for the large role you played in the victory.

But while Garthy did manage to destroy the credibility of the census and of PBS, he turned himself into a good target for my Seer-ability. So while the census didn't go as planned it did actually result in us finding out that Garthy was a Demon. So I'm not sure if it was worth it for you Garthy; if I could go back in time and coach you, I would probably advise against talking such an aggressive stance against PBS and the census.

I had no choice, really. I could throw myself in front of the train and put my arms out to stop it, or turn tail and have it run over all of my allies, and then have it hit me in the back as I fled.

Also, it was fun as heck to become the lightning rod.

I reread my page eight speech from time to time, and think: "My God. Was that me? Am I really capable of being such a horrible, manipulative, evil bastard in real life?". I am simultaneously completely proud and thoroughly ashamed of that speech.

Was it worth it to me? Heck yes. It was fun. I think it increased the odds of us winning, forced using one Seer use, and I think I came awfully close to getting a lot of innocent people killed, which under the circumstances, I felt was a pretty decent achievement. If I could do it again, I'd do exactly the same, but spend more time trying to manipulate people by PM as well.

But I remember that I was literally shaking with anger when Garthy successfully turned the town against both The Hand and the census. I was sooo angry with you. I had to take deep breaths and remind myself that it was only a game

Wow, I honestly had no idea I had that effect on anyone. I had thought that for the most part people thought I was a bit nuts and a bit of a drama queen, terminally misguided, probable demon-bait, but provided some half-decent ideas occasionally and some mild entertainment.

I don't think I was successful turning the town at all! I had almost no supporters, and no solid ones who spoke for me. I think I introduced a lot of doubt though, which was ultimately the objective.

Garthy (my personal Moriarty)

*swoons* Oh yes. I'll be taking *that* as a compliment.

But at that time, both Alevice and Franlinks Ghost had already exposed themselves to me. If you guys had just stayed hidden you would have survived much longer, because we were really clueless about your identity -- up until the point you started telling us obvious lies

In my not-at-all-humble opinion, Alevice and Franklins Ghost played fantastically and I was lucky to have them both on my side. They got stung by a situation they could never have predicted, and had no way to avoid once the trap was sprung. We couldn't coordinate our deceptions properly, but they *still* were able to set things up that would have been extremely effective in a different scenario. Eyeliner and Randomasta ran fairly effective low-profile roles, and ran into patches of bad luck that weren't their fault. They also played very nicely. I suspect that ev149 would have done great as well, if he hadn't been forced to leave. I believe that we were potentially a very, very dangerous team, but we suffered bad luck *and* difficult odds, and couldn't quite overcome them. The same team in different circumstances? I think you guys would have been in serious trouble, and desperately fighting to survive, if you don't mind me tooting our own horn.

It might not be obvious, but this rule-set was originally intended for IRL play -- which is why it got so broken when you add the whole PM thing. It works a lot better when there's a lot less communication except for the werewolves -- that alone annihilates half of the master-strategy you noted, Garthy.

Ah! I'm guessing this would be played in a room, where you simply couldn't whisper your role to the Hand without *someone* overhearing? That would make a big difference.

EDIT: I should add that I've never played TWG in an IRL setting, so I'm quite in the dark as to how it typically goes.

Garthy you did an amazing job and loved the role you played in the game.

Cheers.

Knowing I was the last demon made me feel some pressure to win it for my fellow demons who played a great game.

I thought that you and Alevice had a decent chance at making it after I'd croaked, because you'd generally kept a distance from me publicly, and I was trying to take down as many innocents with me as possible if I was found out. We were all up against some very clever opponents though.

There was no PM interception. I just liked seeing you guys squirm.

Really? None at all? Damn you! *shakes fist at the heavens*

Does anybody have any idea how PBS stumbled on the term "Father", which I was setting up as a codeword? I'd taken that as near-proof that PBS was getting messages from us. Did someone leak it out, was it just luck, or something else? The game could have gone so much differently if I hadn't latched onto that one.

And yeah, I was hoping that the Hand of God would be vague and suspicious enough to dissuade full commitment,

I have to say I thought more people would find the role suspicious. I read *that* situation completely incorrectly.

For future note, I will totally give demons awesome death-curses. Their death scenes were already... explosive (harhar), so it would just add to the crazy-coolness.

Hell yes.

I tried to give people good death scenes and lavish descriptions to minimize the sadness of death, too -- if your character went out awesomely, at least you can cherish that.

I was sad to have failed and fallen out of the game, but my death scene brought a huge smile to my face, I really appreciated that.