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[Mini-Phalla] of Brass: The Philosopher Kings (God Save The Queen: Cultist/Templar Win)
Posts
This unit does not bother with such trifles as emotions and such, but does have a rudimentary understanding of hatred.
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Ashe Swiftclaw in Jdarksun's World's Largest Dungeon 4e Campaign
DEFEND:!
As long as the ghosts are conservative about what they give out, then the risk of giving the mafia valuable information is mitigated (ghosts can lie as well, too). Any rule we write can be brought down by players playing foolishly. I admit the risk is there, but I feel the rewards far outweigh the risks. Under this rule, the mafia will not be able to silence\remove information from the game.
Imagine being mafia and seeing this rule go into effect. Imagine a killing a player who knows to much, only to have that info persist basically forever in some form. Ghosts will help the uninformed majority become informed, and the mafia has their hands tied to such a threat. I mean, even though you are a ghost doesn't mean you should play dumb, but smart ghosts can, and will, run over the mafia.
Support
Knowledge is like a lightsaber. In the right hands, its a tool that helps preserve peace, strike down injustice, and help humanity out. In the wrong hands, its a weapon used to strike fear and confusion into the hearts of men, destroy the foundations of a group, and enslave the weak minded. When you talk to someone, you are handing them a lightsaber and hoping that they don't strike you down with it. I've watched too many time (and just pointed out some) where a player gave that lightsaber to someone just to doom the village because they didn't think about what they were saying. Even now, I got people PMing me, trying to confuse me in some way, so I don't shoot them (and you know who you are). The honest truth is that what once help the village find mafia is now the very poison the mafia is using to kill it. Time and Time again this happens. Allowing people to keep talking as ghost just means that instead of ending the thread of conversation, the mafia can kill someone AND keep talking to them. As the vig in this game, I want every threat eliminated. This rule will not only make that job harder, it will become a threat to the village. And I want to win.
It's gone.
DEFEND
Let's again put ourselves in mafia's shoes: This time, let's say that we are mafia, and that a ghost contacts us. What do we tell them? We are essentially put on the spot and we must lie to the ghost, instead of just the normal laying low\flying under radar etc.
A nice side effect of this rule is that it requires the mafia to be proactive with their lies, which makes it easier for the village to catch them.
Don't always consider worst case scenario (time phalla), nor the scenarios where a ghost talking would be a village home run (assuran's most recent one). Let's imagine what is most likely to happen, where passing the ghost rule would be a slight to moderate village win.
This is why I despise cyclists
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This is why I despise cyclists
Comforting statement: it is admirable that your meatbag mind is able to process as many things as it does. Nobody faults you for your failure.
Quiet addendum: Except for me. I fault you for it.
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Ashe Swiftclaw in Jdarksun's World's Largest Dungeon 4e Campaign
Yes
Good, thanks. My next argument will be up in the next 20 minutes or so.
Support.
In this argument, I will argue that this proposed rule change causes is bad, not because it will disadvantage the faction that Phyphor and I are both on, but because, putting aside who wins and loses, it's bad for phalla as a community. This will involve some significant argument over the question of whether people will in fact have so much data that it will decrease participation and engagement.
One ought not understand that as repeating arguments, however; my first argument was about giving the village better winning chances, whereas this argument does not bear on who wins this particular game at all. The fact that decreased participation is relevant to both of my first two arguments in this debate is not a repeat of arguments, but in fact merely a fact being relevant to, and a part of, multiple arguments. I do not imagine that two arguments that both made critical reference to the fact that the mafia win by killing villagers would thereby be made repetitive, and so my arguments here are properly understood as distinct from the arguments I made previously.
There are two independent reasons why passing this rulechange would be bad for the phalla community. The first has to do with engagement of current players; the second has to do with attraction of new players.
I hold, still, against Phyphor's arguments, that this rulechange will hurt participation and engagement of players in this game. Phyphor has made some fair points toward the end that this would not happen in this context, but I think he misses some critical points.
Phyphor's central argument against disengagement of current players is that things are different in this game and that, as a result, things will happen differently in this game. But Phyphor needs to establish not only that things are different, but that the differences are relevant. Phyphor says that what caused the disengagement in my game was the odd two-step structure of the implementation of the multiple rule changes, but in order to believe that, you've got to ignore what the people who were discouraged actually said in the thread. I quote the relevant posts here:
I've added emphasis to direct your attention to the relevant parts. That Shalmelo post had four agrees, as well. We can all see that the problem these people were having was not with too many types of votes, or an awkward structure of how the rule changes were implemented, but instead with too many proposed rules, and it is this rulechange that will require people to keep track of all these rule changes. Currently, people only really need to pay attention to the leaders; this is what happens halfway through a day on normal red votes. People just pay attention to the targets who could plausibly win the vote, and maybe a target or two lower down of personal interest. In contrast, if this rulechange were implemented, people would need to keep track of any rule that had a chance of hitting four, and pretty much any rule has a good chance of hitting four supports. Relatedly, people will know that several rules might go to Argument, and as a result, they'll feel more compelled to follow more different proposed rulechanges, whereas knowing that there's a low limit on how many rulechanges might be implemented per day justifies players not paying attention to all of them, because all of them can't be implemented.
What's important to focus on here is not the actual complexity of the game. It's the perceived complexity. And when many different rulechanges might be implemented, people think they have to follow all of them to follow the game, whereas they don't think that they have to follow all the proposed rulechanges when only a very few rulechanges will be implemented. Consider my game again. There were lots of rulechanges proposed on day 0, but no one on day 0 felt like they had to speak out about how many proposed rule changes there were. They did feel this way on day 1, and I argue they felt that way because more of the rule changes could be implemented.
So much for the argument that people really will be discouraged and disengage from the game if this rulechange is implemented. Now I'll tell you why that's bad.
The first and most obvious reason is that people who are discouraged and disengaged from the game are not having fun, and we all play this game to have fun. People want to feel like they can do what the game requires of them, and want to feel that their actions make a difference. If they don't feel those ways, they don't have a lot of reason to play the game. This is a reason in itself not to implement this rulechange: people won't be having fun, and we want people to have fun.
But there's a second derivative reason why people not having fun is bad, and that's because it will discourage current players from playing future games. Our hobby, here, is dependent on large numbers of participants. We want 25 or 30 players for a mini, and 40 or 50 for a main. Smaller games just don't work as well, because activity is rarely driven entirely by just a couple players, and also because the game is interesting partially because of all the different people participating. The range of styles of play is a major factor in (at least my) enjoyment of the games.
Right now we're in a phase of particularly arcane, meta, and self-engaged games. If people aren't having fun playing them, they're not going to play the next one, and as above, we need them to. That's why we need to make sure that these games are not totally inaccessible in the way that having to keep track of so many different proposed rules will cause it to be.
Of course, we have another source of players, besides current players, and that's new players. But new players as well will be discouraged from beginning to play phalla. The major way we have to attract new players is through making our games interesting to read, so that people want to join in. Games like Assuran's recent main are excellent for this; it's relatively obvious immediately how the structure of the game is operating, the search for mafia is clear in reading any particular part, as well as the fluff being entertaining to read. Now, I will certainly put INANTP's fluff up against anybody's; I love reading his writing. But the fluff is a secondary issue; to attract people, it has to be the case that the games look fun to play. Here's a really good way to make a game look unfun to play: seem to require tons and tons of effort in order for a player to play well.
Now, of course, tons of effort is required to play a soft-networking game well, too, but that all happens behind the scenes. If this rulechange is implemented, most of the discussion will be debates about rulechanges, not discussions about who to vote for, and even the discussion of who to vote for that does happen will be interrupted and broken up by debate posts. These debates, the content of which is isolated from the rest of the game, are just not as interesting to a lot of people as the main part of the game, but even if they were, players that are interested in these debates don't have reason to play in non-debate-oriented (i.e., most) phallas. That means that by making the debates a bigger part of the game, we move away from doing the things that will attract new players. And, as I argued above, we need lots of people in order to keep playing the games.
Note that I am not saying that this rulechange would destroy phalla, or anything so dramatic. I merely say that passing this rulechange would hurt the activity and vitality of the phalla community by both discouraging current and possible future participants. If we don't have as many people, games don't get started as quickly, and people who love phalla have less fun. This is a reason not to implement this rulechange.
There you are, sir. I teach this afternoon, so I'll probably come back to see your response around 5 Eastern, and put up a post before I go out for the evening.
I'm thinking Mega being Day 1'd is a result of a grudge from the game that just ended. He was a neutral who converted to mafia. So I think we could benefit from taking a look at people who were village in that game, lived past day 1 (so they'd actually care), and are in this game as potentially being a cultist.
This is why I despise cyclists
2. ObiFett
5. premium
6. KetBra
8. Zombie Hero
10. The Anonymous
12. Iron Weasel
13. jdarksun
15. vertroue
17. SeGaTai
18. Phyphor
I think
Edit: removed langly, since he was day 1'd.
This is why I despise cyclists
edit: oh right, he was the union busdriver.
This is why I despise cyclists
I was killed too early to have any grudge against mega. Specially since it was of my own doing, if anyone I would grudge Premium for getting me involved with a mafia posing as a neutral.
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