I don't know. I didn't personally find it bothersome, just trying to articulate what I thought ziggy was saying based on from dead chat.
edit: I reread it again though and see it seemed like her suggestion was to build the story off the game. So rather than have set main characters before the game starts, have the characters become more involved in the story based on how the players are interacting with each other.
I agree with the idea here, but the problem is that in this type of scenario, it's hard to create a cohesive narrative. So let's say we see these 5 people seeming to direct a lot of action, so you start to direct 5 or so story arcs. Let's say that 3 or 4 of those people die in the first half of the game. Sure you have likely got more and more characters involved in those arcs, but then it feels like more you have created a world, and here are things going on in the world rather than a story, if that makes sense (think GoT without the cohesiveness of the story). I have done a narrative one like this prior, and I personally think it missed the mark as a narrative game. I guess, I just am not sure of a good strategy on this, without having a couple of key characters I know will stick around for a bit, even if some of the characters I really wanted to use in the story (Brazlak, Iji, Wiske, Krammet, and Ristham) all died so early.
I like puzzles so I did enjoy picking out the hints in the story. However unfortunately that was only so helpful because about half of the players it seemed treated it as a regular game, and didn't take into account storyline mechanics.
Anyways, I would say it kept me more invested for that reason. However, it was REALLY long, and think for playing something like that, would've been nice to have like more return on investment..?
Not really sure how to put that. But like, we spent a week or so reading and figuring out the story, using it to chase down the antagonists, found them all pretty quickly, felt really good about that but in the end it didn't seem to matter because their affiliations all changed once capri was dead. In this way, it was like being really invested and then that investment feels wasted.
Definitely applaud the effort you in as it was very unique, a great game, totally worth playing.
So, this comes into the other problem with story based narratives. My goal was a story, and I think I did a pretty good job of getting a full and complete story out of it, with a few minor issues. With that said, without having a 50 person game, I am not quite sure the best way that I can FULLY reward you for finding the wolves, and having you deplete their lives was a measure (for instance with SAR it was 3 and done, which is lynch, a night kill, a lynch. Dolphin and paws was the same as lynching them separately, just a delayed death, Capri you knew was untouchable, so you didn't bark up that road, Stagg I can understand the frustration, but I wanted them to live through to their redemption arc OR be killed by Mero (Pippy could destroy all 5 lives with one kill). In addition to that, I made all of the True Antagonists quite squishy, such that they had no means of surviving a kill or a lynch attempt. And I completely get what you are saying there, however, Dolphin and Paws were definitely anti village still, as was Pippy. So the only one that it became not fortuitous to continue lynching was Stagg. But I completely understand the frustration there, I guess I need to rethink a bit more about how fluidity can work.
I didn't ASK to be like a spectator. I said I was available the whole time. I understand not everyone can be the star, but this comment feels pretty ****ty coming from you, gotta say.
FWIW, you would have likely survived quite awhile if Coffee hadn't outed you early on. You were intuitive on who to predict, even on the day you were killed you knew you were being killed, and was going to protect yourself if it wasn't for the burn. With that said, I do apologize that some people received roles that didn't match their activity levels (was below the anticipated levels they wanted)
My constructive criticisms:
*. Extremely Long writeups in a game with a lot of players was pretty hard to digest. Normally I would have been all over the write ups, but until 1/2 the people were eliminated, I didn’t really have time, and I am sure I am not the only one who skimmed through a number of write ups just to keep up.
*multiple wolves with various unknowable ways of being killed ultimately was very demotivating as a villager, there was a certain blasé attitude that kicked in that you as mod were just doing whatever you wanted to tell a story, and it wasn’t worth the effort to figure it out as players, not to mention being next to impossible to do so.
*for me, this game falls in the category as
@DocEspana complains where the game has strayed too far from WW anymore, and is something else. I like problem solving and mechanics more than most in WW, but if it is too hard, or in some cases impossible to understand the mechanics I just kind of shrug.
*personal preference is that I dislike super powered players, as the game is much less interesting to those who don’t have those roles. I especially don’t like chaos with win conditions, Again this is preference though.
*Didn’t know the theme, and don’t really get why it was such a big deal to keep it secret. And not really thrilled that some people knew and others didn’t.
The game had really nicely thought out roles, and a lot of love in the writeups, and was very well run. I really enjoyed playing so that is a tribute to your game design and game running. The stuff above is just a few points that distracted from the overall perfection.
Thank you for your time and effort.
A) Yeah, I completely understand that. I guess I could have gotten progressively longer and longer with the write ups as I went, but I was trying to establish early on that good information was hidden in the write ups, and its hard to hide information without there being some fluff around it.
B) If I redid this game, I would've had a role in there that can assess how many lives each person had at that given time, and provided them with a bit of protection. I think the not knowing how to kill was more frustrating than the them not dying on first lynch, and I can understand that bleakness as a villager.
C) I completely agree that this is on the avante garde side of WW games. Out of curiosity, would you be able to go over some of the mechancis you felt were too daunting?
D) So chaoses win condition was simply to reach parity (to survive to end game). It's very similar to how serial killer functions. Do you believe third parties shouldn't be able to win in conjunction with village? With respect to overpowered villagers/other roles, I agree with you on that. It's hard to navigate narrative games without having that though, as if you develop a story on 10 characters or 15 characters, you need to hope at least 5 of those survive. I guess I really need to rethink how to do narrative games in the future to hit that tricky balance on that.
E) The reason I kept it secret was more to prevent infighting with the antagonists to a minimum in early game. If Capri looked up the game, Stagg and Pippy both would have been attempted to be killed by the pack early on. I could've gone more off script with how I played it, but I really liked the story from the game and wanted to do it as much justice as I could.
I agree with this but for the opposite reason. People who asked for less involvement were basically given a free pass for the first half of the game and didn't have to worry about being lynched or NK'd which was frustrating. I don't necessarily have a problem with that to a certain extent, but about half the players weren't touchable for a long time and there were certain players who definitely had a big advantage towards the end of the game because there was less info to glean from them (due to post restrictions or b/c they simply didn't have to be around).
Loved the narrative with in-depth write-ups. I felt like there was a layer(s) of depth to this game that I haven't seen before. Biggest critique is the whole redemption point with the affiliation changes. As pointed out, a lot of people didn't take the fluidity of the game into account as much and stuck by rules of "never listen to an outed wolf" and such. Which is normally fine but was detrimental to village in this game.
My other critique was that I think some of the characters were made too obvious in write-ups. It was reeeeaaally easy for wolves to figure out who most of the villagers were just from the write-ups very early (like D3). I understand that it was a narrative to tell the story, but there were times where it was so obvious that it almost seemed like the story was trying to push to get specific characters killed, which I'm not really a fan of. I also don't think hiding the theme was really necessary. You'd had contingency plans for if things strayed off course and some parts of the plot ended up being completely different (Mel's conversion), so I think I'd rather have known the theme and had a narrative that felt more organic with how the game developed based on how people were playing as opposed to a narrative that seemed to be pushing specific actions with seemingly pre-determined outcomes (even in small ways).
Out of curiosity, which players do you feel capitalized off of that the most (the ones that didn't have to be around so you could glean more off of them)?
Yeah, I am not sure how to handle redemption arcs better, since I provided a major hint on the first post that likely a wolf will become a villager.
At the same time, I do feel that it was almost as equally simply to start picking out who wolves were from the write ups by village. I was trying to be as fair as possible in that regard, but maybe I had slanted it a bit too much in the antagonists favor early on. With respect to the theme, look at the above post, and that is the main reason I had for hiding the theme.
Yes, and I'll also add that the rules in terms of this were very vague and should have been better clarified since I don't enjoy being called a cheater multiple times when I didn't actually break any freaking rules. The only thing initially posted was this:
So when Mel posted about the mist, bandits, and other stuff it technically was theme solving and led to this:
So again, talking about trying not to solve theme on the thread. It said nothing about posting that "hey, I know things and we should do X thing based on that." So while it prohibited theme "solving", use of theme for game strategy or even saying "I know the theme" was NOT originally prohibited. EVER. PERIOD. It wasn't until after my post where I mentioned INDIRECTLY that I knew what the theme was that Navi posted that no one was allowed to even reference the theme. If that was the rule it should have been explicitly stated in the two other times that rules about the theme were mentioned.
So if people got angry and thought I was cheating then they should either read the rules more closely or ask to have them clarified better. Most of you should know by now that I'll get creative and take advantage of what's given WITHIN THE RULES and that I'll try and find loopholes if possible. Attacking my integrity for that is utter BS and frankly makes me not want to play on this site in the future, as it sounds like people whining because things didn't go their way. So if people want to be pissy cry babies about it when it ended up not even really impacting the game then they can cry me a river, because that's a flaw with the stated rules/design, not how it was played.
I don't think you were trying to cheat, and I appreciate the loopholes. The problem came in that Mel had made it clear already they knew the theme, and then you had directed a theme argument at Mel, referenced them as bosses in there, and threw a lynch from you to chaos based off of theme, which is not what I had wanted. If you had gone with story based reasons, I had put a fair amount in there that could have implicated them in that regard, I would've been thrilled by that. Or even if you had stuck to arguments regarding your wolf pm instead. I just didn't want it to be like "The game says it must happen this way, so everyone vote them instead." As it's a less.... fulfilling type of lynch, and frustrating if you are lynched because someone knows you are a bad guy in the game and another verifies that, if that makes sense. (sorry, typing fast as I had to leave, so if any of that didn't follow, my bad).
