Post
Post #1 (isolation #1) » Sat Nov 10, 2012 2:46 am
Postby callforjudgement »
Rules
Fair play
You've probably seen all these rules before, except maybe 6 and 11.
1. All sitewide rules apply.
2. Play to win. It's more fun to win fairly than if your opponents throw the game, so don't ruin the game for the other players.
3. Don't quote things that aren't public knowledge, or make use of the exact wording of a private message or metadata like timestamps of private communication. (It's OK to paraphrase the meaning. Just not to use things like wording as evidence that you're not faking the communication.)
4. Don't use hidden or small text, cryptography, or provable randomness. (Breadcrumbs are OK.)
5. Until this game is over, don't discuss it anywhere but this thread, or other locations I specifically allow you to discuss it in. If I send you a link to a place where you can discuss the game privately, keep that link secret until the game is over. (And if someone tries to contact you about this game and they shouldn't be doing so, let me or a list mod know immediately.)
6. Don't use out-of-game information as a method of writing a message that will only be understood by specific players. It's tantamount to private communication.
7. Dead players shouldn't post (not here, nor in places their role PM allows them to, nor in unrelated areas). I will create a QuickTopic that dead players can use to discuss the game if they wish, and give the link to players when they die.
8. Don't pretend to break a rule, even if you aren't actually breaking another rule. (For instance, you can't post the timestamp of your role PM publicly, so don't post a fake timestamp for your role PM either.)
9. Please try to stay civil. It's not fun having a game thread full of insults and personal attacks.
10. Don't try to gain an advantage from rulebreaking, either yours or another player's. (This doesn't mean you shouldn't report it if you see it happens; just don't try to use it as a weapon.) If players break rules, I will try to resolve the situation in a way that preserves the balance of the game. (This means that if you're trying to use a breaking strategy that depends on deliberately getting modkilled, don't expect it to work.)
11. Don't pretend to take day actions you can't actually take. That is, don't vote unless you can vote, don't attempt to daykill someone unless your role actually allows you to daykill someone, etc.. Likewise, do not make it ambiguous whether something is a vote or not.
12. Alts and hydras: please post from the correct account. If you accidentally post from the wrong account, please repeat the post from the correct account.
Administrative
13. Day deadlines will be two weeks long. I will let you know the deadlines in each vote count.
14. If players need to be replaced, deadlines will be extended accordingly; days will not end due to deadlines within 72 hours of a player replacing in. In order to gain more certainty about deadlines, and avoid games being decided by out-of-game factors, if a player becomes in need of replacement within the last 36 hours of a day, I will not replace the slot until the next day.
15. If you find you don't have enough time to play the game, let me know and I'll try to find a replacement. (But that makes the game worse for everyone, so try to avoid doing that unless the alternatives would be even worse.)
16. If you want to replace into this game, let me know by PM. In an ideal world, nobody would ever replace out and your request would be pointless, but in practice it's pretty rare for that to actually happen. I'll let you know when a slot becomes free.
17. I'm trying a new experimental system for handling persistently inactive players this game. You should aim to post most days, and definitely at least once every 48 hours. I will initially search for replacements for people after they haven't posted for 72 hours and send them reminders of this rule after approximately 48; however, once a player has been sent a reminder, these timeouts reduce to 48 and 24 hours respectively for the rest of the game day. If a player is sent 48-hour reminders on two separate game days, the timeout reduction becomes permanent for the rest of the game.
18. If you know in advance that you won't be able to play temporarily, or on a regular schedule (such as having no access at weekends), declare your vacation or limited access in thread ("V/LA"). Players are exempt from activity deadlines while V/LA, but if a player has a long declared inactivity period, I may need to replace them anyway.
19. If you see a discrepancy between the number of votes on a player and the number of players voting for that player without an obvious sign that it's deliberate, it's an accident; please let me know so that I can fix the vote count.
20. Your role PM requires you to confirm that you're willing to play when the game starts. The game will start when 80% or more of the player list (for a 10 player game, that's 8 players) have confirmed.
21. I usually randomize night actions for a compulsive power role who doesn't submit an action. However, as an Open mountainous game, you know there are no power roles in the setup, so the problem won't come up.
22. Should something go wrong, please contact me or a list mod. If I should need to be replaced for any reason, one of the scum should send a link to the scum QuickTopic to the new moderator; as a mountainous setup, that's all the information they'll require to continue the game in my absence.
Setup
23. This is a Nightless game. As such, after confirmations, it will consist only of day phases, with one day starting when the previous day ends. And thus, the thread will remain unlocked (and anyone can post there) as soon as sufficiently many players have confirmed.
24. During day phases, each player can vote to lynch themself or another player. You can change or retract your vote as often as you like, but can only have one vote out at a time. Votes will be reset at the start of each day. As a nightless game, you cannot vote to no-lynch.
25. I don't require players to unvote; voting will implicitly remove any previous vote you might have. However, consider explicitly unvoting anyway as a courtesy to the other players.
26. To vote, I recommend using the [vote][/vote] tags, which look like this:VOTE: callforjudgement. (There is a similar tag for unvoting.) Other voting styles are accepted as long as they're clear; a vote is definitely unclear if it's spoilered, or does not at least contain the word "vote" and use bold formatting, but might be unclear even if it complies with the letter of that restriction. (If you're going to boldvote, make life easier for people by putting it on a line of its own.)
27. Day will end when a majority of players (that is, more than half) are voting for the same person. That player will be lynched and removed from the game, no longer counting as alive. Then the next day phase will start.
28. Day will also end at deadline. As a nightless game, "no lynch at deadline" makes no sense, so instead this game uses plurality lynches at deadline: the player with the most votes (even if it's much less than half the playerlist in votes) will be lynched. If there's a tie under this rule, the player lynched will be the player who had the most votes at the most recent point in time at which there wasn't a tie; if there's still a tie (i.e. nobody has voted all day), a random player will be lynched.
29. This is an Open game (specifically, Black Flag Nightless). As such, every player knows the setup (note the unusual win conditions):
7 of the 10 players will get the Vanilla Townie role PM, which looks like this (with the name changed):
3 of the 10 players will get the Mafia Goon role PM, which looks like this (with the names and links changed):
30. When a player dies, their role name will be posted in thread.
Post
Post #2 (isolation #2) » Sat Nov 10, 2012 2:47 am
Postby callforjudgement »
The psychologist looked around the prison. Things were bad.
In the past, the prison had mostly run itself. Obviously, you left the doors locked, but beyond that, it was mostly just a case of providing meals and sanitation; the prisoners themselves could take care of everything else. No matter how hardened a criminal was before they were thrown into jail, humans have a natural tendency to obey orders from their superiors, and can fall into a command structure easily. There was a famous experiment where the experimenters merely told the experimental subjects to pretend to be prisoners or prison guards; and it had to be stopped because of the amount of brutality that went on from the guards, and that the prisoners were willing to accept. For people who actually had done something wrong, therefore, the impulse to just obey orders and take their punishment was all the stronger.
But the whole structure had been breaking down. Several people killed in the last few weeks; some were prisoners, but more were guards, especially the people in charge. Now she was the only one left, apart from the remaining prisoners, and some of the catering staff. Insubordination is one of the most dangerous diseases that can infect a command structure, like an army or a prison; it's the reason that almost every army punishes mutiny more severely than pretty much anything else. A few officers can keep huge numbers of common soldiers in line, but not when mutiny starts spreading.
She had to do something. Just staying there would pretty much ensure she was the next to die. She considered just telling the catering staff to leave, locking all the doors, and leaving the prisoners in there to starve to death, but she was far from certain locked doors could contain them by themselves; and the last thing she wanted was ten people hating her, who'd already proven they were willing to break the law, and with nothing left to lose. Help from outside was unlikely; it was a remote area of the world. So she had to work this out for herself.
No, what was needed was to regain control. It seemed very unlikely that all the prisoners were taking part in the mutiny yet; it seemed more likely that it was only, say, two or three. Probably three. The others would be just as fearful as she was, unable to stop what order their tiny prison world being torn apart. If she just knew who the ringleaders were, it would hardly take much convincing to get the other prisoners to solve the problem for her.
Of course, things were never that easy. She'd already asked them all, but nobody would admit to knowing who was responsible for the killings; the culture of silence among criminals was just too ingrained for a comparatively short prison sentence to remove. So she needed to try something unusual, and fast.
The next day, therefore, she set out on an expedition, the ten prisoners with her. The prison was near the base of a large mountain. And everyone would be climbing the mountain along with her, until the ringleaders admitted what they'd done. She wouldn't even need to punish them, really. Well, she'd need to be seen to punish them, but the mere admission would be enough to prove that they'd given up and were willing to go back to obeying orders, and the punishment would just be to assert her authority.
Until then, gruelling mountain-climbing for everyone. No reprieves. No sympathy for the people who couldn't keep up; she'd get the others to drag them along over the rocks if she had to. No allowances for the people who weren't as athletic as she was. It had to be nasty for everyone. That was the whole point. Eventually, someone would give in and tell her what she needed to know.
Post
Post #491 (isolation #16) » Fri Nov 16, 2012 10:22 am
Postby callforjudgement »
Sorry for not being here earlier. Wow, you were busy overnight… Luckily, I wrote the flavour in advance this time, so there's no further delay for that.
The psychologist was getting a little worried. They'd already climbed four, five miles; not very much compared to the size of the mountain, but already much more than she'd expected the prisoners would be able to take. Sure, some of them would be just fine with it; no doubt, some of them would have much more endurance than she did. But she only needed one of them to confess, and it seemed a little strange that none of the ten had broken yet. Perhaps these people were tougher than she gave them credit for.
She'd wondered what they were bickering about, but knew it would be unwise to ask. There'd been the obvious bragging, that you'd expect at the start of any project like this one. Just as obviously, was the backlash against that, with people betting each other they wouldn't last five minutes. (Not that they had anything obvious to bet with, of course. But bragging rights could be a powerful reward in their own right.) Perhaps the prisoners were more determined than usual to prove that their bravado wasn't just an act. Anyway, it didn't really matter; she knew they'd never get onto discussing the things she wanted them to discuss (such as, shouldn't they just own up to who the ringleaders were so they could go "home"?) if she was listening in. So she'd made a point of walking out in front, letting her pick the path up. It was an authority thing too; she needed to prove that no matter how much bragging was going on at the back, she could limb better than any of them. Showing weakness wouldn't just be embarrassing. In this situation, it might even be fatal.
And then, something happened. Even trying to ignore what was going on behind her, there was no ignoring the clatter of sliding rocks, and the scream, and the sound of impact. Turning behind them, and looking down the small cliff, everyone saw Voidedmafia lying down there on the ground.
The psychologist was confused. She'd checked the climbing ropes earlier, and found no problems with them; perhaps it didn't matter so much for the prisoners, but she was trusting her own life to them too. Perhaps someone had made a mistake in using them, but she imagined that several of the prisoners were inexperienced at climbing, so she was using a particularly secure regime for attaching the ropes. A few mistakes shouldn't matter; for a fall like that to happen, you'd have needed something like six of the prisoners to get the pattern wrong at the same time. And what were the chances of that? The only thing that she could think of, was that half of them were being lazy and doing it wrong from the start, leaving them open to a screw-up from someone who'd got it right up to that point.
She knew what she had to do, anyway. More importantly than anything else, she couldn't show any signs of weakness; no matter what, she had to stay in charge of the situation. Besides, it wasn't even clear whether Voidedmafia was dead yet; and no doubt some of the prisoners would want to turn back to see if anything could be done for their friend. Well, they were going to have to give her the information she needed first; she was determined that this would just be another incentive to cooperate.
"Leave him. We carry on." She tried her best to look unfazed, and just marched up along the mountain.
Voidedmafia, Vanilla Townie, was lynched day 1.
This is a nightless game, so we're going straight into day 2. The vote count has been reset.
Last edited by callforjudgement on Fri Nov 16, 2012 10:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post #614 (isolation #24) » Sat Nov 17, 2012 12:29 pm
Postby callforjudgement »
The psychologist reflected on the situation. They'd been going up the mountain for several hours, now; the morning was long gone, and even the afternoon didn't look like it would last that much longer. Even so, none of the remaining nine prisoners had cracked under the pressure. They were doing impressively well, really. Of course, these were the people who'd survived the killings back at the prison; so at least statistically, they could be expected to be more resourceful than average, or at least more resilient.
The principles behind what she was doing were sound enough, anyway. She was punishing the whole group for the crimes of a few. (Well, they'd all done crimes, or else they wouldn't be here. But she meant, recently.) Perhaps surprisingly, this typically worked better than just punishing the people responsible. A common trick for preventing a group of prisoners escaping was to threaten to, if one of them escaped, punish the rest of them; she hadn't had to do that herself yet, but she definitely would if she thought it would help and that she could go through with it. To some extent, that trick relied on people being unwilling to betray their friends; but more strongly, it also relied on it giving them a strong incentive to prevent each other escaping on the first place, an effect that would work even with the most extreme sociopaths.
This situation, although not quite the same, was similar. The prisoners could hardly be enjoying climbing the mountain. She was finding it pretty arduous herself by this point; going on walks for fun was one thing, but this was something else. And the only way for them to stop – that they were likely to consider, at least – was to own up to who had been performing the killings. (Of course, they could just all, as a group, refuse to keep going, and there'd be nothing she could do about it. But she was sure that they wouldn't, just as long as she stayed in control of the situation. So she had to keep climbing, no matter what.)
And then, another scream, another fall. At this point, it couldn't be a coincidence.
She wondered what was going on. One of her assumptions had to be wrong at this point; this wasn't meant to work like this. And then she realised it: perhaps the prisoners themselves didn't know who the ringleaders were either?
Suddenly, everything fell into place. The prisoners were using her own tricks against each other; if the ringleaders wouldn't admit to what they'd done, the prisoners would try to kill them themselves. Even if they were just killing at random, psychologically you'd expect the plan to work; the "innocent" prisoners would have nothing to lose, because they'd be doomed anyway if they failed to stop the insubordination, but the ringleaders would have to face the probability of death if they didn't own up first. And people don't like facing even a small probability of being executed if they can help it. The Roman army used to punish mutinous units via "decimation", the random execution of 10% of the soldiers responsible; that way, it served as a strong deterrent, while not significantly reducing their fighting power if the punishment had to be carried out. This was the same idea, and she saw no reason why it wouldn't work.
There were a few additional advantages, too. At this point, there was no need to fear a mass rebellion – at least, if enough non-ringleaders remained to stop the ringleaders taking over by force. Anyone who showed any signs of disobedience would almost certainly be executed next. This was another widely used technique for keeping control of a social group; the simple idea of getting everyone else to punish anyone who showed signs of doubting the leader let one person keep control of almost unlimited numbers. The technique had been used to hold dictatorships together, and, more prosaically, to win reality TV shows.
For the first time in hours, the psychologist smiled. She didn't even have to turn round this time; she knew everything was well in hand. She just kept climbing, and she knew the remaining prisoners would follow.
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Post #944 (isolation #32) » Sun Nov 18, 2012 11:37 pm
Postby callforjudgement »
Piggy was hammered at 898. No votes after this were counted.
It was past sunset, with only the last fading light to see by, and they were higher up than the psychologist had ever been before. There had, unsurprisingly, been another death just a few minutes ago. But deaths were becoming pretty routine by now, and hardly even worth dwelling on. That was a pretty awful state of affairs, really, if you sat back to think about it. So she didn't. It's amazing how quickly people can become desensitised to tragedy.
The psychologist was hoping the prisoners were trying to determine the ringleaders for themselves, rather than just executing at random; she'd realised that, even if the loyal prisoners had nothing to lose, that didn't necessarily mean that they would succeed in eliminating the ringleaders. Sure, if they failed, they'd die; but even if they had every reason in the world to try, that didn't mean they'd succeed, and the ringleaders seemed to be gambling that they wouldn't be caught. It was too late to change tack any more, though. The loyal prisoners had nothing to lose; at this point, neither did she.
She'd hoped that the ringleaders would have owned up by now, but they hadn't, and there wasn't much of an option but to pitch tents and sleep for the night. She'd been making the prisoners carry them, of course; she could probably have taken the weight of one, but not having to do the same tasks as everyone else reinforced the fact that she was in charge, and the reduced burden just helped her climb faster and get less exhausted in the process.
Three of the tents had been lost with the prisoners carrying them. Fortunate, she thought, that none of them had been carrying two, or they'd be short at this point. She'd been changing round the prisoner who had to carry the heaviest backpack every now and then; anyone who persistently lagged at the back was given a heavier load as punishment. The tents were old, but good; lightweight, warm, waterproof, pretty much everything you'd want. So carrying two really wasn't that bad a punishment; but still, there was huge competition to avoid being the person stuck with the "heavy pack". It was quite interesting, really, how such petty punishments could nonetheless be seen as such a big deal.
Much the same was true of rewards, too. There hadn't been quite enough of her old tents to go round when she was organising for the expedition; nine then, six now. So she'd bought a couple of new ones; same model, just a little less grubby on the outside. So really, there shouldn't have been any reason to prefer one over another. But she'd made a point of reserving one of the new tents for herself, and the right to sleep in the other was offered as an incentive to whoever had been making the best progress up the mountain. And oh, how much competition there'd been! It was just another way to keep people in line. The goal had been blown up into enough of a big deal that people hardly even considered why they were aiming for it.
So she slept there, miles from civilisation. On paper, it shouldn't have been safe at all; the prisoners could simply have killed her and become effectively free; nobody could have done anything about it. Or, if they didn't want yet more blood on their hands, simply ran away. But they were all anxious to prove they deserved her trust, and terrified of looking out of place, lest they be, correctly or incorrectly, considered a troublemaker and executed by the others. She slept soundly. It shouldn't have made any sense; but for tonight, at least, things would be just fine. And she was right.
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Post #952 (isolation #34) » Mon Nov 19, 2012 1:39 am
Postby callforjudgement »
Sorry about the vote count mistakes yesterday. I'll try to get it right today. (I did double-check to make sure I got who was lynched correct, though.)
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Post #1499 (isolation #55) » Thu Nov 29, 2012 4:22 am
Postby callforjudgement »
Still looking for a replacement for theslimer3. If I don't find a replacement within the next 19 hours or so, deadline will be extended to 72 hours from when the slot is filled.
