*nods* I'm pretty swamped. Might be interesting to try again some day now that I can recalibrate for just how many participation issues many of these players have, but not something I'm jumping up and down with eagerness to do right this moment. Count me as an alternate if we can't find someone who's excited to go.
We've run a number of games with hydra accounts, first going back to eight years ago. Some people might enjoy it; it's not personally my cup of tea due to how much it complicates analysis.
In line with the launching of a longer game platform on MU, and some of the ideas we've been tossing around here, I do have a game that's been in the works for quite some time that may be a good candidate to get us started...
Eve's Horizon. It was nearly the dirtiest bar on Echo Prime. The mingled dust and grit of more than a dozen neighboring worlds was ground deep into the cracks and crannies of the worn, gun-metal grey flooring. The glasses, mismatched, stacked in untidy heaps behind the counter, were smudged with oil, grease, and spit. Low, clouded light filtered through smoke and steam, obscuring as much as illuminating. It was not a bar where you went to sate a common appetite, or find a kindred soul. It was the kind of bar you went to, to get yourself hopelessly lost, time slipping through numbed fingers, numbed minds, like water spilling through the vacuum of blackest space. It was six streets from the starport terminal, and down nine levels from the surface plates and landing strips of the bustling, working city. Warmth seeped languorously from floor-plates dotted throughout the room, staving off the creeping chill that would sweep over the city from its outer edges to its core in less than three hours, if the city's reactors came undone. Light-years from humanity's distant origin, scattered pockets of life clung tenaciously to harbors of rock and metal and steel, balanced on the razor's edge separating dirt and the shadowed and star-strewn sky.
It was not the first time Marlow had darkened the doorway of Eve's Horizon. Once every few months, he would arrive, order a drink, meet briefly with hard-eyed men with slow stares, and a freighter would take on a load of cargo, which Earth Authority customs would pointedly ignore, as they had been well paid to do.
Dirk Marlow sat at his usual table, ordered his usual drink, and waited.
Someone else entered the bar - not a regular. Earth Authority uniform. Nobody quite met her eyes. Marlow stared into his drink.
She lowered her voice. "Look, Dirk, I can't go through with this one."
Marlow swirled the ice in his drink. "Having second thoughts about getting in bed with the rebellion?"
She gave him a level look. "No. And don't be an ********, Marlow. We've been through plenty, and I've put my ass on the line for you more times than I count. But you need to be straight with me, this time. I need to know what I'm getting into."
"It's just another shipment."
"It is NOT just another shipment. Don't pull that on me. Arms for the rebellion - I can live with that on my conscience. But what you're shipping - sophisticated genetic splicers, DNA readers, viral recoding cultures - I don't like what that looks like, Dirk."
"And what do you think that looks like?"
"A pile of a trillion dead bodies, hatching flies. That's what it looks like to me. You people always said this rebellion was for the common man. If you start-"
"Start what? Start killing off entire planets? Have the news reports say it was all just a freak virus? Yeah, it'd be just terrible if somebody got up to that." Marlow's fist tightened involuntarily. "You know, sometimes I don't know how you bring yourself to put on that uniform ever day and see yourself in the mirror."
"That's bull*****. You know what I've done for you. And it wasn't just for the money. And it wasn't your charming personality, either. You wanna talk about looking in the mirror? That's fresh, coming from someone who wants to remake himself into a mass murderer."
"You really think that's what I'm up to? Do you really know me that little?"
She paused. "It looks bad, Marlow. And I don't know all the people you work with. I can't just rubber stamp this and let it pass. We both know that things can't stay as they are. The people won't stand for being ordered how to live their lives from people who live a hundred thousand light years away, with no real say. The five party system is broken, and we all know it. But if it comes down to it, I don't what that kind of blood on my hands, and I hope you and your friends don't, either. So why don't you tell me what this is really about, if you can. Because if you can't, that cargo isn't going to move. Not unless you want to shoot your way out."
"I can't. It's too big, and I'm just an errand boy. They say jump, I jump. But I trust them, and so should you. We've never let you down."
She shook her head. "No. No, Marlow. You know more than you're letting on. You're not just some provincial chief. I've seen the way your men look at you, the way they jump. You know more about what's going on out there than even I do. There's more to you than that. Way more."
An edge crept into his voice. "And if I say no? You going to beat it out of me? Disappear me into some lightless vacuum capsule, fire me into the sun? He moved to get up.
"Marlow. Stop." She slammed her hand down over his. "Look, I know we've had our rough patches. But we've had some good times too, haven't we? I've watched your back this long. And I've been trusting you, for a long time. It's time for a little bit of that to come around. Make me believe, Marlow. That's all I ask." She let go of his hand.
His eyes bored a hole in the table. Then he let out a deep breath.
"The rebellion is finished, Kate. It's over. In the last week, they've wiped twelve more planets off the map. One in a thousand survives the virus, and those that survive that are rounded up into camps and disposed of. Children, too. No witnesses, no questions. Every time we win, they burn us to the ground. They will never, ever let us hold territory of our own. Not even if it means wiping a quarter of the human race from existence to stop us."
Hands shaking, he drained his glass to the last drop. She waited for him go on. "We can't let them do that, but we can't give up, either. So we have to look to the future. Lay the groundwork for a blow they'll never see coming, and never come back from. Someday, years from now, maybe decades, when their guard is down. They still think they're fighting flesh and blood. They think we're fighting for power. They don't realize that they're fighting an idea, and ideas are immortal. You plant the right ideas in someone's head, and you control them. That's what this is about. Not killing. Control."
He met her eyes. "That's all that I can say and more. Is it good enough?"
The corner of her mouth turned down as she thought. She let out a breath. "Good enough."
Disinheritance is a game for 16 players. Players will vote not only for who they believe the most likely mafia player is, but will also vote publicly for players who they wish to "empower", granting those players access to new, more powerful, and more exotic night abilities. This system will emphasize the importance of behavioral analysis and deception more than ever before, directly linking each groups talent in the game's fundamental core skills to the effectiveness of both groups during the night period. In addition, both groups will have unparalleled flexibility and variety in strategic options at their disposal during the night period, if they are able to coordinate their (and their opponents') empower votes effectively.
To facilitate this greater cooperation, strategy, and trickery, this game will feature universal private communication between all players, with the sole restriction being the inability to quote role PMs/mod PMs. To creative and cunning minds, this should present a tremendous opportunity to exploit.
In addition, the game offers the capacity for an unlimited number of additional, non-voting player slots. These players will be assigned alignments, be able to freely comment on the game within a separate, publicly visible game thread, will share in the unlimited private communication privileges, and will be capable of affecting the game not only through contributing analysis, advice, and disinformation, but also in other, unexpected ways. Non-voting players slots may not affect the game with any abilities, nor do they count as hidden players or hydra accounts, but both non-voting and voting player slots should be advised that due to mechanics never before seen here or on any other forum, the alignment of non-voting players may become somewhat relevant during the course of the game...
36 hour phases are going to be brutal for me. Work + sleep means I'll miss at least half of every Day during the week. So it goes!
It was cool seeing the MTGS QT; it's awesome that so many people are following along.
Az, I voted you #1 to advance in our game. Regardless of read accuracy in that particular game, I thought you were in a class by yourself when it came to the "who would you want on your team in a hypothetical game" metric. 10/10, would love to roll village with again.
I would like you guys to come play with us more. i've been busy and/or have had bad internets, but I'm going to organize some community-building meet-n-greet exhibition-style games.
The idea is to have games which feature lots of prominent players from just two communities. Say, MTGS, and another one. And we try to fill the game with just an equal amount of players from each community.
My idea would be to pair MTGS with the Civilization Fanatics and Totalwar.org crews. (Civ and Totalwar are basically my two home sites, and they play on each other's sites all the time. All the time. Basically one website at this point.)
Then we'd pair up some other communities, like the Giraffe/Straight Dope/Idle player group (basically one player base) with some folks from another community. And so on.
And the games would largely fit the setups / phase lengths you'd be more accustomed to. Well, as much as possible, anyway.
If you guys would be okay playing a game with like 3 day long day phases and 1 day long night phases, it would be much easier to pair up your community with another. Since it is so unusual to have the phase lengths you do.
Suggestions on setup would be welcome. Would anyone be interested? I could even get someone else to organize this particular match-up so I can play in it personally. What do you think?
I think that'd be fantastic. We've run some cross-site mixers previously, with mafiascum, which were fun and well-received. We'd planned to follow up with some games that would allow a wider section of our playerbase to participate, but it seemed like the 'scum folks were less interested in organizing that, than the invitional format.
Hell, I'd be a fan of simply running some/all our site's games on MU simply for the sake of hijacking your glorious interface. I wouldn't care to lose our playerbase's distinctiveness and culture, but perhaps we could work something out where our MTGS players form the kernel of a longer-phase game culture on MU, and attract like-minded players into the fold. Worth considering.
In other news, I'm not sure I can ever go back to playing mafia without all the ISO button tools, the sexy automated vote counts, bookmarks might have been fun if I used them from the start...those were incredibly convenient. Totally spoiled now.
@Azrael I'm excited to roll into a game with you! I read the Invitational and came away pretty impressed with your play.
Ooph. That game was ridiculously tough, and I got way too distracted defending myself against Cyan. Looking forward to having at least one familiar face.
Thanks for the well wishes. I've got a few appointments and a trial set around that date, but I should be able to make it work.
Ok, so people who have confirmed interest so far are:
Iso
Megs
Proph
GJ
Myself
We had a lot of other nominations, but we need those people to actually post here to confirm their interest in going. We're short on time here, so if there's people that you would support, say so now. If there is someone you nominated who you feel should go who hasn't chimed in, prodding them with a PM might help. Feel free to designate 1st and 2nd picks/alternates. I don't think we have enough time for a formal poll, so it will be more of a survey of the opinions expressed here in the thread. If there's clear front-runners for 1st pick and alternate(s), great. If it's a close contest, we can have the disinterested members of the council designate the picks.
When does the next tournament kick off? At the moment, I'd be hesitant to sign on, but if it's after the trial I have scheduled for April 12th, I might be able to put my hat in the ring.
EDIT: Hmm, April 25th. If things stay calm, I might be available. But again, if I got the nod, we'd need good alternates in case things get busy on me. It's feast or famine right now.
I've been told killjoy has organized the scribe a account to keep tabs on everyone on the hosting list at the moment. I haven't checked it myself yet, but if we have *anyone* on the list who is ready to go, or anyone off the list for that matter, I'm happy to greenlight them.
In line with the launching of a longer game platform on MU, and some of the ideas we've been tossing around here, I do have a game that's been in the works for quite some time that may be a good candidate to get us started...
Eve's Horizon. It was nearly the dirtiest bar on Echo Prime. The mingled dust and grit of more than a dozen neighboring worlds was ground deep into the cracks and crannies of the worn, gun-metal grey flooring. The glasses, mismatched, stacked in untidy heaps behind the counter, were smudged with oil, grease, and spit. Low, clouded light filtered through smoke and steam, obscuring as much as illuminating. It was not a bar where you went to sate a common appetite, or find a kindred soul. It was the kind of bar you went to, to get yourself hopelessly lost, time slipping through numbed fingers, numbed minds, like water spilling through the vacuum of blackest space. It was six streets from the starport terminal, and down nine levels from the surface plates and landing strips of the bustling, working city. Warmth seeped languorously from floor-plates dotted throughout the room, staving off the creeping chill that would sweep over the city from its outer edges to its core in less than three hours, if the city's reactors came undone. Light-years from humanity's distant origin, scattered pockets of life clung tenaciously to harbors of rock and metal and steel, balanced on the razor's edge separating dirt and the shadowed and star-strewn sky.
It was not the first time Marlow had darkened the doorway of Eve's Horizon. Once every few months, he would arrive, order a drink, meet briefly with hard-eyed men with slow stares, and a freighter would take on a load of cargo, which Earth Authority customs would pointedly ignore, as they had been well paid to do.
Dirk Marlow sat at his usual table, ordered his usual drink, and waited.
Someone else entered the bar - not a regular. Earth Authority uniform. Nobody quite met her eyes. Marlow stared into his drink.
She lowered her voice. "Look, Dirk, I can't go through with this one."
Marlow swirled the ice in his drink. "Having second thoughts about getting in bed with the rebellion?"
She gave him a level look. "No. And don't be an ********, Marlow. We've been through plenty, and I've put my ass on the line for you more times than I count. But you need to be straight with me, this time. I need to know what I'm getting into."
"It's just another shipment."
"It is NOT just another shipment. Don't pull that on me. Arms for the rebellion - I can live with that on my conscience. But what you're shipping - sophisticated genetic splicers, DNA readers, viral recoding cultures - I don't like what that looks like, Dirk."
"And what do you think that looks like?"
"A pile of a trillion dead bodies, hatching flies. That's what it looks like to me. You people always said this rebellion was for the common man. If you start-"
"Start what? Start killing off entire planets? Have the news reports say it was all just a freak virus? Yeah, it'd be just terrible if somebody got up to that." Marlow's fist tightened involuntarily. "You know, sometimes I don't know how you bring yourself to put on that uniform ever day and see yourself in the mirror."
"That's bull*****. You know what I've done for you. And it wasn't just for the money. And it wasn't your charming personality, either. You wanna talk about looking in the mirror? That's fresh, coming from someone who wants to remake himself into a mass murderer."
"You really think that's what I'm up to? Do you really know me that little?"
She paused. "It looks bad, Marlow. And I don't know all the people you work with. I can't just rubber stamp this and let it pass. We both know that things can't stay as they are. The people won't stand for being ordered how to live their lives from people who live a hundred thousand light years away, with no real say. The five party system is broken, and we all know it. But if it comes down to it, I don't what that kind of blood on my hands, and I hope you and your friends don't, either. So why don't you tell me what this is really about, if you can. Because if you can't, that cargo isn't going to move. Not unless you want to shoot your way out."
"I can't. It's too big, and I'm just an errand boy. They say jump, I jump. But I trust them, and so should you. We've never let you down."
She shook her head. "No. No, Marlow. You know more than you're letting on. You're not just some provincial chief. I've seen the way your men look at you, the way they jump. You know more about what's going on out there than even I do. There's more to you than that. Way more."
An edge crept into his voice. "And if I say no? You going to beat it out of me? Disappear me into some lightless vacuum capsule, fire me into the sun? He moved to get up.
"Marlow. Stop." She slammed her hand down over his. "Look, I know we've had our rough patches. But we've had some good times too, haven't we? I've watched your back this long. And I've been trusting you, for a long time. It's time for a little bit of that to come around. Make me believe, Marlow. That's all I ask." She let go of his hand.
His eyes bored a hole in the table. Then he let out a deep breath.
"The rebellion is finished, Kate. It's over. In the last week, they've wiped twelve more planets off the map. One in a thousand survives the virus, and those that survive that are rounded up into camps and disposed of. Children, too. No witnesses, no questions. Every time we win, they burn us to the ground. They will never, ever let us hold territory of our own. Not even if it means wiping a quarter of the human race from existence to stop us."
Hands shaking, he drained his glass to the last drop. She waited for him go on. "We can't let them do that, but we can't give up, either. So we have to look to the future. Lay the groundwork for a blow they'll never see coming, and never come back from. Someday, years from now, maybe decades, when their guard is down. They still think they're fighting flesh and blood. They think we're fighting for power. They don't realize that they're fighting an idea, and ideas are immortal. You plant the right ideas in someone's head, and you control them. That's what this is about. Not killing. Control."
He met her eyes. "That's all that I can say and more. Is it good enough?"
The corner of her mouth turned down as she thought. She let out a breath. "Good enough."
Disinheritance is a game for 16 players. Players will vote not only for who they believe the most likely mafia player is, but will also vote publicly for players who they wish to "empower", granting those players access to new, more powerful, and more exotic night abilities. This system will emphasize the importance of behavioral analysis and deception more than ever before, directly linking each groups talent in the game's fundamental core skills to the effectiveness of both groups during the night period. In addition, both groups will have unparalleled flexibility and variety in strategic options at their disposal during the night period, if they are able to coordinate their (and their opponents') empower votes effectively.
To facilitate this greater cooperation, strategy, and trickery, this game will feature universal private communication between all players, with the sole restriction being the inability to quote role PMs/mod PMs. To creative and cunning minds, this should present a tremendous opportunity to exploit.
In addition, the game offers the capacity for an unlimited number of additional, non-voting player slots. These players will be assigned alignments, be able to freely comment on the game within a separate, publicly visible game thread, will share in the unlimited private communication privileges, and will be capable of affecting the game not only through contributing analysis, advice, and disinformation, but also in other, unexpected ways. Non-voting players slots may not affect the game with any abilities, nor do they count as hidden players or hydra accounts, but both non-voting and voting player slots should be advised that due to mechanics never before seen here or on any other forum, the alignment of non-voting players may become somewhat relevant during the course of the game...
Thanks buddy. Go knock 'em dead, you got this.
I think that'd be fantastic. We've run some cross-site mixers previously, with mafiascum, which were fun and well-received. We'd planned to follow up with some games that would allow a wider section of our playerbase to participate, but it seemed like the 'scum folks were less interested in organizing that, than the invitional format.
Hell, I'd be a fan of simply running some/all our site's games on MU simply for the sake of hijacking your glorious interface. I wouldn't care to lose our playerbase's distinctiveness and culture, but perhaps we could work something out where our MTGS players form the kernel of a longer-phase game culture on MU, and attract like-minded players into the fold. Worth considering.
Ooph. That game was ridiculously tough, and I got way too distracted defending myself against Cyan. Looking forward to having at least one familiar face.
Thanks for the well wishes. I've got a few appointments and a trial set around that date, but I should be able to make it work.
Iso
Megs
Proph
GJ
Myself
We had a lot of other nominations, but we need those people to actually post here to confirm their interest in going. We're short on time here, so if there's people that you would support, say so now. If there is someone you nominated who you feel should go who hasn't chimed in, prodding them with a PM might help. Feel free to designate 1st and 2nd picks/alternates. I don't think we have enough time for a formal poll, so it will be more of a survey of the opinions expressed here in the thread. If there's clear front-runners for 1st pick and alternate(s), great. If it's a close contest, we can have the disinterested members of the council designate the picks.
EDIT: Hmm, April 25th. If things stay calm, I might be available. But again, if I got the nod, we'd need good alternates in case things get busy on me. It's feast or famine right now.
Well, there goes my top pick. But nice to know we play with the best.
So, the game is over now. Yeah, I don't understand how you got mislynched either. It was a very silly wagon.