Realms Beyond Werewolf 2 : Game Thread

[Serdoa]

Honestly? I have no clue why I didn't try to get in contact with the wolves through you or uberfish. Though I didn't have much contact by PM with anyone except scooter so contacting you or uberfish probably simply never occured to me as a possibility.

Btw: Gaspar, how did you find out that I am playing for Team Werewolf but am counting as a villager? I myself had to ask F&I because it was unclear for me but it seems it was suddenly completely obvious to you.

[Irgy]

Oh well, well done village.

From our perspective, Serdoa's move on Scooter was the most obvious moment of fail. How ironic that it was Scooter's good work in protesting his innocence that lost the game for us. It wasn't just that we'd have won simply by voting off Serdoa the next day with at least a wolves+Serdoa majority, nor that we lost a wolf per-se, but that we were all caught with our pants down as a result, with myself and Rowain the only people voting to save Scooter.

From my perspective there's three things I'd do differently next time. One little one is to pull an identical yet almost completely oppositely motivated Serdoa-stunt on Scooter myself. It would have been actually inconsistent with the villager-role I was trying to play though. I actually was getting worried my voting record was suspiciously too good at that stage, a real villager would make a wrong vote at least occasionally. The timing was bad though. Everyone forgets the old voting record unless something particularly stood out, and having a bad recent record was what mattered.

Another missed opportunity I think was to get myself into the network the day I was owl-scried. I should have actively contacted people, claiming to be confirmed and wanting in. That I was eventually shown to be technically unconfirmed wouldn't have mattered then, because I could claim to have at least thought myself confirmed at the time. I might have been able to get myself into the village network that way.

The other thing I'd try and do differently is infiltrate or start my own network. Gaspar is in many ways the player who really shines for me in the village. Nothing he did couldn't have been done by a wolf, but he had himself completely trusted by the end of the game, able to co-ordinate the final wolf votes from a position of authority. Without ever having been actually confirmed by anything or anyone. If I played as wolf in an outside communication game again I'd seriously consider making myself a wolf-Gaspar. It would be a hard task though.

The mod-influences kind of balanced out on the whole. We got screwed by Selrahc's mayor-run based on his mistaken village role-pm. The village got screwed by MJW's modkill (though he has himself at least partly to blame for it I'm sure). The village nearly got screwed by confusion over how the owl worked, but that ended up undone. We thought we'd been screwed by having a village with one and a half seers, but the possessed should have balanced that back out (for all that it didn't really work out that way). Thanks to fire&ice for hosting, I might not have agreed with everything that happened but you kept the game running despite any discontent and it was a good and interesting game.

Basically we lost to a village network. We killed off its members one by one but they still outnumbered us in the end. We took out the power roles early, but not before we lost two wolves to them, and so we still weren't ever really catching up in numbers. Rowain and I were primarily caught by elimination as much as anything else. This is why outside communication favors the village. Although it can in theory be infiltrated, it's still a great source of potential power.

[luddite]

It's pretty funny that this ended with a unanimous vote against Rowain! Didn't expect the werewolves to turn themselves in...

Any congrats to all the other players for working so hard at this. I wish I could have stayed alive longer, but at least I got to do a lot (of both good and bad decisions) while I was alive. And it's interesting that the game was so close at the end, with just 1 vote against scooter making the difference.

[Lewwyn]

HAHA Survival!

Thanks everyone!

[Gaspar]

Hurrah!

I've been sort of waiting to write this post for a few days, so I hope you'll indulge me getting into the "behind the scenes" stuff a bit, which I'd like to do before I touch the lurker thread. I'll address Serdoa's question as well when I get to the point where it becomes relevant. Mostly though, I just want to go through my strategy and how I felt about the game as we went through it.

Pre-game: I had two goals in this game. Win and survive. Those are not necessarily the same goal, because from reading WW1, I saw that Athlete became especially important to the village's central nervous system, and then immediately got eaten. So you have to balance being suspicious enough that the wolves don't eat you with being trusted enough that you can convince people to follow your logic. I don't think I actually did a very good job of either, truth be told, but at least you can see sort of where I was coming from.

Day 1:

My basic plan was to throw around tactical votes and see how people reacted. Roland's opus on Sandover was the first thing that changed the game. While I was far from convinced (those of us who read Sandover's PBEM3 thread definitely felt a bit that it was just Sandover being Sandover) Roland sent me a pm (the first I received) asking me to go along and see what happened. At this point, I was willing, since I thought you learned more from seeing how people reacted than by reading what people said. When the false baner claim came up, I had some self-doubt, based on my reading of Sandover, and my sense that MJW was going to hurt the village at some point. Roland sent me a pm at that point asking what I was thinking, and I told him I didn't know, but that we'd be doing more good than harm by killing off MJW anyway. I believe that too, people get too caught up in the power-roles: I believe they hurt the village almost as much as they helped it this game. As it turned out, Sandover getting lynched but my moving my vote worked out perfectly - Roland, who was moving to be the village figurehead at this point knew where I stood, so I could count on his support to survive, but that vote would fuel suspicion on me for days, which kept me from being eaten at night.

For what its worth, here's a copy of my list of who I thought was what, after the first day, but before the night phase:

Definitely Villagers: Gaspar, Sareln, luddite, Roland, Kyan, Lewwyn, MJW (Baner)

probably villagers: Cyneheard, haphazard1, Ug the Barbarian, Uberfish, Rowain

Suspicious: sunrise089, Serdoa, scooter, Irgy, Mr. Nice Guy

Suspected Wolves: Meiz, Selrahc, Dantski

I did pretty good on the definitely list but two wolves on the probably list and 2 innocents on the definitely wolves list.

Day 2:

I already touched on this a lot. I was in the crosshairs for pretty much the whole day, and I had really no sway with the village at this point. Roland believed me innocent, and made that happen, but I was definitely not a part of any trusted network. I was pretty much sold on Meiz's innocence before the day was done, but I had to preserve myself first, so I surely couldn't do anything to facilitate his escape.

Day 3:

Day 3 is mostly a blur for me. It was at this point I was brought into the trusted network, though honestly, I never really got brought in, its better to say that I became informed of its existence, the roles of the people involved, and who I should vote for. For what its worth, I believe most of the moving and shaking happened on gchat, and I only had 1 gchat all game, with Lewwyn where he tried to sell me on Roland's guilt. Nonetheless, I voted with the pack, Selrahc got lynched, and we learned little else, other than this was the day that cemented scooter and Serdoa as wolves in my mind.

Day 4:

This was the first "key" day in cementing the outcome of the game. uberfish should have been as easy a lynch as Selrahc was, only he wasn't. Everyone got so caught up in meta that we nearly lost Sareln, who was one of the better villagers this game. Fools, fool baners, godfathers, yadda yadda. I can't say I didn't get caught up in any of this, but less so than some of my compatriots. Anyway, around the mid-point, I got approached by Roland who was trying to push me to move my vote off uberfish. He has been approached by another seer, though he refused to name him. I kept an open mind, until he told me the scry targets. For the record uberfish, MJW on day 3 was the completely unbelievable part. There was absolutely no reason to scry him at that point. All the targets were too convenient, based on what we knew. Roland and I got into a heated pm discussion, which I was unable to convince him. The pinging back and forth of PMs at this point is what convinced me that Roland and Lewwyn couldn't be the power-axis of the village. Roland was too easily shaken, and Lewwyn was impossible to shake. This knowledge was key to my actions in the later days. This was also where I started to get more vocal - and also where I learned that no amount of arguing in-thread was going to convince people - there were few fence-sitters.

I'm going to pause here to break this up. I'll discuss the remainder in a follow-up post shortly.

[scooter]

Roland's opus on Sandover was the first thing that changed the game. While I was far from convinced (those of us who read Sandover's PBEM3 thread definitely felt a bit that it was just Sandover being Sandover) Roland sent me a pm (the first I received) asking me to go along and see what happened.

Real briefly, I figured I'd touch on this because the whole "Sandover being Sandover" was actually exactly what was going on. I forgot to mention this in my report in the lurker thread. Here's one of the first emails we exchanged all game, when Sandover voted for Rowain in the first 6ish hours:

Hi guys,

I'm going to try my best to play this game as if I were a villager, which means being my usual highly confrontative and rather stubborn self. Hopefully I won't get Rowain lynched in the process.

So for whatever it's worth - that's more or less what Sandover was doing - just being confrontational and stubborn because that's sort of his style . This is why we found it humorous when Roland wrote his book about lynching Sandover, because it really was nothing at all suspicious that Sandover was doing, but Roland just happened to be correct.

[Roland]

This is why we found it humorous when Roland wrote his book about lynching Sandover, because it really was nothing at all suspicious that Sandover was doing, but Roland just happened to be correct.

I fail to see how deducing that Sandover is a 'Wolf based upon his posting style (along with gut instinct, I'll admit) is in any way irrelevant. "Sandover being Sandover" has no bearing on the fact that he was acting 'Wolfish - plain and simple. Perhaps I have blinders on, but I truly believe your team is giving too much credit to Sandover's benefit in this regard: his actions, along with Selrahc's (which, looking back, was ironically due to him being drafted as the Devil - suddenly his suspicious behavior made perfect sense, although the circumstances surrounding that were poor, to say the least), led me to call both of them out on Day 1. Moreover, I nailed you as a 'Wolf, and Serdoa as a probably one as well - what I didn't realize was the existence of the Possessed role (nor how it functioned). All I knew was Serdoa was playing for the 'Wolves side, and it took most of the game for me to change my mind about that (ironically, after my death he had free reign to switch back over, more boldly than ever, and that is exactly what he did - it's not nearly as much of a surprise to me that he was outed by Gaspar; his behavior was blatantly obvious, and Gaspar's far sharper than any of you give him credit for).

I'll be the first to admit I made some huge mistakes during that game (Uberfish vs. Sareln was the biggest, in my estimation - the worst part was I based it almost entirely on meta-gaming, rather than taking the evidence on its merits; and, yes, I was suspicious of Sareln after Selrahc went down - it took lynching Uberfish for me to accept Sareln as 100% Villager), but frankly I don't think any of my actions during Day 1 were part of that. Going headlong after Meiz at the urging of my teammates was a mistake. Allowing myself to be bullied by others in the thread, rather than simply sticking to my convictions, was another - it led to a great deal of lost credibility (votes are far easier to track than reasoning, and no one seems to believe anything you say in this game anyway - something I hadn't really accounted for at all, as it's simply the opposite of my nature). The whole meta-game ordeal, in general, was another crucial mistake on my part - it affected my judgment, poorly, at far too many critical points. That's not to say I'm blaming Fire & Ice for my failures, just that the uncertainty that was present throughout the whole game put a cloud over everyone, on both teams. It just wasn't a very smooth game, and that fact had far-reaching consequences - some subtle, some not so.

I will say Rowain slipped off my trusted list around Day 3 - his absolute hatred of me from that point onward was a pretty good indicator to me that something was going on behind the scenes, regarding my move against Selrahc. Irgy was a very late suspect for me - basically, around the day I was lynched. scooter was a foregone conclusion for some time - Day 2 pretty much sealed the deal on him in my mind, whereas during Day 1 he was tucked under Serdoa (I felt Serdoa's guilt would have made scooter look more guilty, although not conversely had Serdoa been found innocent it would not have swayed me from scooter one iota - just would have made it tougher to prove directly).

I don't know. I just feel like the 'Wolves aren't giving credit where credit is due. The whole point of Werewolf, to my understanding, is sniffing out who's who by the actions and words you put in thread - that's all. Anything beyond that is meta. I feel I did a pretty good job of that in the (very) early game, but no one is willing to admit that. I don't find it at all ironic that my constant blunders through the mid-to-late game were given more credit. :P Frankly, I'm a little disappointed in the 'Wolves play overall - I think they could have, and should have done much better. Overall, though, it was a very... chaotic game, and I don't think it was a very decisive victory, despite the 1-2-3 punch in the end. While I firmly believe the Villagers did plenty to screw up their chances of winning, I think the 'Wolves did just as bad - if not worse. They never seemed to capitalize on the weaknesses that were presented, and instead seemed more content to get lucky than good. I feel like they could have - perhaps should have - won this.

In any case, I won't say it was a "good" game, but it was... enlightening, entertaining, and infuriating. I learned a great deal, but it still leaves a foul taste for me in the end - just not a very smooth game. Too many issues clouding the heart of it all. Ironically, because of that I'm actually starting to consider joining WW3 - something I thought certain I would not do only a few days ago. I think, though, that with a solid, streamlined ruleset it might be a bit more enjoyable - certainly less chaotic!

Anyway, I'm glad I participated, and there certainly is no hard feelings on my end. Maybe I'll see some of you in the next round - we'll see!

[Lewwyn]

Awww, you did good Roland ... on day 1.

SO are you going to or are you not going to join WW3? Waffle waffle!
I've seen this dance before Roland, you're going to sign up

[Meiz]

Go village people!

Thanks everyone for the game. I had fun for the time it lasted

See you in WW3

[Sandover]

"Sandover being Sandover" has no bearing on the fact that he was acting 'Wolfish - plain and simple.

It would've had a bearing had I actually been a villager, because all you did was determine that my posting style (one that I always use, no matter the situation) was wolfish behaviour and convince people to go along with that. Saying I'm a wolf based on the content of my posts this game (prior to the baner claim) is no different than saying Dantski is a wolf based on his lack of posts during the same time span - and it's a flauded approach in both cases because it's exactly what one can expect from both of us.

You're a great writer, and for that reason I was dead the moment you targeted me. The actual targeting was nothing but a lucky break though, based off of your lack of knowledge of my typical posting style, that lead you into believing it was all a wolfish act to cause disturbance - which it wasn't. I would've caused the same disturbance had I been villager. If someone wants to argue that that makes me a poor villager then fine, I can buy that argument. (And you better pray that we're not both on the villager team in WW3 while you're at it, because my play style will remain the same for better or for worse). End of the day though, I was just being me, and the errors of the utterly flauded methods Roland used to reveal my identity were simply covered up by the excellent end result, which was a luck of the draw moment.