The Wolf Game - SS Black Swan - Day 6 - Everybody Dies, Traitors Win

I kinda de-facto did that this game (deliberately) by re-using the exact same name as the CQ system from ISS Relatively Fast.

I had thought that I’d rather not do that for all subsystems as that would lose lot of the of the chaos which makes a wolf game fun. However, perhaps this is really the fundamental difference between subsystems and roles - roles promote secrecy by individuals to create chaos, whilst systems promote behind the scenes arguments between groups who don’t really trust one another to create chaos. In that case the secrecy of what systems do is not important!

Agreed. Revealing all about the systems would probably help with this, as would some more powerful human aligned systems. Currently I’m unhappy with how most the systems are kind of ok for humans, and have a game winningly awesome desperate action for wolves! Really I’d like desperate actions to be more of a grey area exploitable by both teams.

That said… I think a lot of the problem with subsystem games being wolf biased so far is that you guys keep misplaying them! In my opinion the whole thing of randomly distributing people around systems reduces the information available - i.e. the wolves no longer have to defend why they repaired {powerful system} because they can just point at the RNG - and lack of information is what kills humans! But hey what do I know, I’m just the GM I never actually play the game xD

My role games (almost?) never have RNG, conversely subsystems were actually introduced initially as a way for me to experiment with RNG in games. I’m not sure how I’d implement a damage mechanic without some kind of RNG. I’m totally open to suggestions, as I don’t think damage mechanics do enough to promote switching around systems. Perhaps each player can only be in control of one system at a time?

Oh boy, roles and subsystems. Be careful what you wish for :smirk:

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Everyone who played in the first game knows about the power of third parties. I don’t know if we should walk down that road again…

coughs @LucasFIN

I’d be down for another game whenever you’re ready with it martin. I’m an addict at this point. I followed the entire game even though I was dead.

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I think Dekaku meant a classic role mixed into a subsystem game, rather than a third party seer alignment. I’ve mentioned before (possibly just to the wolves) but I’m pretty sure after the vampire game you guys would lynch me if I tried to run another game with a secret third alignment :confused:

Didn’t we have such a one. The one on the mining outpost? That was more with items though and more of a general “everyone has a vote on everything”.

I think the “Repair it/Controll it” mechanic could be change a little.

I don’t recall running one on a mining outpost. Are you sure I was the GM?

I think mine are:

  • Welcome To Eliseni
  • ISS Relatively Fast
  • Panic Station
  • SS Black Swan

The GM was Lysk. Here’s the link:

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I don’t believe you :stuck_out_tongue:

I don’t think this is a game you can allow yourself to be fed up by. Sure, if the GM is consistently being a dick, then that’s a problem, but in this case, it’s fine for a few things to go wrong, because we can talk about it and hopefully the next game will be designed better.

Yay! I’m in

Agreed. Though I think this metagaming stuff is more a symptom of having a subsystem style game. When players have the roles themselves, they have extra information, the primary currency of the wolf game. In the subsystem games, the only players with extra information are the wolves (by virtue of being a wolf and knowing the other wolves).

I think an interesting idea would be to have a wolf game where the wolves are unknown to each other at the start. That might make it a bit too hard for the wolves though.

Yeah, it was a bit strange not to have any systems go critical this game.

Soon works for me. Some people might have to deal with family over Christmas.

I forget, was the generator still functioning when I got lynched? Because the whole reason I didn’t go for you whilst we were on the generator was because I’d be the prime target the next day if I didn’t get night killed. Didn’t help with Enginish being all suspicious and everything either. Don’t know why they’d let you have the generator alone…

The only strong argument in favour was to prevent the wolves getting a majority on any system on the first night. However, the reasoning didn’t hold up based on the number of players active, and it all went to hell when not everyone followed the plan anyway.

Well, yeah. It still sucked. By the time I’d learned the bandwagon had turned on me, I had two hours left in a day that’d gone on 2 days longer than expected. I knew I wasn’t going to stop it. Still sucked.

I might be the only one that actually enjoyed that game. Though I did end up winning when I should have lost, so there’s that.

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Retrospectively it was a lot of fun, but at the time… But what a game it was! :smiley: I’d never lynch the GM… mostly.

I don’t think we’ve ever tried. I’m not afraid to experiment in the next game…

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So number 1 thing I learned this game… don’t try to join 400 posts in and try to catch up unless you have a lot of spare time on your hands. Sorry guys, I didn’t appreciate just how busy I am right now.

Well done traitors… it seems you played a good game.

I did too! At least for the roleplay and cool story that emerged.

Every single response about wolves was pretty exclusive to 3 so I doubt that. And yes you did sadly get shafted but everyone and I mean EVERYONE had technical issues. Mine was just a misfortune of timing and YOU HAD 36 HOURS TO QUESTION MY VOTE FOR AAA BUT CHOSE LAST 2 HOURS.

Not your fault, good call, but I’m still steaming about it.

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Yeah, if we’d come up with a plan sooner (which we should have, given we knew from before the game started it was going to be subsystems) you might have had a better chance.

Just a quick thought before turning in for the night on game theory.

One of the reasons I think, and this may have been mentioned before, that the last few games with systems in them as apposed to roles, is that the systems give the wolves collectively more knowledge of the game than the humans do - on top of the fact they know who the other wolves are. Ironically, the paranoia of the humans plays right into the wolves’ interest, when they are so secretive of the systems’ functions, thus keeping the vast majority of the humans unable to execute any form of complex plan early to mid game. In the last two games I’ve played as a wolf and there were systems to be repaired/exploited, I knew what most of the systems did by the second night. Why? Well duh, I talked to the other wolves, and we shared information.

The only way I see to get the humans the advantage early game is to rid themselves of the paranoia right away, because paranoia doesn’t and hasn’t worked. Spread themselves across all the systems DAY ONE - even if it means that only one human is in a system - and have them immediately post all information asap. If a system sounds important, put some more guys on there, sure. If somebody lies, lynch them.

Sure, the wolves will have the info sooner, but so will the humans. And it isn’t as if you’re hiding the info from the wolves, because trust me, we found out about them this game and the last game just fine.

Thoughts?

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Agreed. Bear in mind that the wolves already start the game with an advantage over the humans. They already know who the other wolves are.

I completely agree with your assessment. A wolf on a system will obviously share details of the system with every other wolf. A paranoid human (yes, I’m looking at you here Enginish) will share that information with no-one, and therefore it can’t be used in any human plan.

I think this kind of game works better if we spread on day one, figure out what the systems do, then prioritise which ones we protect going forward, as you say.

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I would go far to say don’t even wait for the next day to start. Just PM spam everybody that night, or even better, start a mega discussion PM (since these forums allow for that) with everybody involved.

Can I just say that after having read back over that thread, we are missing a lot of flavor that we used to have from past games. Nobody roleplays anymore :frowning: that game had so much roleplaying, even the game was roleplay focused!

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I remember … yes.

2 hyp3d 4 r0l3pl4y

Honestly though. It feels a lot … harder and less relaxed. It has something to do with the atmosphere.
I think I could nail down some indices for what could be the reasons, but I’m not sure about them.

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maybe make it so wolves are in control of the damage, some people thought that would be the case in ISS relatively fast.

we used to do a lot of very standard wolf games so the roleplay was needed to spice things up, i feel. If the game is engaging enough, this goes for any game, people dont tend to feel motivated to roleplay past the game mechanics themselves.

My roleplay has always been a little thrown together though.

I really miss when we had more roleplaying! I guess we had a fair amount in ISS relatively fast, so maybe it’s just a matter of finding settings people can come up with good RP for.

Hopefully my next setting (inspired in a conversation with Lysk) will be much more RP inspiring :smiley:

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*starts coughing and spluttering uncontrollably*

So when’s that next game @martindevans? :stuck_out_tongue:

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