WW23: The Heart of Gold

[novice]

The game is over! See below for results, or skip it to read the game from a player's perspective.

Congratulations to the winners, Bigger and Zakalwe!

Live Players (2)
Bigger, playing Trillian Astra, Brilliant Astrophysicist, with the abilities Hack and Slash, was resurrected on day 5.
Zakalwe, playing Colin the Security Robot, with the abilities Cheer, Motion Sensors, Tracking Software, Hack and Slash, survived to the end.

Killed Players (8)
Ryan, playing Eddie, the Shipboard Computer, with the ability Monitor Room, was lynched day 1.
Serdoa, playing Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Galaxy, with the ability Quibble, was killed night 1.
Bigger, playing Trillian Astra, Brilliant Astrophysicist, with the abilities Hack and Slash, was lynched day 2.
Uberfish, playing Arthur Dent, Last Survivor of the Human Race (almost), with the ability Order tea, was lynched day 3.
PocketBeetle, playing Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, Vogon Captain, with the ability Recite poetry, was killed night 3.
Gaspar, playing Slartibartfast, Planetary Coastline Designer, with no special abilities, was lynched day 4.
Mattimeo, playing Ford Prefect, Galactic Hitchhiker, with no special abilities, was killed night 4.
Lewwyn, playing Marvin, the (not technically) Paranoid Android, with the ability Lament, was lynched day 5.

Day 1 resolution
Night 1 resolution
Day 2 resolution
Night 2 resolution
Day 3 resolution
Night 3 resolution
Day 4 and endgame resolution

Bad guys thread:
http://www.quicktopic.com/50/H/RtRCZvRBJEPR

Role PMs:

Bigger,

You are Trillian Astra, Brilliant Astrophysicist.
You win with the bad guys.

You were born on earth as Tricia Marie McMillan, but now refer to yourself simply as Trillian, which you adopted because it sounded more "space-like". You're a brilliant mathematician and astrophysicist, skills you're now using to pilot the stolen starship Heart of Gold, the only ship in the universe powered by an Infinite Improbability Drive. You have ridiculously brown eyes.

Your fellow bad guy is Colin, the Security Robot, played by Zakalwe. You may communicate with him in this quicktopic: http://www.quicktopic.com/50/H/RtRCZvRBJEPR

You have hatched a plan to kill off everybody on board the Heart of Gold and secure it for yourself. After all piloting this ship is your dream job, and you don't want to share it with anybody else. You've recruited Colin, the Security Robot to help you, by short-circuiting his morality circuits and stimulating his pleasure center.

You have no special abilities, apart from your faction abilities:
Hack: At night, one member of your faction can electronically manipulate a person's environment to kill them.
Slash: At night, one member of your faction can visit someone and stab them until they are Dead.
Hack and Slash can not be used on the same night.

Zakalwe,

You are Colin, the Security Robot.
You win with the bad guys.

You're a small, round, melon-sized, flying security robot, originally designated as part #223219B. You were once enslaved by Ford Prefect to aid in his escape from the newly re-organized Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy offices. Ford captured you by trapping you with a towel and re-wiring your pleasure circuits, inducing a cyber-ecstasy trip. As a result you're chronically cheerful and react to all stimuli with ecstatic happiness. You were named by Ford Prefect after Emily Saunders' dog. You're now an unofficial mascot on board the starship Heart of Gold.

More recently, Trillian Astra, played by Bigger, has hacked your morality circuits and persuaded you to join her in killing off everybody else on board the Heart of Gold. Like everything else you think this sounds like an ecstatically splendid idea. You may communicate with Trillian in this quicktopic: http://www.quicktopic.com/50/H/RtRCZvRBJEPR

You have the following abilities:
Motion sensors: You can use your inbuilt motion sensors to monitor where, if anywhere, your chosen target visits during a night. Your motion sensors are the usual Sirius Cybernetics garbage, so this ability only works once.
Tracking software: You can use your inbuilt security tracking software to monitor any electronical activity initiated by your target, revealing who that activity is targetting (but not what it does). Your tracking software is the usual Sirius Cybernetics garbage, so this ability only works once.
Cheer: This is a post restriction. In every post in the game thread you must post something enthusiastic or cheerful about the state of the game, your role, somebody's behaviour or whatever else you might wish to babble happily about.

You also have the following faction abilities:
Hack: At night, one member of your faction can electronically manipulate a person's environment to kill them.
Slash: At night, one member of your faction can visit someone and stab them until they are Dead.
Hack and Slash can not be used on the same night.

Serdoa,

You are Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Galaxy.
You win with the good guys.

You are hedonistic and irresponsible, narcissistic almost to the point of solipsism, and often extremely insensitive to the feelings of those around you. You are nevertheless quite charismatic, a fact you've exploited to get elected President of the Galaxy. You've subsequently used that position to steal the Heart of Gold, a spaceship with an Infinite Improbability Drive. You have two heads and three arms.

You have the following ability:
Quibble: For one day phase, you can use your charisma to cast two votes, one for each head. Unfortunately you can never agree with yourself, so the two votes have to be cast for two different people. You activate your ability by posting "Action: Quibble" in bold in the game thread. I will then confirm your ability at the first opportunity. When your ability is active, you must always cast two votes when you vote, so post e.g. Pindicator, NobleHelium in red to vote for those two players. If you want to change just one of the votes, revote the other person at the same time to make tallying easier. Unvoting and voting no-lynch is also allowed, but you cannot cast two votes for no-lynch.

Lewwyn,

You are Marvin, the (not technically) Paranoid Android.
You win with the good guys.

You are the ship's robot aboard the starship Heart of Gold. You were originally built as a failed prototype of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's GPP (Genuine People Personalities) technology, and you're afflicted with severe depression and boredom, in part because you have a brain the size of a planet which you seldom, if ever, are given the chance to use. Indeed, the true horror of your existence is that no task you could be given would occupy even the tiniest fraction of your intellect. You've solved all of the major mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems of the Universe except your own, three times over. Still, you don't know why Zaphod Beeblebrox likes to refer to you as "the Paranoid Android", when you don't actually display any signs of paranoia, nor do you know why Ford Prefect refers to you as "maniacally depressed", when you show no signs of mania either. In actual fact, you are consistently morose.

Your main virtue is a remarkable stoicism. You once waited hundreds of billions of years for your employers to rejoin you, after they forgot to take you back from the past on their time machine.

You have the following ability:
Lament: This is a post restriction. In every post you must post something morose bemoaning the state of the game, your role, somebody's behaviour or whatever else you might wish to complain about.

Gaspar,

You are Slartibartfast, Planetary Coastline Designer
You win with the good guys.

You're a Magrathean, and a designer of planets. Your favourite part of the job is creating coastlines, and you once won an award for designing the fjords found on the coast of Norway on the now-destroyed planet Earth. When Earth Mk. II was being made, you were assigned to the continent of Africa. Unfortunately, fjords in Africa would be hard to explain without natural glacial movement, so you've now shelfed coastline design and joined the Campaign for Real Time which tries to preserve events as they happened before time travelling was invented. Your starship is named Bistromath, but you're currently a guest on board the Heart of Gold.

You have no special abilities.

Mattimeo,

You are Ford Prefect, Galactic Hitch-hiker
You win with the good guys.

You're an experienced galactic hitch-hiker who once rescued Arthur Dent off earth as the planet was about to be destroyed. You're currently hitching a ride on the Heart of Gold, a starship powered by an Infinite Improbability Drive. As a field researcher for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you've become pragmatic to the point of fatalism, endlessly broad-minded, and in possession of an off-key and often very black sense of humour. You never learned to pronounce your original name, which was a matter that caused your father to die of shame (which is still a terminal disease on your home planet of Betelgeuse Seven). At school, you were nicknamed "Ix," which translates as "boy who is not able satisfactorily to explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven".

You have no special abilities.

Uberfish,

You are Arthur Dent, Last Survivor of the Human Race (almost).
You win with the good guys.

Along with Ford Prefect, you barely escaped the Earth's destruction as it was demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Now you're spending your time helplessly launched from one crisis to another, still wearing your dressing gown. You rather enjoy tea, but you have trouble obtaining it in the far reaches of the galaxy. In the meantime, you've learned how to fly and carved a niche for yourself as a sandwich-maker. You're currently a useless member of the starship Heart of Gold's motley crew.

You have the following ability:
Order tea: At night, you can go to someones room and order tea from the Nutrimatic drinks dispenser outside their room. This overloads the local computing network, meaning that no electronical abilities can affect the targeted person, nor can that person use any abilities that depend on electronics. You can only perform this action once, as the drink dispensers will be closed down for inspection after this incident.

PocketBeetle,

You are Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, Vogon Captain.
You win with the good guys.

You were the Vogon Captain in charge of overseeing the destruction of the Earth. You are sadistic even by Vogon standards, and unpleasant to look at, having as much sex appeal as a road accident. When not shouting at or executing members of your own crew for insubordination, you enjoy torturing hitchhikers on board your ship by reading your poetry at them, then having them thrown out of an airlock into open space. For unknown reasons you're currently a guest on board the starship Heart of Gold.

You have the following ability:
Recite poetry: You've created a "best of" compilation of all your finest poetry, that you can recite to a target of your choice at night. You have enough material for one night's recital. Your fantastic poetry is usually wasted on the uncultured recipients, causing them to crouch in a fetal position and loll senselessly. As a result, the targeted person can't go anywhere during your poetry recital, and nobody else can come near him either. Since your poetry reputation precedes you the poetry will be delivered as an electronic audio message.

Ryan,

You are Eddie, Shipboard Computer
You win with the good guys.

You are the shipboard computer on the starship Heart of Gold. Like every other system on the spaceship, it has a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Genuine People Personality. Thus, you are over-excitable, quite talkative, over-enthused and extremely ingratiating, or alternatively a coddling, school matron-type as a back-up personality. Shipboard networking interconnects you with everything on the Heart of Gold; at one point, the whole ship was effectively crippled by Arthur Dent's request for tea from the Nutrimatic drinks dispenser; the computation of which nearly crashed your systems and everything connected to you.

You have the following ability:
Monitor room: At night, you can use your sensors to electronically monitor anybody trying to enter somebody's room or otherwise influence your targeted player. Unfortunately your split personality means you can only stay focused enough to pull this off for one night.

[novice]

Rules

1. 48 hour days. Nights are 24 hours.
2. Days and nights end at 2100 GMT. The forum clock is used as the official clock. Votes and actions posted at 20:59 count, votes and actions posted at 21:00 don't.
3. Posting is not allowed after the day and night deadlines until the GM has posted a phase resolution.
4. In the event of extended forum downtime or downtime that occurs in close proximity of the deadline the day will be extended 24 hours at the GM's discretion

5. During the day each player may cast one vote for someone to be lynched. Players may also vote for "no lynch" and if "no lynch" receives a majority there won't be a lynch.
6. Votes must be posted in red text or they will not count. Votes with spelling errors of names do count so long as it's unambiguous in the GM's opinion whom is being voted for. Votes embedded in quotes do not count.
7. The player with most lynch votes at the end of the day is lynched and eliminated from the game. In the event that two or more players are tied for the most votes, and no roles or other game conditions break the tie, a random player from the group with most votes will be lynched.
8. Night actions have been pre-assigned a priority order that seems sensible to the GM and will be processed in that order.
9. Anyone failing to vote for 2 consecutive game days will be mod killed and removed from the game with a loss.

10. Dead players may make one posthumous post that doesn't contribute to discussion.
11. Forum profile camping is not allowed.
12. To prevent confusion that may arise in the case of cross posting, posts may not be edited.
13. Breaking rules will result in penalties ranging from warnings to loss of abilities to being mod killed depending on the severity of the infraction.
14. Players may not communicate with other players about the game outside the thread via PM, email, chat, quicktopics etc. unless told otherwise.
15. Players must check their PMs each game day before posting.
16. The town wins when all threats to their faction are eliminated and at least one town aligned player remains alive.
17. The scum win when all nonscum players are eliminated or nothing can prevent this.
18. In the event that an equal number of scum and non-scum is left alive at the start of a day, the scum win.
19. If all players are simultaneously eliminated, or the game reaches a stalemate situation, the game is a draw. (But see rule 18.)
20. Directly quoting role PMs or other communication from the GM isn't allowed.

Night Result / Reveal Policy
If your action doesn't need to return information you won't receive a PM telling you whether it was successful or not.
If your action returns information but fails for any reason (negative result or interference of other actions) you will just receive a "no result".

Dead players will flip with their alignment, character name and ability titles (if any).

Items
There are no item rules in this game

Tiebreaks
There are no mayor elections. See rule 7.

Setup process
The game setup was created like this:
1. I picked out the characters that I wanted to be part of the game and wrote the flavour part of their role pms, and tentative abilities.
2. I randomly rolled the character alignments.
3. I adjusted the characters abilities in order to create a balanced setup.
4. I randomly assigned players to characters.

Town is referred to as good guys in role PMs. Scum is referred to as bad guys.

Sample town role PM:

<Player>,

You are <Character>, <Description>.
You win with the good guys.

<flavour description>

You have the following ability / You have the following abilities / you have no special abilities.
<Ability title>: <Description>

EDIT: Setup information from the signup thread:

I'm thinking max 9 players, weirdish roles, no promises with regards to balance.

With 2 scum and 7 non-scum a game should take maximum 4 day/night cycles.

[novice]

"O Deep Thought computer," said Fook, "the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us...." he paused, "The Answer."
"The Answer?" said Deep Thought. "The Answer to what?"
"Life!" urged Fook.
"The Universe!" said Lunkwill.
"Everything!" they said in chorus.
Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection.
"Tricky," he said finally.
"But can you do it?"
Again, a significant pause.
"Yes," said Deep Thought, "I can do it."
"There is an answer?" said Fook with breathless excitement.
"Yes," said Deep Thought. "Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer. But, I'll have to think about it."
...
Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.
"How long?" he said.
"Seven and a half million years," said Deep Thought.
Lunkwill and Fook blinked at each other.
"Seven and a half million years...!" they cried in chorus.
"Yes," declaimed Deep Thought, "I said I’d have to think about it, didn’t I?"

Meanwhile, several million years later...

Arthur: "If I asked you where the hell we were, would I regret it?"
Ford: "We're safe."
Arthur: "Oh good."
Ford: "We're in the stolen spaceship Heart of Gold, powered by an Infinite Improbability Drive, along with some rather shady characters, if I may say so myself."
Arthur: "Oh good, I feared you were going to say we were in a small galley cabin in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet again."

---

And that's all you know. Who the bad guys are and what they are trying to achieve is up to you to find out. You just know that at the end of the day, somebody's going to be tossed out the airlock, and you'd better make sure it's not you. And since this show is written on an episode by episode basis, I'm sure I will be as surprised as anybody else when the whole plot is wrapped up nicely in the end.

Flavour borrowed from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

[novice]

Role PMs have been sent out. Let the game begin!

[Serdoa]

First!

[zakalwe]

How delightful! Even if the rationale is refreshingly unclear, it will bring me pure, unadulterated pleasure to chuck someone out of the airlock!

Serdoa

[uberfish]

Zakalwe, it would be improbable for him to be scum this many times in a row, and therefore must be the case

[Mattimeo]

Yeah, I'm fairly bad at playing to flavour. Lack of sleep generally doesn't help, either.

Not going to be around much for the next day or so. Will probably be back around lunch, but unlikely to be anywhere near a computer I can readily access for 24 hours after that. Will be around for the part of Day 1 that actually matters, though.

[zakalwe]

Words cannot express the joy I feel to encounter such a healthy attitude!

Will be around for the part of Day 1 that actually matters, though.

You mean, the part where we chuck you into the airlock?

Mattimeo

[uberfish]

Yeah, I'm fairly bad at playing to flavour. Lack of sleep generally doesn't help, either.

Not going to be around much for the next day or so. Will probably be back around lunch, but unlikely to be anywhere near a computer I can readily access for 24 hours after that. Will be around for the part of Day 1 that actually matters, though.

Why did you even sign up for this game?