First off, good game everyone. It was a lot of fun. Thanks to Remus for his time, effort, and skills in hosting.
It was a formidable group of villagers. You all kept us on our toes the entire game and I know I was incredibly fortunate to survive. Thanks to everyone for a very enjoyable game.
Grundbegriff wrote:Q & p: what was your thought process along the way?
I have also been deleting my PM box along the way (with the Princess Bride game running in parallel), but I'll try to reconstruct things.
Here were my thoughts:
Night 1
It was a wide open kill and we considered everyone as a target. We considered killing theo, but thought that might cast too much suspicion on pr0ner. We wanted to leave Grund, bb2112, and trig alive (always a dangerous proposition, since they are all three excellent players) because they were generating a lot of discussion and (seemingly) poking at each other.
However, the decision was made to kill triggercut because of the Newcastle vote. trig had already said that he was suspicious of the two votes placed right after his (mine and then pr0ner's). Truth be told, that really was a simul-post. I was in the process of writing my post (as you can tell by the time stamps) and didn't even see trig's Newcastle vote until after I had hit Submit. Still, though, that had gotten trig's notice. In addition to that, it seems to me (from my limited experience in games with him) that trig places a lot of weight on votes and voting patterns. So, we felt that trig would probably look strongly at the Newcastle votes and, from there, look even stronger at pr0ner and I because trig had noted twice that he was suspicious of the timing of our votes. I thought that would lead trig to look away from bb2112 and Grund at looking at one of us. Knowing that trig is relentless when he has a target in mind, trig became our Night 1 kill.
Night 2
That night was one of the highlights of my brief OOWW experience. Grund did a spectacular job of sprinkling the iocane around. I had a great time thinking through all the permutations of his play in deciding on the Night 2 kill.
By the time I got to the thread (after Grund claimed Seer and named pr0ner) Grund was already planting the seeds. Here:
Grundbegriff wrote:
I sincerely hope that nobody will dispute my claim.
and here:
Grundbegriff wrote:There are many ways this could play out, depending on how well the players know and trust one another.
I sent a PM to pr0ner and Remus about those two posts and that I would need to proceed very carefully. Here was my (probably not so) subtle acknowledgement that I had seen his play:
Qantaga wrote:Trust (as Grund refers to) is always an intriguing commodity in these games. I'm inclined to follow Grund's claim and see what pr0ner's death tells us.
That led to Grund spelling out the scenario in response to me:
Grundbegriff wrote:Let's say for the sake of argument that I'm not the Seer. With two dead and myself excluded, and with 9 at the outset, there's a 25% chance that either Newcastle or triggercut was the Seer.
Newcastle, of course, departed this life with protestations of simple villageousness on his lips. Granting his word, that would mean 12.5% as the chance that triggercut took the crystal ball with him.
Let's say, further, that I'm not the Seer but a simple villager trusting that the actual Seer will recognize my move as a covering move aimed at protecting him. What might make that a good bet? First, that it would be utter folly for a wolf to claim Seer with only a 12.5% chance of going uncontested. Knowing that I wouldn't commit such a blunder, a Seer might well recognize in my claim a valiant effort to defend his interests through misdirection.
As we'll undoubtedly see in these tournament games, there's still considerable room for gambits even in a cast with few specials.
Then, of course, he had his last minute challenge as the night fell.
I sent Remus a treatise on my thought process.
In the end, I decided to kill Grund, even with the possibility of theo being the Seer. The final contributing factor to that decision was that I determined that if Grund was a spoofing Seer, he would have been more likely to leave his Seer status in the murky realm and not go to the trouble of spelling it out so clearly. I thought only a true Seer would be inclined to point to the fact that he might be spoofing. It seemed to me that a spoofing Seer would be inclined to be more assertive in their Seer claim (to draw the mis-kill). There were a lot of other factors that contributed, as well, but that was the deciding one.
Day 3
I didn't want to be the killing vote on RMC, but I saw the momentum start to turn as RMC moved away from theo to me and theo said he would be willing to vote for me, too. I knew that if theo moved his vote, I was as good as dead, so I killed RMC and tried to dress up a rational reason to do so.
Night 3
I thought about a lot of different scenarios here. I was sorely tempted to kill theo, then come in at the dawn and claim Seer myself. I had already outlined the timeline and the posts that I could quote that would provide evidence that I was the Seer who had been saved by Grund. However, it would have necessarily told one of the final two that I was truly the wolf, since I would have to back my Seer claim with an accusation. In the end, I knew that it would have played as much too "gimmicky" and the other player would have probably voted against me, just because it was so convenient and so they didn't wind up being "played." It sure would have been fun to try, though. If I were stessier, maybe I would have tried it.
So, then I had to decide who to kill. Unfortunately, my hands were fairly well tied. I was very clearly theo's top suspect. Knowing theo, I had my doubts that I could convince him with a "you weren't killed to set me up" arguement. I considered the scenarios of killing bb2112 or Isgrimnur, but I thought the odds of theo changing his mind about me were significantly less than getting bb or Issy to look at each other.
Of course, when bb waltzed in and placed his vote on me, my heart jumped to my throat.
