General Info from the Moderator: Update 21 - Edit 10
Before modification by Isaac at 04/05/2010 03:08:47 PM
This is General Info from the Moderator, subsequent threads may be posted under this heading. As before, the update counter at the top says which one I'm on, so you should keep an open eye for changes to that and look in on this message when it changes.
Update 21: 3 May - Someone actually did ask a very interesting question via NB, which I will answer here though not give the question, I'm sure the person who asked will get an answer to that question from this. To answer it with another question - What makes you think I did not randomly pick character's alignments prior to assigning roles? Role assignment must be 100% random, role alignment does not, it must merely be done so that their flavor and role power matches, both of which can be adjusted, and that the game remains balanced. Blaine could easily have been a DF as he was, all the way down to the reluctance to vote. Hobo could not, he could not be a DF but he could have been other than town, FT's original character of course had to be town, he was the cop. As to the vanilla question, as I have said many times prior to this game but not in this game, I do not consider someone vanilla if they begin with useful clues, you could say I consider clues to be a form of passive role power. In the other aspect of that question, I refer you to the very first paragraph of the game. Also, while it is true that the warder bond in this game is similiar to the lover/sibling roles, and I could have adapted the PM to indicate he had something like this with the same 'warder flavor alteration' as I did with the bus driver, I believe that all players familiarity with Wheel of Time already left that throughly clarified. Even by absent of comment, I will not indicate someone else's alignment through another player's PM, so if you have drawn conclusions on that score, they may be right or wrong but you have compiled it from flawed logic. It is not possible to ascertain the answer to any EMT question by someone else's PM, even by their faction alignment, IMHO. That is the sole reason for vagueness in some PM's. Take that exactly at its face value, not "Ah, but now he's said we can't be sure so we know that...".
Update 20: 29 Apr - I'm sure I'm missing votes for chair and advocate or even lynch, if you know any, while names are helpful since I can search there posts, most helpful of all is just the message number, which would be up in the website address title http://www.readandfindout.com/rpg/messageboard/102051, so that little six digit number, which is the actually chronological number of a post to the website, not specifically the RPG board, in case anyone is curious, when this game opened just over a month ago we were at 91845, so around 10,000 messages later we have accounted for about 10% of RAFO's posts ... quick note on WF's role and roles in general, I have created blending of roles for this game not to screw people up assumption-wise and give the non-town faction(s) a hand, or not in whole, roles are designed to fit flavor and vice-versa, obviously the match won't be complete but by and large a roles power would have to actually make sense with their flavor, this may not be immediately obvious, but to within the best of my ability no aspect of someone's rolepower(s) if they have any will blatantly contradict their flavor, quite the other way around I hope. Take Hobo's power, to protect his comrade(s) once in the game by pulling an all-night strategy session. Why does that work as a mass-bulletproof-vest? Answer... your average assassin is unlikely to try for a kill on someone when he and at least one other person are present and awake and armed and unlikely to be pushovers if swords are drawn. Similiar, his 'revenge' ability, a one-shot NK with certain undisclosed restrictions and limitations, is predicated on the assumption that an experienced whitecloak leader who just lost his nephew is full of homicidal rage and likely not - as a high-ranking whitecloak - going to be especially reluctant to go all vigilante when he already thinks darkfriends are afoot, as that's basically what whitecloaks are anyway. WF was a warder, if his AS died he would have either died or gone blatantly and violently crazy, unless something happened on par with what Moraine did to Lan, he obviously is not going to have any power which would deliberately harm his AS instead of him.
Update 19: 28 Apr - Generally speaking I hate to let game lulls happen, but DK's RBIRL has reminded me that last I checked many of the players are in college, I'm obviously not going to freeze the game for final's week, but I will probably either let the VNTL ride or just set a minimum on it, should we have a relative period of finals-induced inactivity I don't want a lynch happening on a VNTL of 3 or something when there are 12 players in, so no set ruling yet but I think we might set VNTL-min say 75/2% of living players or something like that. Your thoughts are welcome as to a criteria, though of course do not reply directly to this message, I wouldn't mind knowing who and when finals might be occurring for, I imagine it's not the same week for everyone anyway and of course it's hardly always a total time-thief. But anyone expecting to have activity significantly impacted by it should let me know in advance if possible, remember posting RBIRL doesn't mean you can't post during it, it's just a headsup you are expecting not to be around, should you end up free and bored when RBIRL you are hardly under any restriction not to pop in and look around and post.
Update 18: 26 Apr - More on PM's, whenever I am deliberately vague on someone's role power or have, in this case, spread the group decision thing onto every mason, the reasoning is that it is disclosed as soon as it's reveal no longer unfairly harms or aids someone else. This group decision thing is not actually specific to this game, but hinges on what some of you have heard me refer to as the "Evil Mason or Traitor Dilemma", or EMT. No one is such a role should be able to be outed through clever role message or PM maneuvering, therefore no one can be allowed to be confirmed as not being an EMT through the same methods. If it occurs to me something might allow confirmation of such an option, it will be addressed in whatever fashion I consider will make certainty of a living EMT or certainty someone is not a EMT impossible, that is actually what is being addressed with these PM changes, if you don't see why or how it effects, it is because you do not have the information I have, and of course I have a notoriously high skill at scheming and plotting myself which tends to make things of this nature clearer to me. I also happen to know what all the clues mean. Clarifications will be addressed either post-game or at any point in the game I feel the ambiguity is no longer necessary, for instance Fox's existence as a EMT was revealed when he died.
Update 17: 26 Apr - I don't know if anyone caught that but when adding in the 'Posthumous Message' sub-thread I accidentally edited this message rather than replying, so that's why there was a name shift. Henceforth by the way I will be referring to people's post-death role reveals as "PM" or "PMs" etc. Note that there have been cosmetic changes in the collection along with the i.e.-e.g. fix, and that I may add to it if I go back and notice I forgot to mention someone's eye color or whatever, anything of significance in that regard would be mentioned here in the updates, I don't expect people to pick through the whole mess of PM's regularly to try to find the obscure place where I change 'Se had hair and brown eyes' to 'She had brown hair and brown eyes', but you'll obviously want to read it now if you haven't already.
Update 16: 26 Apr - Some quick clarifications, the day started late because I was waiting on a night action which impacted results fairly heavily, the player's submission was fairly clear but I needed confirmation and that confirmation took a while, it was White Flame incidentally, so you can imagine why I wanted to be sure of his intent. Because of that, and the lateness of the hour, I had to throw night results together rapidly while tired and busy with other things, and when I don't have the chance to be rigorous, I favor vague instead, to be updated as soon as circumstance permits careful examination, so note that his (WF's) death message has been updated, and I did fix the i.e.-e.g. confusion, I'm rather set in my ways so don't be surprised if I misuse i.e. for e.g. in the future, assume I use i.e. essentially as 'for instance', 'an example of', etc. Though I'll try to be better in my future usage. I will dig through the advocate and chair votes some time today, the inactivity roster will not be updated until at least 72 hours for obvious reasons. I apologize for the delay fully explaining WF, but as mentioned I was tired, did not want to delay the game, and wanted to choose my words with care in some regards. Everyone's role message and various flavor and actions will be posted in the post-game thread, you may decide at that time whether I was acting correctly in my handling of death messages, but I do subscribe to the rule that no false information should be in a message, and that it should be as complete as possible without unfairly harming another player. Quick note on randomness, all roles in this game are 100% random in assignment, I am a big believer in that.
Update 15: 25 Apr - I'm making a special archive of all the humorous ironies and bizarreness of this game, I look forward to sharing them all post-game.
Update 21: 3 May - Someone actually did ask a very interesting question via NB, which I will answer here though not give the question, I'm sure the person who asked will get an answer to that question from this. To answer it with another question - What makes you think I did not randomly pick character's alignments prior to assigning roles? Role assignment must be 100% random, role alignment does not, it must merely be done so that their flavor and role power matches, both of which can be adjusted, and that the game remains balanced. Blaine could easily have been a DF as he was, all the way down to the reluctance to vote. Hobo could not, he could not be a DF but he could have been other than town, FT's original character of course had to be town, he was the cop. As to the vanilla question, as I have said many times prior to this game but not in this game, I do not consider someone vanilla if they begin with useful clues, you could say I consider clues to be a form of passive role power. In the other aspect of that question, I refer you to the very first paragraph of the game. Also, while it is true that the warder bond in this game is similiar to the lover/sibling roles, and I could have adapted the PM to indicate he had something like this with the same 'warder flavor alteration' as I did with the bus driver, I believe that all players familiarity with Wheel of Time already left that throughly clarified. Even by absent of comment, I will not indicate someone else's alignment through another player's PM, so if you have drawn conclusions on that score, they may be right or wrong but you have compiled it from flawed logic. It is not possible to ascertain the answer to any EMT question by someone else's PM, even by their faction alignment, IMHO. That is the sole reason for vagueness in some PM's. Take that exactly at its face value, not "Ah, but now he's said we can't be sure so we know that...".
Update 20: 29 Apr - I'm sure I'm missing votes for chair and advocate or even lynch, if you know any, while names are helpful since I can search there posts, most helpful of all is just the message number, which would be up in the website address title http://www.readandfindout.com/rpg/messageboard/102051, so that little six digit number, which is the actually chronological number of a post to the website, not specifically the RPG board, in case anyone is curious, when this game opened just over a month ago we were at 91845, so around 10,000 messages later we have accounted for about 10% of RAFO's posts ... quick note on WF's role and roles in general, I have created blending of roles for this game not to screw people up assumption-wise and give the non-town faction(s) a hand, or not in whole, roles are designed to fit flavor and vice-versa, obviously the match won't be complete but by and large a roles power would have to actually make sense with their flavor, this may not be immediately obvious, but to within the best of my ability no aspect of someone's rolepower(s) if they have any will blatantly contradict their flavor, quite the other way around I hope. Take Hobo's power, to protect his comrade(s) once in the game by pulling an all-night strategy session. Why does that work as a mass-bulletproof-vest? Answer... your average assassin is unlikely to try for a kill on someone when he and at least one other person are present and awake and armed and unlikely to be pushovers if swords are drawn. Similiar, his 'revenge' ability, a one-shot NK with certain undisclosed restrictions and limitations, is predicated on the assumption that an experienced whitecloak leader who just lost his nephew is full of homicidal rage and likely not - as a high-ranking whitecloak - going to be especially reluctant to go all vigilante when he already thinks darkfriends are afoot, as that's basically what whitecloaks are anyway. WF was a warder, if his AS died he would have either died or gone blatantly and violently crazy, unless something happened on par with what Moraine did to Lan, he obviously is not going to have any power which would deliberately harm his AS instead of him.
Update 19: 28 Apr - Generally speaking I hate to let game lulls happen, but DK's RBIRL has reminded me that last I checked many of the players are in college, I'm obviously not going to freeze the game for final's week, but I will probably either let the VNTL ride or just set a minimum on it, should we have a relative period of finals-induced inactivity I don't want a lynch happening on a VNTL of 3 or something when there are 12 players in, so no set ruling yet but I think we might set VNTL-min say 75/2% of living players or something like that. Your thoughts are welcome as to a criteria, though of course do not reply directly to this message, I wouldn't mind knowing who and when finals might be occurring for, I imagine it's not the same week for everyone anyway and of course it's hardly always a total time-thief. But anyone expecting to have activity significantly impacted by it should let me know in advance if possible, remember posting RBIRL doesn't mean you can't post during it, it's just a headsup you are expecting not to be around, should you end up free and bored when RBIRL you are hardly under any restriction not to pop in and look around and post.
Update 18: 26 Apr - More on PM's, whenever I am deliberately vague on someone's role power or have, in this case, spread the group decision thing onto every mason, the reasoning is that it is disclosed as soon as it's reveal no longer unfairly harms or aids someone else. This group decision thing is not actually specific to this game, but hinges on what some of you have heard me refer to as the "Evil Mason or Traitor Dilemma", or EMT. No one is such a role should be able to be outed through clever role message or PM maneuvering, therefore no one can be allowed to be confirmed as not being an EMT through the same methods. If it occurs to me something might allow confirmation of such an option, it will be addressed in whatever fashion I consider will make certainty of a living EMT or certainty someone is not a EMT impossible, that is actually what is being addressed with these PM changes, if you don't see why or how it effects, it is because you do not have the information I have, and of course I have a notoriously high skill at scheming and plotting myself which tends to make things of this nature clearer to me. I also happen to know what all the clues mean. Clarifications will be addressed either post-game or at any point in the game I feel the ambiguity is no longer necessary, for instance Fox's existence as a EMT was revealed when he died.
Update 17: 26 Apr - I don't know if anyone caught that but when adding in the 'Posthumous Message' sub-thread I accidentally edited this message rather than replying, so that's why there was a name shift. Henceforth by the way I will be referring to people's post-death role reveals as "PM" or "PMs" etc. Note that there have been cosmetic changes in the collection along with the i.e.-e.g. fix, and that I may add to it if I go back and notice I forgot to mention someone's eye color or whatever, anything of significance in that regard would be mentioned here in the updates, I don't expect people to pick through the whole mess of PM's regularly to try to find the obscure place where I change 'Se had hair and brown eyes' to 'She had brown hair and brown eyes', but you'll obviously want to read it now if you haven't already.
Update 16: 26 Apr - Some quick clarifications, the day started late because I was waiting on a night action which impacted results fairly heavily, the player's submission was fairly clear but I needed confirmation and that confirmation took a while, it was White Flame incidentally, so you can imagine why I wanted to be sure of his intent. Because of that, and the lateness of the hour, I had to throw night results together rapidly while tired and busy with other things, and when I don't have the chance to be rigorous, I favor vague instead, to be updated as soon as circumstance permits careful examination, so note that his (WF's) death message has been updated, and I did fix the i.e.-e.g. confusion, I'm rather set in my ways so don't be surprised if I misuse i.e. for e.g. in the future, assume I use i.e. essentially as 'for instance', 'an example of', etc. Though I'll try to be better in my future usage. I will dig through the advocate and chair votes some time today, the inactivity roster will not be updated until at least 72 hours for obvious reasons. I apologize for the delay fully explaining WF, but as mentioned I was tired, did not want to delay the game, and wanted to choose my words with care in some regards. Everyone's role message and various flavor and actions will be posted in the post-game thread, you may decide at that time whether I was acting correctly in my handling of death messages, but I do subscribe to the rule that no false information should be in a message, and that it should be as complete as possible without unfairly harming another player. Quick note on randomness, all roles in this game are 100% random in assignment, I am a big believer in that.
Update 15: 25 Apr - I'm making a special archive of all the humorous ironies and bizarreness of this game, I look forward to sharing them all post-game.
Link to previous Info and Updates on Day 2
Link to previous Info and Updates on Day 1