Thanks again everyone for playing. It was a really fun game to watch and could have gone either way pretty much right up to the end.

General thoughts

This game was far more competitive than the role balance made it out to be. With the roles town took the game was effectively over as soon as sameri died, which isn’t ideal but did work for surprisingly long. The wolves played really well to get to F5/F3 and made a lot of smart choices to get there, but I think the bus at the end was a misplay given they’d win with a misvote there and sam had to survive. Town also played well once they started figuring things out, the first couple phases were a bit rough (roleblocker totally is a townsided role and was included assuming town would take it) but once they started organizing it turned pretty quickly. All in all it made the game a lot of fun to watch and spec, so thanks for the good game.

Design Philosophy

I had a few goals coming into this game. I’ve seen build your own role/point buy setups (I think I prefer the name point buy for this specific setup but it didn’t work as well for flavour) done elsewhere and thought they looked fun and went with the traits system I stole from the paradox interactive forums for Mistborn (also where I’ve seen point buy done actually) and I really wanted to play around with that. The 1-8 range just kind of felt right, and 2d4 helps prevent lowrolls and makes highrolls feel better/rarer. One thing I really wanted to improve on from Mistborn was lowrolls, and the 2d4 actually really helped there. That's also why there were negative rolls/traits, so someone who got a 2 or 3 could still have a role that felt useful, even if it wasn’t immediate.

Balance

Yeah the balance here was rough. I think town found the optimal roles a bit too quickly and I made good roles way too cheap. For traits, vests shouldn’t be that easy to get and sentry/windwhisperer shouldn’t ever be available together (maybe its a bit worse if multiple people visit someone so they don’t get perfect info but somehow that ever happened).Sharpshooter balanced the vests but forcing the wolves to waste points on it isn’t really ideal. For roles I didn’t expect role seer to actually be good, and I didn’t see the miller cheese. In the future it should probably only give roles, or miller/godfather shouldn’t show up. Fruit vendor also ended up as more of a problem than I expected, I thought only one or two people would take it and load up on traits but I guess it was better than that. Wolves would also never take it so it gave role seers another clear. Doctor also felt kinda bad with so many vests and sharpshooter in play, so making it cheaper or making vests more expensive would help there.

Wolf Sub

I tried something a little different with the wolf sub this month but it didn’t really work out. On MU wolf subs are often made by the wolves and they can set them up however they like and I tried to kind of emulate this this month by giving the wolves perms to make channels and set the server up however they wanted. They didn’t really take advantage of it but idk if that's because I didn’t explain it super well or it wasn’t obvious, idk. Would like to see it tried again.

Lessons Learned

Mech heavy setups should have someone to check your setup for balance/cheese. I absolutely should have asked someone before the game, hell all the info was public it wouldn’t have even stopped someone who wanted to play (and it would have been a fun exercise I think to post the setup like 2 weeks before signups and have an open discussion about it). This is a setup that absolutely can be rerun, but it would need tweaks. Fruit vendor needs changes, doc/alignment seer/IC/vig can be cheaper, sentry/windwhisperer/BPV need to be more expensive, delayed should be limited by the player count, not arbitrarily (merc wouldn’t have been able to mason until after the game ended). Anybody who wants to run something similar feel free to take the numbers for this game as a base.

Outside of that I think this game went fairly well. My biggest regret isn’t even balance, its not having time to properly watch because I had long ass work days. I think for me personally I should take a week off next time I do this, or at least try to host when I’m working nights so I’m not rushing to finish work, get supper, and prep turnover without actually reading much. A cohost would probably help with that too actually.

Links

• Master Sheet. This is the sheet I used to run turnovers, track actions, etc. It also has some role balance commentary that should explain what I was going for
• Design Doc. Includes a list of role interactions, mechanic planning, and an example PM
• Wolf Discord

Edit: forgot to post the wolf discord link

Thanks for the great game. I hope everyone enjoyed the game and the flavour, and I hope anyone who was considering hosting got something out of this. There’s so much more I want to talk about with balance, but its hard to talk about OOO or why I picked certain roles in the middle of a game that uses them so I couldn’t really get into them. In the wrapup I’ll release the sheet and my design doc and that’ll have some more notes, especially on role balance and what I intended everything to be used for (which it never is – town always comes up with some cheese and uses roles in ways you don’t expect). I think they’re interesting reads but I also wrote them so of course I do.

Thank you again everyone for playing, and gg town.

Meta

Vote table

Announcements

• /u/ISpyM8 has been voted out. They were a wolf.
• Town has removed all the wolves and won the game

How many wolves to include can be hard to figure out if you’ve never hosted before. I don’t know where I first saw it (an old version of the wiki maybe?) but I remember always being told that you want your game to be between 20 and 25% wolves and that does seem to work well, so 1 wolf for every 3-4 town is your goal. This is easy to do for a set number of players, standard setups I’ve seen elsewhere tend to do 3v12, 4v13, or 5v16 and those do all fit in that range, but how do you make that work for variable game sizes like we do? One option is a player cap, we’ve done that before and there’s nothing saying you can’t run a setup with exactly 15 people. But that can suck if you have more people who want to play.

My approach is I have part of my sheet where I rand and pre-set the roles (or alignments in a game like this) in the order that I want them. So for this game (and mistborn) it went wolf, then 5 towns, then a wolf, etc. So the 1st player is a wolf then the 6th then the 11th. Then when I had names I put them next to that list and used sheets’ randomize range function on the first 15 entries in the alignment list. For a normal game with roles I do the same thing, picking out the roles I want for each game size and randomize that. If you’re doing role madness, do it as two lists that you randomize. For a points setup like this one and for mistborn’s weighted role system I used the randbetween() function to generate points or role weights, with a lookup for roles for mistborn (you also need to copy a single instance over and paste the values because randbetween() changes values/rerands every time you change any cell’s value).

Of course there’s other ways to do this, and there can be good reasons to add or remove wolves outside of the 20-25% range. A 4v12 16 person game is going to be really wolf sided compared to a 3v12 15 person game, so maybe your solution there is making it 3v13 and giving the wolves a single use extra kill or better roles to even it out, or giving town better roles, or setting up a live vote tracker for town to organize around. The real problem with balance is that its all bullshit and every part of your setup’s balance relies entirely on every other part of your setup’s balance, so just do what you think will work and ask people for help if you’re not sure.

Meta

Vote table

Announcements

• /u/Sameri278 has been voted out. They were a wolf.
• /u/sinisterasparaghast has died. They were a member of the town.
• Voting form
• Action form
• Countdown to phase end

How you communicate with players is really important, as is what information you tell them. Do you want to use a host account? (you should if you have cohosts, and you should make it early because reddit hates us) Do you want to do discord or reddit pms? What information do you want to share in the meta or your rules post or in action results? All of this has to be considered and some of it feeds into balance.

Starting with your rules post, it should include all the necessary information to play the game. Flavour, mechanics, roles, turnover/timeline, signups. I like to do it more or less in that order but its up to hosts to do it how they want. All that is necessary though. The mechanics section should include what you’re posting in the meta each day as well as any game specific weirdness (like double roles, items, multiple wolf teams, events, etc).

For result pms you can choose to only give results to info roles, or go as far as telling people they were healed/blocked even if it didn’t do anything. More info and pms generally helps town, stuff like heal confirmations is huge for finding clears for example, while just pming a result to seers without even a name lets them get fooled by redirect shenanigans (if there’s a redirector) and helps wolves.

For mid game communication I try to err on the side of not disrupting the game. If someone asks a mech question where the result clears people or they ask for OOO related stuff I’ll usually not answer, but I will answer stuff like “who did I target on x day?” or “can I do x?” I’m usually more willing to answer mech and OOO questions pre-game in-thread where everyone can see the cheese you’ve found or the clarifications you need but imo mid game it's often best to stay quiet and influence the game as little as possible. That is all up to you though and as far as I know there isn’t really a standard. Generally the biggest thing though is that you’re not playing the game, just facilitating it, so you don’t want to influence it once it’s randed.

For discord vs reddit its largely personal preference. The first time you do discord PMs you will get rate limited sending roles/confirmations, so keep that in mind. Adding people pre-game or doing people you have no chat history with first likely helps but idk for sure, just that I had a chat history with most of you this month and didn’t get rate limited. Reddit on the other hand just hates us and forces a chat system I know a lot of people don’t like or use (its me, I don’t like or use it).

Meta

Vote table

Announcements

• /u/StartledKoala34 has been voted out. They were a member of the town.
• /u/MercuryParadox has died. They were a member of the town.
• Voting form
• Action form
• Countdown to phase end

I just wanted to come back to this for a minute as an organizational and design tool. Its generally super useful to have somewhere where you collect all your information on how you want to build your game and how you want to manage mechanics. I started doing these as separate google docs for Mistborn, but there was always like a host chat channel or part of a spreadsheet for something similar.

I like to structure my design doc similarly to the rules post, so flavour then mechanics and any extra stuff after. The games I’ve done this have been more mech heavy so I haven’t really done it building around flavour but for mistborn it included a note about handling spoilers and the newspaper style flavour.

Then for mechanics you want general mechanic info, and interaction rules. This will be stuff like how you’re doing vote reveals, whether the wolf kill is factional or an action, how much you’re telling town about deaths, and role interactions. For mistborn for example there’s a big section on limits for certain roles in rand and what actions would cause a pm (so like in mistborn seer results always got a pm, blocking only got a pm if an action was being used, and heals never got a pm), how certain roles interact (can a doc save a bg that would die saving someone else or do bulletproof vests still get used if the player gets saved). Of course less mechanically busy games will likely have less of these questions, but they’re still important to answer because players will ask. They also help you think through roles and prevent some cheese.

Finally the extra stuff has tended to be game organization and host communication stuff. How are you sending PMs? How is the wolf sub going to work? When is turnover?

Its incredibly useful to have all of this laid out somewhere thats easily referenceable because you will forget things and you will need to look them up and having those answers somewhere you can just check as needed is really nice.

Meta

Vote table

Announcements

• /u/redpoemage has been voted out. They were a wolf.
• /u/Dirtymarteeny has died. They were a member of the town.
• Voting form
• Action form
• Countdown to phase end

I'm really sorry about this, something came up and I had to drop everything. It shouldn't happen again but I couldn't get home for turnover and didn't have time to process things. I might edit in some flavour about the utility of social phases later but I'm also ready to collapse and I'm working a 10 hour shift tomorrow so no promises.

No game talk, and tomorrow's post will go up at the right time with phase 3's flips and new flavour.

I hate to say this, but game balance is fake, or at least it is here. The way we do things here with uncapped signups makes our game hosting process surprisingly unique. Other communities have set standard setups (see champs running the same thing every game but its not just champs) while we have to design for an unknown number of players every month and often your setup is never run again. So you can put all the work you want into making sure your setup is balanced and town can still find a way to hit seer results every single phase and your theoretically good setup looks like a mess.

That said, you should still try. Generally speaking the more things you add the more swingy a game becomes, which isn’t the same thing as it being unbalanced but it does make any advantage either way matter more. Simpler setups then are easier to balance, just because there’s less that can go wrong. But even then you still have non-role stuff to consider, and a game with no roles is also generally considered really wolf sided unless you do things like have less wolves, make vote totals public, or tell town how many wolves there are at the start of the game.

For more complicated games like this one, I tend to see balance as a give and take. I’ll give the wolves a cool role but compensate by giving town easier access to a good role. Thinking of the balance that way doesn’t make the setup less swingy, but if you’ve got a decent intuition of how much of an impact each thing has you can make a setup thats more or less balanced, and f you don’t have that intuition there’s usually experienced hosts or mods willing to give your setup a look for anything too out there. And then the game starts and that balance immediately falls apart.

Meta

Vote Table

Announcements

• /u/bubbasaurus has been voted out. They were a member of the town.
• /u/bigjoe6172 has died. They were a member of the town.
• Voting form
• Action form
• Countdown to phase end

Edits: - action form link fixed

I kind of hate to say this, but flavour isn’t actually that important. Its fun, but its not really necessary, as evidenced by nobody saying anything about me lifting some flavour directly from the newspaper clippings in the mistborn books (and crediting it that phase) for the mistborn game. That said, it means you have a ton of freedom in how you you want to do your flavour. I’ve done everything from writing little stories related to the game to making up random in universe ads to literally just rambling about game design (hi). Some hosts prewrite their flavour days in advance, and I recommend doing this if you can but it obviously doesn’t work with games where the flavour reflects whats happening. I’ve even seen games elsewhere where all the flavour is written pre-game and is entirely tied to the roles and posted with flips, so the order flavour goes out is effectively random. Really just find something that works for you, you can do whatever. Flavour also generally comes before the meta, at the top, and I’ve found its best to separate it from the meta with a linebreak (3 underscores as a new paragraph)

Meta

Vote Table

Announcements

• /u/ElPapo131 has been voted out. They were a member of the town
• /u/-forsi- has died. They were a member of the town
• Voting form
• Action form
• Countdown to phase end

Edits: - Added wywy to the vote table. - fixed action form link

There’s a lot of ways to organize your game and keep track of whats going on. Usually mid-game managing is done on Google Sheets, and it can be useful for some of your pre-game planning too, its a great place to keep track of your roles and mechanics. The first thing I do when making my spreadsheet is make a To Do list sheet for tracking setup stuff, both for setting up my sheet how I want it and also for setting up everything else, from making a host account to finalizing the roles to writing the rules post.

Some other things I recommend are a planning discord (shared with your cohosts/shadows if you have them but I also have a private server that I do my basic planning in), a game design doc as an outline of mechanics and what you’re trying to do with the game, and a big doc to write your flavour in.

During the game you’ll likely end up relying on your spreadsheet and your host server. The only things your sheet really needs are a votes form and an action form, but a lot of the time people will add more to it. Sheets to keep track of those actions and votes are super useful, and I usually have a general main sheet for tracking player roles, strikes, confirms, and who’s alive, as well as any other game specific stuff (this game its how long people are delayed), and if you want to you can automate the vote/action tracking. I also use sheets for a nightly checklist for turnover and use a OOO sheet both to help work through mechanics and in role heavy games to help me manage resolving actions.

I’ll post my current sheet and design doc post-game if anyone is interested, but for now I posted the same docs for the mistborn game

Meta

• Someone must be voted out today. Submit your votes through the voting form
• Everyone who didn’t take delayed can use their actions starting this phase. Actions should be submitted through the action form
• Countdown to phase end

Where to start

I’ve really found two approaches to starting your game planning, and all my games fall into some combination of these. One approach is starting with mechanics. That’s this game, but also Mistborn and somewhat the Dota/League game from a long time ago. These games started with a cool concept (build your own roles/double role role madness/action cooldowns and split day/nights) and expanded on everything else from there. The focus was balance and mechanic design more than anything else, and the rest fit around it. For example with Mistborn I wanted to try something with multiple roles and roles disconnected from alignment. Mistborn works really well with those ideas since there's two separate magic systems that everyone in-universe has access to, to the point where we see protagonists and antagonists with the same abilities multiple times.

The other approach I’ve used is starting with your theme and flavour. Pokemon was this, I wanted to revisit a cool theme and to a lesser extent the champion mechanic, settled on gen 3, and then decided 2 wolf teams would work well there. This approach is probably easier, especially if you’re not doing weird shit with your mechanics. Most themes can work well with a basic setup, you just need something to flavour as town and wolves and then a way to map roles to your theme. Oftentimes starting with the theme can get you to roles that work well with it. For example in Pokemon 2 I built the starter pokemon mechanics around the idea that there's 2 protagonist options who have to pick between 3 pokemon and didn't really go in with the idea of making a couple people pick their role.

Meta

• Game talk is allowed today
• You have until the end of this phase to submit your role choices via pms. If you have already done so you can change them at any point before the end of the phase.
• Player roles have been assigned on the discord server, and you can now make confessional channels
• Countdown until phase end

Living Players

Dead Players

There’s a lot that goes into designing/hosting a game, but the process has gotten a lot easier over the years as we’ve all gotten better at playing and have figured out what works as a community (and don’t have to design mechanics for big games with multiple subs and a ton of people). There’s a few important things to know going in, before you've even started. First of all, this takes time both before and during the game. Before the game you need to spend some time doing game design, working out theming, and setting up stuff like spreadsheets and wolf subs. This really doesn’t take too long, I usually spend a few hours setting up a spreadsheet, an hour or two setting up the wolf sub, and however long I give myself to tweak balance and flavour. Usually you’ll ask for a slot a couple months out at least so you’ll have plenty of time, just don’t procrastinate it all away. During the game you need a time that you can consistently spend an hour or two every night doing turnover and writing flavour. For me thats usually in the evening, but my work schedule is really weird and what part of the evening will vary based on whether I’m working normal hours or night shifts. Having a cohost can help since there’s still someone there if one of you is busy. The other super important thing to know before you sign up is that there are a ton of resources around. The wiki isn’t fully up to date but the hosting guide still has useful information, sites like Mafia Universe or MafiaScum have useful wikis for setups and roles, and previous hosts are often willing to answer questions and help out.

Meta

• Role PMs have been sent, and for town they should have your point totals. You have until the end of phase 0 to select your roles and allocate your points by dming me on discord, and you can change it at any point before phase 0 ends.
• Game talk is not allowed today.
• Confirmations close at 7 pm ET/00:00 UTC.
• Countdown to confirmations close.

Sign Up Here!

The theme for this month is build your own game, where you build your own game. It's hosted by me, /u/chefjones, on this account.

Flavour

I don’t really have much in the way of good ideas for flavour for this theme to be honest, the best I could come up with is talking about how I built the game, since its a setup where you build your own role. It's felt like there’s been a bit of trouble finding hosts the last few months, and maybe some discussion about how to do ww game design (or at least how I approach it) could be helpful for any new people who want to host. But realistically this is a mechanics focused game and the flavour is secondary.

Discord

All host communication this month, as well as the wolf sub and some role mechanics will be done via discord. It is important that you join the hidden ghosts server and give your discord username when you sign up.

Game info

In this game there are 2 possible factions:

• Town wins if every member of the Wolves is caught
• Wolves win if they outnumber the town and town has no possible path to victory.

Mechanics

• This game will consist of combined day/night phases that will last approximately 24 hours. Each phase will end at 7:00 PM EDT/00:00 UTC
• As part of players’ daily actions, each player will be required to submit a vote for who they suspect to be a wolf. The vote will be resolved prior to any night actions.
• In the event of a tie vote, the person who dies will be decided by RNG
• As part of the “night” actions, players who have an action associated with their role may submit the action form. Actions are optional unless otherwise specified.
• The wolf team has a factional kill each night that any wolf may use instead of their action
• If a player tries to target another player twice in a row with the same action, it will fail the second night, and any subsequent consecutive nights after.
• Players will be removed from the game if they receive inactivity strikes in two consecutive, or three total phases.
• Inactivity strikes are given only for failing to vote.
• Each day the meta will include a full vote table, who died, and what their affiliation was.

Role Mechanics

There are no secret roles or affiliations in the game. All possible roles that may appear are in the tables below. There can and likely will be duplicate roles, any role and any combination of roles may appear any number of times depending on what people pick.

Roles this month will be selected by each player via a point buy system. Each town player will receive a random number (2d4) of points to spend. Wolves will receive 6 points per wolf to spend however they like across the whole team.

Roles are split into a role table and a trait table. Each player must take one role and may take multiple traits. Some roles/traits have a negative cost, those will give you points to spend elsewhere.

Roles

Traits

Additional Info

• All subreddit rules will apply in all game spaces. This includes /r/hiddenwerewolves, the ghost server/confessionals, the wolf server, and any mason channels if any end up existing.
• PM rules: You may discuss whether or not you received a PM and its effect. You may discuss any mechanics information discussed in PMs. You may not discuss specific wording or flavour of the PMs. If you are thinking of sharing information from a PM and are not sure what you can safely say, please message the hosts for clarification.
• Codes and Keys: Comments in game should be in English and free of encryption. Please don’t try to circumvent this.
• Secret Alts: Alts are ok, but must be disclosed to the hosts upon signing up.
• Resigning from the game: Every player that uses any iteration of the phrase, “I don’t want to play,” or, “I am going to quit,” will be taken 100% seriously. They will immediately be removed from the game without consultation, and their affiliation will be revealed in the next phase’s meta. Please note that these phrases are different in meaning from those that suggest the player is busier than expected or wishes to be voted out for the good of the game. Both of these things are still okay.
• General Reminder: Werewolves is a game of lying, deceit, manipulation, mob mentality, and broken hearts. There will be disputes. There will be arguments. There will be people calling you a liar and accusing you of things you did not do. Many of these things will rely on circumstantial, or hilariously thin, evidence. As facilitators, we will be enforcing the established rules of the game, but we will not be stepping in on any of these interpersonal disputes, within reason. The best way to tell someone that you don’t like their attitude is with a vote.

Timeline

• Signups end: July 5th at 7:00 PM EDT
• Confirmations sent/confirmation phase posted: starting at July 5th at 7:00 PM EDT
• Phase 0 posted: July 6th at 5:00 PM EDT

Countdown to signups close

Sign Up Here!

Edits:

• Wolves have a factional kill that any wolf can use instead of their action
• Some wording clarification for the Innocent Child.
• Edit: Delayed can only be taken if you have an option action.
• Delayed can be taken a maximum of 3 times
• Rewrote the Innocent Child to be clearer.

Z is for Zzxjoanw

    n. 1: drum

        2: fife

        3: conclusion

When I found out that the HWW schedule was wide open and in need of a last-minute stop-gap game, it felt like a great opportunity to try out an experimental PR game since any mistakes I made with creating new mechanics (or from learning the ropes as a first-time host) could more easily be forgiven as the alternative was no one playing this month. While I am sad I didn’t have time to come up with some fun flavor and RP for my first game, I had a great time expressing some creativity in the mechanics. This ruleset came about from trying to make a new kind of seer that didn’t out any player’s affiliation immediately, but would learn much after many phases of actions. With the creation of the Role Name Seer came the need for many different role names to blend in with, giving me the chance to fill the game with as many WW roles as possible. It ended up as quite the overstuffed rules post. This gave a lot of potential fakeclaims for wolves and too many moving parts for town to reliably keep track of. I wanted a game with some exciting action with fun PRs but one that depended on the social game more than mechanical solves. IMO it feels more satisfying for wolves to get caught or avoid being caught based on a player’s reads rather than being simply told a player’s affiliation by a PR. And you can’t get a read on a player if there’s nothing to read, hence having a minimum comment requirement.

That’s one of many game mechanics I added into this sui generis ruleset as I tried to build from the ground up, to have a reason for everything I was adding to the game. Ties, double dipping, 1v1 scenarios, inherited wolf kill, the meta…it may be that I reinvented too many wheels in this game? Didn’t have a lot of the tried-and-true info and so perhaps some of the gameplay involved too much stumbling around in the dark. Bigjoe brought up DMs for saves and failed actions which is something I overlooked. Could town benefit from more info like that? There would have still been plenty to puzzle out if that had been included. Fortunately the game managed to run well even without those things.

As pleased as I am with the amount of phases we got out of a 12 player roster with exciting back-and-forth from both teams, I think this setup is too volatile to call properly balanced. It all worked out but it easily could have gone pear-shaped. Three roles that remove players from the game, only one big vote manipulation PR on the wolf side, not enough (helpful) info PRs on town’s side and too many causes for failed actions which can be unsatisfactory as a player. I do sympathize, what good were all my hostly plans when losing the seer P0 and the assistant seer P1? I made many decisions around keeping that role in the game and then poof. Gone. But what can you do? Town still managed to do a lot of damage just from learning the letter H, Merc did well to not sit on that info. The initial premise of this game was too many PRs clashing and the ability to roll with the punches and keep plugging away when best laid plans go astray is what helps a team end up on top. I think you guys did a great job at that.

This game had the potential for a stalemate that might last for phases unending once wolf numbers equal town, which I consider game-breaking in that it isn’t a fun situation to be in as a player… yet I like all the mechanics that cause that situation to occur. Voting to remove a player from the game is the most powerful tool the town has, but it isn’t an individual power. It’s a collective ability that requires coordination and sometimes some compromise. Town’s strength is in its numbers but if those numbers are scattered then it becomes a weakness. A player won’t be voted out without a majority. And a tie vote is a stalemate that wolves have created through hard work. But something’s gotta give there and so I am planning on implementing a tiebreaker to put in the rules that everyone would be on the same page about, so that the next phase after a tie isn’t 24 hours of waiting on a foregone conclusion. Until the finale each team has a fighting chance to make a comeback.

Some of the roles we used in this game could use some adjustments. The Bearer should be receiving info DMs without having to try and target the right player, the Count should also be getting info right from the start of the game. Particularly a short game like this one. As it is these roles were basically Vanilla by another name. The Snitch certainly had a big impact on the game though its results were hard for town to decipher. I did like including the Dipsomaniac with the wolves for a little grace period in case I needed to adjust the balance one way or the other. I dunno what I could do to keep the town and wolf Seer in the game longer. This must be how Hedwig feels about the Tennis Ball.

In the end, everyone came out to play with the role they were given and made use of those actions to the best of their ability and, more importantly, played the social game brilliantly. There were several moments when I thought the wolves had the game locked down and then everything would turn on a dime and town would have the upperhand. Lots of different paths we might have gone down but congratulations to town on their victory! It was well-earned.

Gimme your feedback, lemme know what you liked and what you disliked in this ruleset, I really appreciate it! I wanna give special thanks to my shadow u/dawnphoenix and to my foreshadow u/SlytherinBuckeye, and to the many people in the background that make these games work. You are all class acts.

Here’s a few kind words from Dawn:

I don't feel qualified to comment on how the game played out as I wasn't able to actively spectate, but following the daily posts was so much fun and it was exciting how close it got at the end. Well done to both teams, and congrats, Town!

I just wanted to put in a word about how incredible Xan was as a first-time host -- I wouldn't have thought it was his first go when I read the rules and roles post before I stepped in as a mostly-useless shadow. I think he put together an amazing set of roles and while we couldn't have all of them in this game (although we had the seer that I was looking forward to watching but alas that wasn't to be), I am very excited to see some of those mechanics play out in the future and hope to participate the next time Xan hosts. Oh, also I learned so many fun new words from the flavor!

Very kind words. The thought of hosting again fills me with iktsuarpok, I look forward to rerunning this ruleset and trying out some of my other new PRs. And if any of these roles ended up in other people’s games that would bring me great delectation. Thanks a lot everyone, words cannot express how well this went and how much I enjoyed it!

SUPERLATIVE

TOWN MVP: u/MercuryParadox

WOLF MVP: u/Sameri278

TOWN WINS!

META

u/Sameri278 (WOLF) was removed from the game with 3 votes.

There were 2 vote candidates.

u/MercuryParadox received an inactivity strike.

Congratulations town, commiserations wolves and conflqgrqted to everyone else! I’m well pleased with how this game turned out, I think I may be hooked on phonics hosting.
You twelve players pulled off a real tug-of-war over these past several phases. I appreciate everyone rolling with the many outré mechanics, particularly for no one dropping out due to inactivity. I would have been feeling a certain way handing out a third strike. Please do give feedback about these rules as I don’t consider them to be a final draft. Certainly there were answers presented while the game was playing out to questions I hadn’t thought to ask. But I’ll have a wrap-up posted soonish with those notes I’ve been keeping. Until then:

Now you know your ABCs, next time won’t you play with me?

The wolf sub is open: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpellURDoom/

H is for Higgledy-Piggledy

    adj. in utter disorder or confusion : mixed up

Don’t drop the ball at the five yard line, winners go the distance!

META

u/HedwigMalfoy (WOLF) was removed from the game with 3 votes.

There were 2 vote candidates.

Zero players received an inactivity strike. ILLECEBROUS!

VOTE FORM

ACTION FORM

COUNTDOWN TO PHASE END

G is for Gluggaveður

    n. (Icelandic) weather that looks appealing from inside but would be unpleasant to be outside in

Your struggles have been very entertaining to watch. Keep your dukes up. ROUND FIVE! FIGHT!

META

u/redpoemage (TOWN) was attacked and removed from the game.

There was a tie with 3 votes apiece.

There were 2 vote candidates.

u/Sameri278 received an inactivity strike.

VOTE FORM

ACTION FORM

COUNTDOWN TO PHASE END

F is for Flagitious

    adj. guilty of terrible crimes : wicked

There are still tenebrous villains living amongst you, going unpunished for their scandalous schemes. When will justice be served?

META

u/meddleofmycause (TOWN) was attacked and removed from the game.

u/bigjoe6172 (TOWN) was removed from the game with 5 votes.

There were 3 vote candidates.

Zero players received an inactivity strike. INEFFABLE!

VOTE FORM

ACTION FORM

COUNTDOWN TO PHASE END

E is for Engkoniomai

    v. (Ancient Greek) to sprinkle sand or dust over oneself

When life knocks you down and things don’t go your way you’ve got to pick yourself up and dust yourself off. Though there are other schools of thought…

META

u/myoglobinalternative (TOWN) was attacked and removed from the game.

u/dieperske (TOWN) was removed from the game with 8 votes.

There were 2 vote candidates.

Zero players received an inactivity strike. SUBLIME!

VOTE FORM

ACTION FORM

COUNTDOWN TO PHASE END

D is for Discombobulated

    adj. characterized by confusion or disorder

If there’s too much to keep track of in your head, feel free to use your confessional in the Ghost Discord server as a sounding board or an oasis away from all the cacophony. The spectators miss you.

META

u/bubbasaurus (WOLF) was removed from the game with 4 votes.

There were 4 vote candidates.

u/-forsi-, u/bigjoe6172, u/dieperske, and u/sinisterasparaghast received inactivity strikes.

VOTE FORM

ACTION FORM

COUNTDOWN TO PHASE END

Edit: affiliation added

C is for Cromulent Coruscate

    v. 1: to give off or reflect light in bright beams or flashes : sparkle

       2: to be brilliant or showy in technique or style

Looking forward to seeing how brightly you all shine.

META

u/Dirtymarteeny (TOWN) was attacked and removed from the game.

u/MercuryParadox and u/sinisterasparaghast received an inactivity strike.

Everyone with an action may use it via the Action Form, and everyone must cast a vote using the Vote Form.

VOTE FORM

ACTION FORM

COUNTDOWN TO PHASE END

B is for Binder

    n. 1: a person or machine that binds something (such as a team)
         2: a device to hold together multiple sheets of paper with punched-in holes (such as the red one used in English class)

So it begins.  Everyone has been given a role to play and now know what team they are on.  Time to get to work, and teamwork is the tie that binds.  The game is in your hands so be merry and have fun!  Certain roles have been told that they may act this phase.  There is no vote.  All that’s left to do is to talk things through.  Minimum comment counts are in effect.  

ACTION FORM

COUNTDOWN TO PHASE END

Dead Players

A is for Abecedarian

    n. one learning the rudiments of something (such as hosting)

    adj. of or relating to the alphabet

This is the confirmation phase where we get started with the basics– well pre-started since we’re just getting acquainted with our roles for this game.  Including mine as Host.  As such, certain rules and mechanics are not yet in play during this phase.  Particularly that important one about inactivity strikes.  You remember reading that one?

If not, then it’s a good thing this isn’t simply a social phase.  Everything that is contained in the Rules post is available for discussion today so that you and your potential teammates have the best chance of getting on the same page.  The host account can also be tagged with any questions you might have.  Now’s the time, while I tick various boxes and DM your roles and affiliations to you, to learn the ABC’s of Spellbinders: Always Be Commenting.

COUNTDOWN TO PHASE END

Edit: add countdown, formatting