Watchmen [ENDGAME]

[LoRab]

My power use: I LD-ed G-Man on a post where he said he wasn't Moloch. Night 3 maybe (it was a night Rorsharch could be checking me). But then I doubted my own results because I figured Moloch might be check-proof.

[Dragon D. Luffy]

I love how consistent Ozymandias role was with the comic. He killed the Comedian, made a very elaborate ploy to make Manhattan go away, and framed Rorsrach to make him go to jail. How did I not stop to think of that?

[Golden]

-- Whether DH used any abilities in the two nights he was alive (and what and on whom)

4-Person poll thingy and protection on myself, I think.

You are to blame for my lynch?

In fairness, your vote was sketchy.

In fairness - you created a poll in which I was virtually a guaranteed lynch with no information except one sketchy vote...

And I was a cop.

[Epignosis]

Actually, the Night 9 kill. The one that failed yesterday. Or it didn't get sent at all?

Russ chose not to kill.

[Ricochet]

Actually, the Night 9 kill. The one that failed yesterday. Or it didn't get sent at all?

Russ chose not to kill.

Awww yisss.

[Epignosis]

I hope you all enjoyed the unusual host posts. I had a lot of fun making those. They were a test run for the game Long Con and I plan to run, Arkham Mafia, in which we will combine my recording skills with Long Con's graphic prowess to make an immersive experience.

I hope my side of it all held up for you!

If you were looking for a lighter, but no less intense, Mafia experience, my son is making his hosting debut in Angry Birds Mafia (I'll be helping him out!). Sign up and get angry!

[G-Man]

Ugh, the Elo debacle. Yeah, that was a mistake. It was a gambit, really, since I thought I was soon dead meat, people were finding my noncommital and floppy behavior suspicious, and I couldn't get any luck with tracking at night. N1 I track Scotty, he dies. N2, no result, I thought, 'fuck'.

Finally we had luck with Cookie the night right BEFORE I got lynched, but I was silenced and couldn't even hint about it.

Poetic justice after lynching a silenced Elo, I suppose.

For the record, the reason I was playing particularly washy was because I knew, as a tracker, I would eventually have good information. I just never got it.

No, we never tracked Elo. I really thought she was bad and was willing to pull a gambit -- if I was right, then boom, my tracker partner and I were still both alive. If I was wrong, then it gave me another night to check, since otherwise I likely would have been lynched D5.

I tracked juliets N3.

Scotty tracked me on N4.

So you can see why I was frustrated.

I didn't even consider a genuine possibility for why G-Man was so sure.

- Did G-Man actually have info on Eloh? Was the bet a dirty one? lol

Heh. MP, you can remove the signature regarding our bet if you wish. I made a dirty bet with you. I had just found out Night 4 that Elo was Joey. Elohcin went in alphabetical order: Night 1, she said she wasn't Bass; Night 2, she said she wasn't Cookie; Night 3, she said she wasn't Dragon (okay to skip DharmaHelper because he was lynched Day 3); and Night 4, she said she wasn't G-Man, skipping over herself.

I had been waiting for Joey to skip a name because that would mean Joey was that player. Sure enough, the day I knew Elohcin was innocent was the day MP07 decided to go all guns blazing on her. Had I had another day to work with, I could have come up with reasons for Elo to be trustworthy. Having been peed on by MP07 in Economics, though, I knew nothing was going to stop him. Thus, I decided to knock him down a peg by taking him up on his rhetorical bet. It was a dirty bet all the way but at least I got to re-write a little House of Pain:

I'll spam your ass like Rob Soloway
If you vote Elo, I'm looking your way
Word to your mom- my spreadsheet's the bomb
I got more rhymes than BoB's host Dom
And just like the Prodigal Son I've returned
Anyone betting with me- you'll get burned
'Cause I got stats but you ain't got none
If you come to battle bring a shotgun
But if you do you're a fool, 'cause I duel to the death
Trying to step to me you'll take your last breath
I got the skill, come get your fill
'Cause when I place my vote, I vote to kill

[Ricochet]

The host post style was excelent.

[Scotty]

Still want to know why each one of the three night kills failed, though. The first one was aimed at Rico. What about the other two?

@MP: So you two never tracked Eloh? LOL

How would they track Elo and make a full wolf case on her afterwards?

Tracker uses his ability on Eloh.

Epi PMs him back and says "Eloh used an ability on X"

Night ends, X was killed.

Therefore, Eloh is the one who killed X, barring an incredible coincidence.

Exactly.

I figured Scotty was my partner for sure after I had no result N2 and then a result on N4. Then when he started defending me subtly after the N4 result, I knew 100% it was him.

It's possible he thought I had info on Elo that he didn't get to see (i.e., N3) and that's why he followed me.

Ding ding ding.

Being away for 2 days and coming back in was a blur. I honestly skimmed days 2 and 3, and found that MP seemed the most out of place. Of course he was my partner. If I had been alive for those 3 days I probably would have tracked him N2 and gotten confirmation earlier, and maybe this game would have ended differently..

So coming back for Day 4, and knowing MP didn't do anything on N4 after tracking him, I knew he had to be either the Comedian or my partner.

Night 4, Ozy sent me this brilliantly done audio message that was so hard to hear, and concurrently needed to be played backwards. I spent like 45 minutes trying to listen to that shit.

Fucking Ozy. Puzzles are my kryptonite.

But here's the funny thing:
The message sounded so much like mafia chit-chat talking about ika's blowing up and such. Then it said distinctly that "he made a read on me yesterday so I'm going to make him look bad," followed by "I voted for espers to get some cred."

So me, in my dimly lit, World War 2 backwoods bunker thought "oh yis" and went to town looking at who might be attempting to frame someone that day, and who voted for espers.

It was all legit hogwash. However. That piece directly led me to either Elo and Cookie. So while Rico had given me false information, it actually led me to a little more conviction for those 2. But MP had done a biopic on why Elo was bad that night after, and Elo was avidly defending herself- so much so that it made MP look bad- so I was like, "GOTCHA" and, assuming MP had some info from one of the nights I missed, voted with him. It just seemed to fit.

Big kudos for Rico. He played me well.

N5 MP tracked Cookie and saw she targeted 2 People: Rico and MM. And then I found out MM was silenced, so...there ya go. Obvious for me, but a lynch was led against MP for some reason.

If I hadn't been silenced Day 7, I would have built more of a case against Cookie and maybe we could have bought ourselves some time.

Derf silencing me and Comedian killing me...well...you guys chose poorly. But hey, hindsight is 20/20.

I really do appreciate DDL for bringing me back. That was incredibly helpful for the time I had to spend with my partner.

I tracked DDL Night 6 and it said he targeted Ninjablooper, which made me go all Scooby Doo. So I knew you were Manhattan. But there was little I could do that following night, when no one heeded my advice. Cookie was toast by that point, but then I knew I was as well. My last speculation was that Moloch "is someone who looks the most civ." Which was hardly DDL. I knew it was either Russ or Rico as Moloch. I actually thought it was Rico til the end. Russ was a complete mystery to me, and he played a brilliant game as well.

Thanks for blowing up my brain with this game, Epi. It felt really immersive and your technical expertise was sure fun to witness! Here's an obscure stout from Germany in your honor.



If I could go back and change one thing of my play, it would be not to piss off MM day 1 when he's a vigi

Good game all!

[Ricochet]

Ugh, the Elo debacle. Yeah, that was a mistake. It was a gambit, really, since I thought I was soon dead meat, people were finding my noncommital and floppy behavior suspicious, and I couldn't get any luck with tracking at night. N1 I track Scotty, he dies. N2, no result, I thought, 'fuck'.

Finally we had luck with Cookie the night right BEFORE I got lynched, but I was silenced and couldn't even hint about it.

Poetic justice after lynching a silenced Elo, I suppose.

For the record, the reason I was playing particularly washy was because I knew, as a tracker, I would eventually have good information. I just never got it.

No, we never tracked Elo. I really thought she was bad and was willing to pull a gambit -- if I was right, then boom, my tracker partner and I were still both alive. If I was wrong, then it gave me another night to check, since otherwise I likely would have been lynched D5.

I tracked juliets N3.

Scotty tracked me on N4.

So you can see why I was frustrated.

I didn't even consider a genuine possibility for why G-Man was so sure.

- Did G-Man actually have info on Eloh? Was the bet a dirty one? lol

Heh. MP, you can remove the signature regarding our bet if you wish. I made a dirty bet with you. I had just found out Night 4 that Elo was Joey. Elohcin went in alphabetical order: Night 1, she said she wasn't Bass; Night 2, she said she wasn't Cookie; Night 3, she said she wasn't Dragon (okay to skip DharmaHelper because he was lynched Day 3); and Night 4, she said she wasn't G-Man, skipping over herself.

I had been waiting for Joey to skip a name because that would mean Joey was that player. Sure enough, the day I knew Elohcin was innocent was the day MP07 decided to go all guns blazing on her. Had I had another day to work with, I could have come up with reasons for Elo to be trustworthy. Having been peed on by MP07 in Economics, though, I knew nothing was going to stop him. Thus, I decided to knock him down a peg by taking him up on his rhetorical bet. It was a dirty bet all the way but at least I got to re-write a little House of Pain:

I'll spam your ass like Rob Soloway
If you vote Elo, I'm looking your way
Word to your mom- my spreadsheet's the bomb
I got more rhymes than BoB's host Dom
And just like the Prodigal Son I've returned
Anyone betting with me- you'll get burned
'Cause I got stats but you ain't got none
If you come to battle bring a shotgun
But if you do you're a fool, 'cause I duel to the death
Trying to step to me you'll take your last breath
I got the skill, come get your fill
'Cause when I place my vote, I vote to kill

O.M.G.

[Epignosis]

What's the story of Derf, though? I never finished reading the comic, but why the animosity between Owl II and him?

Spoiler: show

He was responsible for Hollis Mason's death.

[Dragon D. Luffy]

Great game Epi. Thanks for hosting! I surely had a blast.

I think it's the first time I was ever in a conventional lylo before. Loved it.

Loved my role too.

[G-Man]

I thought you were Baernard for a while because, for a very long time, G-Man mentioned every player except you.

Also lol at G-Man having himself as his main suspect the whole game.

Also I used the @Rico because I felt like I was relying to what you had just said.. Er... whatever, my mistake.

Hee hee. Dragon, would you believe me if I told you I was trying to get you killed by the Inmates? I suspected you of being baddie/indie so I tried to avoid talking about you in my Bernard posts to make them think you were Bernard. The longer you lived, the more I thought you might be one of the Inmates. Oh well.

Ricochet fleeced me. I was wary of Russ when you guys went into that final lynch because Dragon just seemed too easy but Russ fooled me all the way.

[Ricochet]

Night 4, Ozy sent me this brilliantly done audio message that was so hard to hear, and concurrently needed to be played backwards. I spent like 45 minutes trying to listen to that shit.

Fucking Ozy. Puzzles are my kryptonite.

But here's the funny thing:
The message sounded so much like mafia chit-chat talking about ika's blowing up and such. Then it said distinctly that "he made a read on me yesterday so I'm going to make him look bad," followed by "I voted for espers to get some cred."

So me, in my dimly lit, World War 2 backwoods bunker thought "oh yis" and went to town looking at who might be attempting to frame someone that day, and who voted for espers.

It was all legit hogwash. However. That piece directly led me to either Elo and Cookie. So while Rico had given me false information, it actually led me to a little more conviction for those 2. But MP had done a biopic on why Elo was bad that night after, and Elo was avidly defending herself- so much so that it made MP look bad- so I was like, "GOTCHA" and, assuming MP had some info from one of the nights I missed, voted with him. It just seemed to fit.

Big kudos for Rico. He played me well.

Check my puzzle walkthrough for all the details and what I actually intended to bait you with. Interesting development, nevertheless.

[DharmaHelper]

What was that shit I got sent?

[Epignosis]

I thought you were Baernard for a while because, for a very long time, G-Man mentioned every player except you.

Also lol at G-Man having himself as his main suspect the whole game.

Also I used the @Rico because I felt like I was relying to what you had just said.. Er... whatever, my mistake.

Hee hee. Dragon, would you believe me if I told you I was trying to get you killed by the Inmates? I suspected you of being baddie/indie so I tried to avoid talking about you in my Bernard posts to make them think you were Bernard. The longer you lived, the more I thought you might be one of the Inmates. Oh well.

Ricochet fleeced me. I was wary of Russ when you guys went into that final lynch because Dragon just seemed too easy but Russ fooled me all the way.

DDL never took a NK!

[Ricochet]

Also, before I completely forgot: DDL, I should probably disappoint you further by telling you that I'm not actually from Nauru. Sorry.

[Ricochet]

What was that shit I got sent?

Good shit.

[Ricochet]

Seriously, though, how can Elohcin not get the cake reference?

[DharmaHelper]

What was that shit I got sent?

Good shit.

I was gonna go ham on it until I got killed.

[Dragon D. Luffy]

@Scotty: Godamn it, that's one hell of a tinfoil.

I revived you mostly because I didn't want to bring back someone who would be killed by mafia the following night. You were completely unconfirmed, even being a possible candidate for Inmate, so you'd stay alive for a while. Also I knew you were a tracker. It seemed perfect.

Too bad I blew that extra night later by mislynching like 5 times.

@G-Man: I wanted mafia to waste kills on me. It was actually one of the reasons I picked the civs on day 0. It felt like a very easy way to contribute.

But I had to blew it by revealing my role too soon. I thought they had tried to kill me on N5 so my role had already done its job.

@Rico

Damn it. I actually did a wikipedia binge on Nauru because I got curious about it. Such a funny coincidence if it were true lol

[Ricochet]

Epig let me know that I got targeted on N5 and my protection was up.

[G-Man]

I told you guys G-Man was totally Bernard. His posting style was so obvious, after getting accustomed to his dead ink monologues.

I didn't know at first if Epi was going to post my ramblings verbatim or not. Sure enough, he said I could get into the character as much or as little as I liked. I watched some All in the Family clips and fashioned my Bernard after Archie Bunker.

Epi- did you select that role for me or did I get it randomly? Even though I had a crappy game, being Bernard made me smile every time I got to slip into character and write my opinions.

Just about everything Epi posted was word-for-word:

NIGHT 1 (I loved hearing Epi read my words. The delivery wasn't quite what I was going for but these things happen):

Spoiler: show

You wanna know what I think? Don't trust nobody! It's way too early in the game to take sides on anyone. Anyone getting all touchy-feely with positive vibes for other players needs to put down the marijuana and turn off their Simon and Garfunkel hippy music and wake up.

I gotta hand it to ya- you guys did a good job catching Sloonei but don't lose sight of what's right in front of you. G-Man stinks to high heaven of scum and we all know it. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's a damn duck. What do the university kids call it nowadays? Something razor. In my day we called it common sense.

You know who else you should keep an eye on? I'm gonna blow your young minds here with this one- watch out for the quiet ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. No one takes that phrase seriously anymore. Well snap out of it, alright? Timmer, Nijuukyugou, Cookie, Russtifinko (there's a commie name if I ever saw one), and Long Con have the 10 or less posts. There's always a quiet one waiting to sneak up behind you and slit your throat.

That being said, don't forget to watch out for the talkers too. That Moving Pictures fella bounces all over the place and his Golden boy ain't much better. And don't get me started on that Metal Marsh punk. It's like he doesn't even try to make sense half the time.

Good grief. No wonder the world's falling apart. Even if the reds do win, we're not exactly leaving much in the way of spoils for them. My father told me a long time ago that...

July 17, 1985
Veidt Security Footage Leaks, cont.

You have 24 hours to lynch someone.

NIGHT 2 (I was blocked this night, so I incorporated parts of it into later posts):

Spoiler: show

Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What a wasted day that was. Whichever one of you boneheads messed with the poll gets a gold star in stupid. You set us back a day and there ain't no clues in any of the Day 2 votes. Thanks for nuthin'.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but you are one dumb Polack if you don't lynch G-Man Day 3. Forget what Golden said about him trying. He's just trying to look like he's trying. Remember that razor thing I said! Common sense wins the day every time.

Speaking of grouch man, Long Con sure seems to be buddying up to him. I'd look there once G-Man filps scum. You know how those Canadians are- they're basically commies who drink maple syrup instead of cheap vodka.

That MetalMarsh fella still gives me the heebie-jeebies too. It takes a special kind of special to vote for yourself on a day like Day 2. Death wish much? Not sure if he's scum too or just a whack-job for the looney bin.

I wouldn't worry about anyone who voted for Sloonei on Day 1, least of all Dragon. Sure, he was wrong about Golden, but that kid's going places. Rorschach better leave him alone or else he's gonna find out that this here news stand is protected by Smith & Wesson.

How about we ditch the gimmicks and make a little progress, huh? No more goodwill and psychobabble. Just stick to what we know and move on. Boy, if my mother was alive today- the things she'd have to say about all this.

NIGHT 3:

Spoiler: show

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph you guys! You trying to give me a heart attack or something? We go from poll option shenanigans one day to everybody waiting to the last minute the next. Gimme a break already!

I see we got a new player in the mix. Nice to meet you juliets- now get to work! We can't afford to sit around holdin' hands and singin' Kumbaya while you catch up. We're coming up on Day 4 after all.

Congratulations on finding a few new people to pick on but I got a knuckle sandwich with your name on it if you take your eye off of G-Man and Long Con. Ain't it convenient that they both vanished for most of the day that led to new suspects? Out of sight, out of mind, if you know what I mean.

Speaking of the new suspects though- I'm keeping my hands off of Elo's goodies. She may know how to decorate a cake but something tells me her secret ingredient's scum. Scum I tell ya! There's a chance some of you might be right about her and Cookie being buddies. How do ya like that idea? A broad that makes baked goods and a player named Cookie being teammates. Now that's irony!

And, you know, that MetalMarsh fella still gives me the heebie-jeebies. It takes a special kind of special to vote for yourself on a day like Day 2. Death wish much? Not sure if he's scum too or just a whack-job for the looney bin.

I got one more name for you rainbow warriors to consider- Russ-uh, Russ-uh, Russkie Fink-wad- there it is. Makes an awful good impression by catching up and posting commentary but then misses the vote? On top of it all he comes out and says if he ain't around Day 4 he deserves to be lynched. Fake guilt if I ever heard it.

*sighs*

Things ain't lookin' much better right now. That Rorschach fella's gonna start coming after the folks who voted for Golden and DharmaHelper. I feel bad for that Dragon kid. If it weren't for the mark on his head, I'd say he's goin' places. Tell you what though, that Rorschach better stay away from my customers or he's gonna meet my new security system. Yep, my news stand is now protected by Smith & Wesson but I ain't tellin' ya where I keep it. That's for me to know and...

It is now Day 4. You have 24 hours to lynch someone.

NIGHT 4:

Spoiler: show

Even though I hate to say it, I gotta admit that whole group-think thing we did on espers or ika or whoever (hard to keep names straight with all these changes) really paid off. We're down to one last Inmate but I feel like I gotta take a shower. Wash away any lingering commie germs, you know? Maybe there's something to that fluoridation theory after all.

Anyway, it sure looks like that rainbow sock money guy is the last Inmate. Nice and easy right? I mean he's either gotta be dead wrong about everything or he's none other than Big Figure himself. Otherwise he'd be dead by now.

That leaves us with this Moloch character. How the heck do we find him, you ask? I got two names for you- G-Man and Russtifinko. They both have played really laid back games and neither one of them has cast a vote that amounted to anything significant. Mark my words- we take out those two knuckleheads after Sock Boy and this thing will be over. I'm givin' up on suspecting that MetalMarsh punk. Near as I can figure, he's just a basket case.

We're starting to look more like the US of A that I grew up in- taking out anyone trying to be a tough guy. Like Patton and Ike- now those guys were heroes and leaders! Anyone running their mouth of at us and thinking about taking us over and they'd point all out heavy artillery right at 'em. None of this soft-spoken diplomacy crap. Boy, those were the days.

It is now Day 5. You have 24 hours to lynch someone.

NIGHT 5 (Blocked again- this post would have suggested the dirty bet via Bernard. Instead, I wound up mentioning it in the thread on my own):

Spoiler: show

So here's the deal- I know a bookie who's cousin is one of the higher-ups at a casino in Atlantic City. This bookie tells me all kinds of wild stories that he hears from his cousin. People are always trying to swindle the house but the house knows what to look for. When they get scammed, they learn from it.

Most of these stories were about knckleheads trying to count cards and smarty-pants college kids thinking they can use probability to game the system. The trickiest card sharks made what my bookie- er- my friend who is a bookie- calls a "cheater's bet." It means making a bet that you know in advance that you're gonna win or lose.

Suckering someone into a bet you know you're going to win is a power play to make someone else look stupid the rest of the night. Pretending to get suckered into a bet you know you're going to lose lowers people expectations and suspicions of you.

Long story short, I'm thinking either G-Man or Sock Boy made a cheater's bet. One of them is Big Figure and the other one is probably innocent. It'd be nice if one was Big Figure and the other was Moloch but I'm thinking we're not that lucky.

If you're looking for other names, I'd say Cookie, LoRab, and Russtifinko (you can't deny that name sounds like something a Red would pick). I also think Tiny Bubbles is due for a large dose of pressure. Not much to go on with that one and that makes him dangerous.

NIGHT 6:

Spoiler: show

My best customer may be dead but I ain't. Nobody ever takes my advice, so why do I even bother at this rate?

Cookie, G-Man, LoRab, Russtifinko, Tiny Bubbles- we oughts nuke 'em all and let God sort it out. I mean, I see the signs, I read the headlines, look things inna face, y'know? I'm a newsvendor goddamnmit! I'm informed on the situation! We oughta nuke 'em till they glow!

'Course, that's just my opinion.

July 27, 1985

Word from Dr. Manhattan

You have 24 hours to lynch someone.

NIGHT 7:

Spoiler: show

What's going on here? Everyone's talking about how sure they are that they're gonna die like they're clairvoyant or something. 'Oh but Bernard, you're just too old and stubborn to see things clearly,' they'll say. Well sticks and stones may break my bones but you are one dumb Polack if you don't lynch Cookie next.

G-Man's a close second though. One of you said something sharp about his bet with MovingPictures being a dirty one. That reminds of a story I heard once. See I got this bookie- er- I mean I got this friend who is a bookie. His cousin runs floor at a casino down in Atlantic City. He's told me a couple stories about a power play bet just like that. Makes the cheater look like a god but he's really just scum underneath it all. Food for thought.

So help me God, I'm not doin' another one of these messages if you get this next one wrong.

From The New Frontiersman

July 29, 1985

As you purchase your paper, Bernard is ranting:

"What's going on here? Everyone's talking about how sure they are that they're gonna die like they're clairvoyant or something. 'Oh but Bernard, you're just too old and stubborn to see things clearly,' they'll say. Well sticks and stones may break my bones but you are one dumb Polack if you don't lynch Cookie next.

G-Man's a close second though. One of you said something sharp about his bet with MovingPictures being a dirty one. That reminds of a story I heard once. See I got this bookie- er- I mean I got this friend who is a bookie. His cousin runs floor at a casino down in Atlantic City. He's told me a couple stories about a power play bet just like that. Makes the cheater look like a god but he's really just scum underneath it all. Food for thought.

So help me God, I'm not doin' another one of these messages if you get this next one wrong."

You have 24 hours to lynch someone.

NIGHT 8 (The final installment. I'm glad it got posted even though I died.):

Spoiler: show

Don't beam me up just yet, Scotty. Looks like there might be intelligent life down here after all.

Seems we've come full circle in this game. Don't trust nobody! Well, maybe not nobody. Crazy as it sounds, I like what G-Man is doing with his tin foil things there. Some pretty good food for thought. Convenient that he leaves himself out of the mix but it's not hard to piece one together on him at this point. Still, it makes me hesitate just a little about voting for him right outta the gate. We'll see.

I really want to trust Ricochet but I can't shake the heebie jeebies that he may have played us all game long. Everybody else is falling into a big, murky, gray area.

Tomorrow's gonna be interesting for sure. I hope you've all been boning up on the issues because I don't want to be the only informed vote present tomorrow.

Flyer found on 5th Avenue
July 31, 1985

You have 24 hours to lynch someone.

I'll have to look back at all the names I suggested. I recall initially including Russ just to pick on his name. Go figure!

[DharmaHelper]

-- Whether DH used any abilities in the two nights he was alive (and what and on whom)

4-Person poll thingy and protection on myself, I think.

You are to blame for my lynch?

In fairness, your vote was sketchy.

In fairness - you created a poll in which I was virtually a guaranteed lynch with no information except one sketchy vote...

And I was a cop.

My bad.

[Epignosis]

I didn't know at first if Epi was going to post my ramblings verbatim or not. Sure enough, he said I could get into the character as much or as little as I liked. I watched some All in the Family clips and fashioned my Bernard after Archie Bunker.

Epi- did you select that role for me or did I get it randomly? Even though I had a crappy game, being Bernard made me smile every time I got to slip into character and write my opinions.

I did not choose you for Bernard, though I was pleased you got it.

[Scotty]

@Rico DAMN MAN. That's the type of thorough commitment you would see out of a Host, but a player? Hot damn. Throw me in a pot and call me Potatoes. You were very deliberate.

I knew you sounded much too civ to be on completely our side, but I didn't expect you to be Ozy. I also couldn't finger as bad either way. One hell of a game, and one hell of a commitment.

You say you learned flash and wrote that maze all in half a day? Shit man.

I didn't know at first if Epi was going to post my ramblings verbatim or not. Sure enough, he said I could get into the character as much or as little as I liked. I watched some All in the Family clips and fashioned my Bernard after Archie Bunker.

Epi- did you select that role for me or did I get it randomly? Even though I had a crappy game, being Bernard made me smile every time I got to slip into character and write my opinions.

I did not choose you for Bernard, though I was pleased you got it.

Epi, how do you, in particular, pick roles?

[Epignosis]

Eloh wanted to be Joey. I wanted Sloonei as Mafia.

That was it!

[Scotty]

Eloh wanted to be Joey. I wanted Sloonei as Mafia.

That was it!

Oh nice! And the rest are randomized? How do you randomize it?

Well when you host me next, can I ask that I don't get NK'd on day 1? Can you just, like, work that into my role somehow? Because reasons.

[G-Man]

Also lol at G-Man having himself as his main suspect the whole game.

I thought that if I tunneled on myself hard enough, some of you might figure it out. Oh well. In my experience, this kind of role (I call it a Chatty Kathy after the role I included in my Secret Mafia game) is often ignored by most players because you don't know if the player opining in secret has any credibility. Seeing as I am a crappy people reader, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to have Bernard say anything useful for the first few nights. That's why the Night 1 message was so all over the place (don't trust nobody, watch out for the quiet ones, keep an eye on the talkers). Night 1 was more for my amusement than anything else. In fact, most of his messages were for the lulz. I was so off this game due to RL dragging me down and making it hard to properly participate in the game.

I really let myself get into the character when I wrote up the posts and I wondered if anyone would assume it was me or just assume Epi dressed up my commentary.

Had I been lynched, I had this waiting in the wings:


Then I would have switched gears and spammed the heck out of the thread with a rezz campaign featuring this guy:



For those of you who don't know (shame on you!), the above picture is the character Andy Bernard from The Office. I would have made silly comments like "You know what this game needs? More Nard Dog!".

[Made]

I won't prolong, however, the puzzles reveal. Here is a link where you can download and check all of them:

http://we.tl/gd21FPc1LB

If you want to have a go at them for fun, don't open the spoilers tab before you do.

If not:

Spoiler: show

This is a walkthrough of the puzzles I created and sent to players. Epig once asked me if there are actual solutions to them, so I'll post what I told him as explanation for how these puzzles worked.

If you're asking if they can be solved, yes, all of them can be cracked.

If you're asking if there's something at the end of cracking them, yes, all of them contain a message that can be called a "solution" to the puzzle. Even Eloh's maze. So far, they've been a(n) (intentional) mix of "fluff" (meaning a message with no bearing to the game; the target, by solving it, would only find out he's been rused) and "bait" (a message with bearing to the game, meant to manipulate players' reads and perceptions; the target, by solving it, would receive a fabricated info he could or not be tricked into making use of).

PUZZLE 1 - technically BAIT, but meant as FLUFF - Sent to MovingPictures07. Confirmed he didn't give a shit.

-- I sent MP07, via the Host, an mp3 file named "737473696c6e6f736f6e686374616d"
-- the title of the mp3 file is made up of hex numbers
-- converted, they spell stsilnosonhctam, which needs to be reversed
-- reversed, the text spells matchnosonlists
-- "match the numbers (nos.) on lists" (meaning the list of players and roles)
-- the numbers that need to be matched are recited in the audio recording
-- the audio fragment is an excerpt of an electro-acoustic experimental piece called "September" by Keith Rowe
-- everything that actually belongs to Rowe's piece - from electronic noise and radio static to an excerpt of EMF's "You're Unbelievable" - is completely irrelevant
-- superimposed on two occasions (quite audibly, too, because I suck at mixing) are two fragments from "Freitag-Abschluss" by Karlheinz Stockhausen, the last part of his "Freitag aus Licht" electro-classical opera
-- two numbers are separately and obstinately recited in the two fragments, "Sieben" and "Zwolf", which is German for "seven" and "twelve"
-- 7 and 12 are, thus, the two numbers that need to be matched on lists
-- version A of matching is 7 from the roles (Janey Slater) and 12 from the players (MP07), but since MP07 knows his role, this result wouldn't make any sense for him (except if he is actually Janey Slater) and he would normally discard it
-- version B of matching is 7 from the players (G-Man) and 12 from the roles (Silk Spectre II)
-- puzzle message is thus "G-Man is Silk Spectre II"

I intentionally (i.e. not randomly) crafted the version B matching, because I had a theory (disproven, of course, by Sloonei's D1 flip) that G-Man and Sloonei might be the Silk Spectres, Laurie knowing who Sally is. BUT AGAIN, this entire message was entirely fabricated, in case MP07 would have cracked it.

PUZZLE 2 - BAIT - Intended to Llama, but he got night killed, so I got Epig's permission to send it to Dharma instead (I sent Epig the puzzle in advance, because of going hiking); ironically, Dharma then also got lynched D2 without any indication that he got something out of the puzzle. He probably didn't give a shit at all, either. I'm quite fond of this one.

-- I sent to Dharma, via the Host, a zip archive named "woobjxib"
-- "woobjxib" is codified (ROT-4) for "assemble" [I chose +4 because it was the first codified version in the sequence that had a pretty form]
-- just as a nice touch, "assemble" is tongue-in-cheek for both superhero teams (such as the Watchmen) assembling, as well as for solving this puzzle
-- the zip archive contains 23 png files, each with a symbol
-- each symbol is actually a letter, written in blue ink, imitating the style of Rorschach's signature in his journal or messages
-- each image thus contains a letter; in some cases, it contains two letters (TH, TI, RR)
-- half of the images are randomly flipped horizontally, the others are normal
-- the images have to be assembled correctly, puzzle style, to create the message
-- the message is "The detectives are corruptible"

The message was basically intended to bait Llama/Dharma into thinking the statement is true and potentially mess up with his reads. The most obvious candidate for a recruiter is Moloch. The message's rate of validity is pretty decent in all situations, except if Llama/Dharma was Moloch and knew his actual ability - alternatively, in case either was one of the Detectives, the message could still have a potential effect on him. I initially considered writing "the civilians are corruptible", but then I narrowed it down to the detective pair. It seemed the better version, considering half the civilians can be linked with Watchmen, so it's harder to believe they can all be recruited or corrupted. All the letters were handwritten by me on paper, scanned to my computer, cropped and saved separately (duplicates included).

PUZZLE 3 - FLUFF - Sent to Elohcin. I laughed my ass off when she seemingly didn't even get the joke.

-- I sent to Elohcin, via the Host, a Flash file named MH, intended to stand for Manhattan
-- the file is a four-level maze game, called "Info Maze", imitating the "Scary maze game" format, whilst promising "precious info" upon completion
-- the start page says "Pyramid Deliveries Presents" in Symbol font, followed by the game name and the instruction to complete the maze for info
-- each level (apart from the last one) is split into separate increasingly difficult paths (two each, first two levels, three on the 3rd level), leading to different end points, one fake, one unlocking the next level; every fake end point leads to a dead end panel, after which the game needs to be restarted from scratch
-- dead end panel for Level 1 [left path, the easier of the two] is the Boy George impersonation picture Epig used in Guess Who, with an excerpt of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence"
-- dead end panel for Level 2 [up path, ironically the harder of the two] is a gif from Disney's The Skeleton Dance, with an excerpt of "The Gonk" from the "Dawn of the Dead" soundtrack
-- dead end panels for Level 3 [down path, up and down path, equally challenging] are gif scenes from the Comedian's death in the Watchmen movie
-- end panel ("win" panel for Level 4) [which is completely straightforward] is a blue image with Manhattan's forehead symbol and the message "The cake is a lie"
-- "The cake is a lie" is a famous catchphrase from the game Portal, used to mean a promised reward at the end of several trials without actual intent of delivering said reward
-- so the maze game is esentially one big ruse. The harder time you had to complete the levels, the better.

I created the whole game in half a day. :o I had no knowledge of writing Flash and didn't even have Adobe Professional installed beforehand. I chose Eloh as a sort of revenge ruse for her "intentionally giddy" Day 3 endgame. I came up with this after struggling to think of something else. I definitely wanted to do something Manhattan-related and my first idea was sending a message, apparently from him (written in bright blue), in which he would promise to take the target away with him on another planet (immunity, so to say), if the target would post some subtle message in the thread of wanting to go away or even out himself/his alignment in some way - Canuck-style in Roger Rabbit, but you can already tell how difficult it was to come up with the right bait. Then it hit me that the "promise" can just as well be no promise at all, at the end of completing the puzzle, so I worked with that instead.

Further symbolism and tongue-in-cheek-ism:
-- the color of the start panel, level mazes and "win" panel are all intentionally Manhattan-hinting blue;
-- Epig's picture and the skeleton gif are a soft idea of "spooky"; also
-- the idea, in case Eloh was familiar with the actual "scary maze game", that you had to risk doing this (for the sake of info) and get spooked;
-- the "Cake" ruse is even more delicious in connection with Eloh's baking skills;
-- the Comedian scenes made no sense, but in case it would make the target wonder (considering the Comedian might be dead), yay for more apophenia;
-- this kind of silly game would normally be way too trivial for anyone to believe it's actually from Manhattan, but whatevs.

PUZZLE 4 - BAIT - Sent to Scotty. It turns out it influenced him, so I'm proud of this one.

-- I sent Scotty, via the Host, an mp3 file named "БТСЦ"
-- title of the mp3 file is cyrillic for "BTSC"
-- the audio is fully reversed and needs to be undone in order to be listened properly
-- the file is a combination of radio stock static, different others sources and a spoken text
-- I asked an internet/PA friend (some of you may know him as Brian or JJLetho from ProgArchives) to record himself reading the text, because my English accent is pretty butts
-- the text is supposed to be a BTSC fragment from the mafia team:

"Well, that was one hell of a backfire... I told you it was a bad idea for espers to tap out so suddenly, even if he missed a few days... too many replacements during that day to seem credible... good effort anyway, ika, going crazy on everyone was probably the only thing you could have done. anyway, I think the best thing right now is to keep the pressure and everyone's attention [on MP]... with some luck, everyone will hound him and he'll go down... his read on me yesterday was [so crazy]... but hopefully I'll calm the waters and make him seem unreasonable... my vote on espers looks so good, after all... I'll use that cred to my advantage... I'll do my best to survive for as long as possible, guys..."

-- further radio static is juxtaposed between some of the sentences or covering important details in the second half of the text, such as "MP", for the sake of confusion - it hints at Russtifinko as Big Figure, of course, but, with the proper editing, it ends up a bit more vague [Scotty thought it was Eloh, hah!]
-- the text, of course, is completely fabricated and intended as bait, to influence Scotty's gameplay
-- other notable, but entirely irrelevant, audio excerpts added to the mix include the catchphrase "Rorschach's Journal" cut from his first monologue in the movie, electro-acoustic or static noise bits by Ryoki Ikeda (various albums), Jeph Jarman ("Matterings", 2015) and Keith Rowe ("September", which you may recall I also used in Puzzle 1), classical bits from Dvorak's Piano Quintet and Stravinsky's Petrushka, Manfred Man's "There She Goes" and Espers' "Moon Occults the Sun" (which is tongue-in-cheek for espers' mafia role)

I don't think there's much more to add about the purpose of this puzzle and its main bait. I took a gamble with that much alleged BTSC content, since roles of this kind don't usually intercept more than a sentence, but I thought the incentive would be high enough, should Scotty decipher the audio properly, in order to believe that the Mafia might have been intercepted and subsequently influence perhaps Scotty's game. Oh, did I mention that it worked?!

PUZZLE 5 - BAIT - Sent to G-Man, poor lad

-- I sent G-Man, via the Host, two jpg files titled "Pic1" and "Pic2"
-- both pics contain material written on a dirty paper template background
-- Pic1 contains a written text and the instruction to decode it, whilst Pic2 contains a sequence of numbers
-- the instruction at the bottom right of Pic1 was added simply to not torture G-Man more than necessary by wrongly using ROT forwards [which would normally be the right way to use ROT, except that I completely screwed up and wrote the cipher so that it needs to be rotated backwards, gah!]
-- the sequence of numbers in Pic2 matches the word and letter counts of the text in Pic1. It means that each letter needs to be rotated (backwards) according to its corresponding number in the sequence in order to be deciphered
-- however, the text is almost one entire massive ruse, because it's a "lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" template
-- I used a lorem ipsum online generator to generate the text and I banged my hands on the keyboard to generate the sequence of numbers; I did however manually rotate (the wrong fucking way, too!!) each letter in the text, for reasons of insanity
-- what this text does contain, however, is a four-word actual message, each word hidden in each paragraph of the lorem ipsum bullshit text
-- to not torture G-Man more than necessary [although, from the looks of it, he didn't even notice] the first three words of the message were rotated intentionally to create another legible word: "upstep" (paragraph 1), "pay" (paragraph 2) and "timmer" (paragraph 3). The word "timmer" was especially created to capture the target's attention towards what the message could be.
-- nevertheless, to still torture G-Man in some way, the legible word appearing in the fourth paragraph (nightkill - even more incentive to make the target curious, or even imply something, since timmer/juliets was NK'd) is actually bait, since it rotates into a nonsensical form. The word that, rotated correctly, reveals the fourth word of the real message, is the nonsensical "BEQOKWMJV", situated slightly earlier in the paragraph
-- the four words of the real message, if rotated correctly, are UPSTEP => MOLOCH | PAY => HAS | TIMMER => SEEMER | BEQOKWMJV => ABILITIES

The message was basically intended to bait G-Man into thinking the statement is true and potentially mess up with his reads. The timing seemed right at that stage in the game, when Moloch was hard to trace - although, given that G-Man was suspected as a Moloch candidate, it risked being rendered null, in case G-Man was indeed Moloch and was aware of his abilities.

PUZZLE 6 - BAIT - Sent to Rico... err wait hold on

What puzzle?

I intentionally took a break from sending puzzles, because with MP gone (and his role revealed), I didn't want to risk making people believe I could be the only potential actively player to manufacture these types of puzzles - well, there was also G-Man, but... I announced the Host I wouldn't be sending a puzzle that Night and on D7 I made the fake announcement of receiving one. It would also help me not be perceived as Ozymandias (in case players were wondering), since self-targetting was regarded as inconceivable. The message I said in the thread I uncovered was something I simply thought off, without any real basis. If I would have sent it to someone else, it probably would have read "Moloch only needs the former Minutemen and the Watchmen dead" - this was my hint, in the thread, at a more "subtle general win con", compared to the rest of the field.

PUZZLE 7 - FLUFF - Sent to Cookie

-- I sent Cookie, via the Host, a pdf file titled "red err sun"
-- the title is an anagram of "Surrender"
-- the pdf contains 12 pages, modified or not, extracted from a virtual copy of the Watchmen comic that I have
-- in an alternative sequence, 6 pages were an image of a clock with blood slowly pooring from the top of the page (they look to me like the back cover of distinct volumes of the comic, but I could be wrong and they could be fan art, added to the mix) and 6 pages from the comic
-- the latter pages were modified so that they highlighted only a panel, with the face of a Watchman member (one page for each of the six Watchmen), while the rest is covered in red
-- each Watchman panel also has a modified text in the dialogue bubble, compared to the original dialogue in the comic; unfortunately I couldn't find a free version of Dave Gibbons' original fonts (and I sure wasn't going to pay 39 bucks to acquire them!), so I used a lookalike VLC Letterer Pro font
-- almost* every modified text was transcribed from a game post made by every living (at that time) player
-- each modified text has a bolded word that is part of the real message of this puzzle; the bolded words are not in the right order
-- rearranged, the real message of the puzzle is "You are not fooling anyone anymore"

Without any real knowledge if Cookie was or not a baddie, the message was nevertheless intended to mess up with her game and intimidate her. The "Surrender" anagram in the pdf title was also appropriate for this.

PUZZLE 8 - BAIT - Sent to G-Man, alas he died the same night

-- I sent G-Man, via the host, six items, out of which five were put in a zip; these five pictures were also encrypted with a password
-- the title of the first jpg file and the five zip files indicate the passwords that need to be entered to unlock the next picture in the sequence; they're also numbered, to not screw up the sequence
-- the first item is a jpg called "beast"; it is a old representation of the demon beast Moloch (with its name also appearing written on top); thus, the password to the next picture was "moloch"
-- the second item is a jpg put in a zip called "maker"; the pic itself is called "syracuse"; it is a painting by Giulio Parigi of Archimedes' parabolic reflectors allegedly used to burn ships attacking Syracuse; Giulio Parigi's name is written in morse code on the bottom of the painting, to hint at the painting's origin and meaning; the connection is that Moloch also tried to built a sun mirror weapon, until his plan was foiled by the Minutemen; but the "maker" is neither him, nor Parigi for the painting, but Archimedes' for creating the original sun mirrors; thus, the password to the next picture was "Archimedes" (caps sensitive)
-- the third item is a jpg put in a zip called "number"; the pic itself is called "inletters", hinting at the "number"; it depicts a scene from the Watchmen movie when Rorschach first checks on Moloch; I was hoping a number of Moloch's apartment would be detectable, alas not, so I referred instead to the "XXX" letters in the porn movie announcement, left on the screen; XXX, "in (roman) letters", is thirty; thus, the password to the next picture was "thirty"
-- the fourth item is a jpg put in a zip called "time"; the pic itself is called "isup", hinting at the location of the item to be deciphered; it depicts a scene when Molock opens the fridge in his kitchen; up ("isup" -> "is up") on the wall, right to him, is a clock; the time reads 8:20pm; thus, the password to the next picture was "twentypasteight"
-- the fifth item is a jpg put in a zip called "identity"; the pic itself is called "duh", hinting at the sillyness and simplicity of the puzzle; it is a text written in Watchmen font, on a blue (Manhattan) background, that says "Moloch is _____ ______ (duh)"; contrary to this being an indication of who plays Moloch's role in the game, but simply what is Moloch's name in the comic; the fact that Edgar Jacobi isn't actually his real name is a mere technicality; thus, the password to the final item was "edgarjacobi"
-- the sixth item is an avi put in a zip called "answer"; the avi itself is called "omg"; it is a video of a mountain marmot eating a carrot, because why not
-- therefore, the real message of this puzzle is "Moloch is a mountain marmot eating a carrot"... err I mean "Moloch is MetalMarsh"

The message was basically intended to bait G-Man into thinking the statement is true and potentially make him vote for MM. Him getting killed made the whole plan flop. Even if I was wrong about MM being Moloch, the puzzle having its effect and making MM further get votes would have suited me nevertheless, since I needed the Comedian gone.

PUZZLE 9 - BAIT - Sent to Made

-- I sent Made, via the Host, a PowerPoint show called "Presentation1" (I got lazy with the titles)
-- it contains two slides, one with a movie clip, the second with the avatars of the other remaining players, besides him
-- the movie clip is a mix of the "bloodied midnight clock" from the comic and a short scene from the movie with each of the Watchmen, over which an excerpt from The Doors' "The End" is played
-- the movie clip is irrelevant, except for setting the atmosphere of a gloomy endgame
-- the avatars in the second slide each contain a hyperlink (activated upon mouse click) to certain pictures on the internet, meant to imply the real identities of the players
-- Russ' avatar links to a gif of Ozymandias
-- DDL's avatar links to a picture of the actor playing Moloch being interviewed
-- Rico's avatar links to a picture of Bernard the News Vendor taken from the wiki page of the character (only thing I could find)

The message was intended to bait Made into thinking these identities are real and potentially make him vote for DDL as Moloch. Of course, I deliberately cast myself as the more reliable Bernard and Russ as Ozymandias. I also started fearing DDL might be Manhattan, whom I also needed gone, so the bait worked in that interest as well. If Made was Moloch, the message could still have worked as an "interpretation" of the identities, seemingly sent to him by Russ.

Damn it, I clicked my on mobile and it didn't work .

[Long Con]

So Llama never got to clean Rorschach's list one bit. LC never had a chance.

No chance at all. I thought maybe the psychoanalyst might clean up the guilty for me by endgame, but that never could happen... and the Civs didn't win anyway.

-- If LC tracked anyone on N3 (even if it proved pointless)

I tracked DDL on Night 3, and found that he had targeted (aka resurrected) Scotty. So I knew he was Manhattan back then, but couldn't do anything about it.

-- Whether DH used any abilities in the two nights he was alive (and what and on whom)

4-Person poll thingy and protection on myself, I think.

WHY did you include me in that poll?

And why, baddies, did you choose to kill me on Night 3?

I hope you all enjoyed the unusual host posts. I had a lot of fun making those. They were a test run for the game Long Con and I plan to run, Arkham Mafia, in which we will combine my recording skills with Long Con's graphic prowess to make an immersive experience.

Oh, snap! It's gonna be on, ladies and gentlemen.

Rico, I didn't get to take part in any of these crazy games or whatever that you made, but when we get our Internet back (still down from a big storm) then I am looking forward to taking a peek. Especially this Flash maze! I actually have a Flash maze myself that I bust out in games I host, it would be excellent to compare notes. 90 MB is too much though, I'm getting Internet from my phone's data plan right now, which is already over the limit, costing me five cents per MB.

[Marmot]

I deeply apologize to MM and DDL for being forced to deliberately target them for my last two lynches. Win con stuff. No hard feelings, I hope.

linki: G-Man was the first civ to target Russ.

I'm confused, how was I targeted?

[Russtifinko]

I am pleased that everyone who hinted lost.

I warn people not to do that shit. People do it anyway. And I don't have to lift a finger against them.

You're so evil.

Sorry Epi, but I did ask you permission before I started hinting. I figured out info dumping would be fine as long as I only implied it. Well, karma is a bitch.

I have a philosophy on info-dumping. I try to make it so that the dumper punishes himself.

I am with this 100%. Nothing against DDL here, I just don't like sharing non-public info in thread or role-claiming. Rare that game events punish the person who does those things, so I felt vindicated by it.

Anyway, Epi. Terrific game. I loved the host posts and pretty much everything about the game.

[Marmot]

I am pleased that everyone who hinted lost.

I warn people not to do that shit. People do it anyway. And I don't have to lift a finger against them.

You didn't warn me.

[Golden]

-- Whether DH used any abilities in the two nights he was alive (and what and on whom)

4-Person poll thingy and protection on myself, I think.

You are to blame for my lynch?

In fairness, your vote was sketchy.

In fairness - you created a poll in which I was virtually a guaranteed lynch with no information except one sketchy vote...

And I was a cop.

My bad.

It was pretty funny, in a way. And somehow I still nearly managed to survive (thanks MM!)

And frankly, I don't think my presence would have been enough to catch russti.

[Long Con]

I did not role-hint, but I was still nightkilled. Why??

Also, I called MM being the Comedian immediately when he claimed to have gotten something from the night poll. Because I'm just that awesome.

[Marmot]

I played a pretty shitty game. Too bad the civvies had to depend on a guy who had no chance of winning in the end.

[DharmaHelper]

-- Whether DH used any abilities in the two nights he was alive (and what and on whom)

4-Person poll thingy and protection on myself, I think.

You are to blame for my lynch?

In fairness, your vote was sketchy.

In fairness - you created a poll in which I was virtually a guaranteed lynch with no information except one sketchy vote...

And I was a cop.

My bad.

It was pretty funny, in a way. And somehow I still nearly managed to survive (thanks MM!)

And frankly, I don't think my presence would have been enough to catch russti.

My dumbass plan was to narrow the poll down to (what I thought) was an interesting pool of suspects in the hope that even though you were on the list, people would talk about and vote for the others

[Long Con]

But there was no reason to vote anyone else at the time. You put in one suspect, and three trusteds. DAMN though, should have gone with Russ. I trusted him from an early post that felt genuine to me.

[DharmaHelper]

But there was no reason to vote anyone else at the time. You put in one suspect, and three trusteds. DAMN though, should have gone with Russ. I trusted him from an early post that felt genuine to me.

The one flaw in my plan was how nobody ever talks about new suspects.

[Tangrowth]

Ugh, the Elo debacle. Yeah, that was a mistake. It was a gambit, really, since I thought I was soon dead meat, people were finding my noncommital and floppy behavior suspicious, and I couldn't get any luck with tracking at night. N1 I track Scotty, he dies. N2, no result, I thought, 'fuck'.

Finally we had luck with Cookie the night right BEFORE I got lynched, but I was silenced and couldn't even hint about it.

Poetic justice after lynching a silenced Elo, I suppose.

For the record, the reason I was playing particularly washy was because I knew, as a tracker, I would eventually have good information. I just never got it.

No, we never tracked Elo. I really thought she was bad and was willing to pull a gambit -- if I was right, then boom, my tracker partner and I were still both alive. If I was wrong, then it gave me another night to check, since otherwise I likely would have been lynched D5.

I tracked juliets N3.

Scotty tracked me on N4.

So you can see why I was frustrated.

I didn't even consider a genuine possibility for why G-Man was so sure.

- Did G-Man actually have info on Eloh? Was the bet a dirty one? lol

Heh. MP, you can remove the signature regarding our bet if you wish. I made a dirty bet with you. I had just found out Night 4 that Elo was Joey. Elohcin went in alphabetical order: Night 1, she said she wasn't Bass; Night 2, she said she wasn't Cookie; Night 3, she said she wasn't Dragon (okay to skip DharmaHelper because he was lynched Day 3); and Night 4, she said she wasn't G-Man, skipping over herself.

I had been waiting for Joey to skip a name because that would mean Joey was that player. Sure enough, the day I knew Elohcin was innocent was the day MP07 decided to go all guns blazing on her. Had I had another day to work with, I could have come up with reasons for Elo to be trustworthy. Having been peed on by MP07 in Economics, though, I knew nothing was going to stop him. Thus, I decided to knock him down a peg by taking him up on his rhetorical bet. It was a dirty bet all the way but at least I got to re-write a little House of Pain:

I'll spam your ass like Rob Soloway
If you vote Elo, I'm looking your way
Word to your mom- my spreadsheet's the bomb
I got more rhymes than BoB's host Dom
And just like the Prodigal Son I've returned
Anyone betting with me- you'll get burned
'Cause I got stats but you ain't got none
If you come to battle bring a shotgun
But if you do you're a fool, 'cause I duel to the death
Trying to step to me you'll take your last breath
I got the skill, come get your fill
'Cause when I place my vote, I vote to kill

Ahhhh! Nicely done. I should have known. Sorry I didn't listen to you. :P

[Tangrowth]

But here's the funny thing:
The message sounded so much like mafia chit-chat talking about ika's blowing up and such. Then it said distinctly that "he made a read on me yesterday so I'm going to make him look bad," followed by "I voted for espers to get some cred."

So me, in my dimly lit, World War 2 backwoods bunker thought "oh yis" and went to town looking at who might be attempting to frame someone that day, and who voted for espers.

!!!!!

I was wondering why you were so convinced that a teammate bussed espers!

[Tangrowth]

Great game Epi. Thanks for hosting! I surely had a blast.

This was one hell of an enjoyable game. The players all made it great too. What a lineup!

[Tangrowth]

Rico, totally checking out those puzzles later, after I catch some sleep and am finished with meetings. Too tired now.

[Ricochet]

Eloh wanted to be Joey. I wanted Sloonei as Mafia.

That was it!

Boss lady don't ask, huh?

----

G-Man, I get that you didn't feel confident in reading people and, thus, focusing on trying to get yourself known to the world via your messages - it was easy for me to become very confident it's you entirely based on style (plus believing a Nite Owl might have lie detected your statements, once their roles flipped. LoRab in fact did, but then still "drummed" on you. boooo. )

My problem with them was that your suspects pool was too wide. As you noticed, players never believed Bernard could suspect himself in his posts (I never had an issue with believing this, though) and, until you finally said something of me too, they believed I was Bernard, not you, because you had taken shots at everyone else. I also got to work with that in my N9 puzzle. A messager should trust himself a bit more with reads. I think it might happen to help the civs more than lead them astray. MM, remember in Film when Bass would constantly read you bad (correctly) both in his Night messages and the thread? We were sweating too much to kill him.

Sorry if Puzzle 5 was too rough, in retrospect I overdid it with encrypting every letter of a bloody lorem ipsum fake text. But I expected you to spot the legible words and have it easier.

Did you even bother with Puzzle 8 after you received it along with getting night killed? That sucked, but the puzzle was also one of quickest and simplest I elaborated, so not that much of a loss.

---

I won't prolong, however, the puzzles reveal. Here is a link where you can download and check all of them:

http://we.tl/gd21FPc1LB

If you want to have a go at them for fun, don't open the spoilers tab before you do.

If not:

<snip>

Damn it, I clicked my on mobile and it didn't work .

That's too bad. I was worried my Presentation might not work, depending on the device / Office version / etc. it would get played on, but I didn't have enough time to work on a solid version. But you stuck to your "gut", anyway, so the lynches still went the way I needed them to. Sorry to hear you could have won, as well, simply by silencing Russ. Funny, Russ listened to my plea not to kill me and we both won; you listened to DDL's plea to not silence anyone and you both lost.

Guess I had a very good vibe about Moloch recruiting someone, even though I crafted Puzzle 2 to indicate the detectives might be the recruitable ones.

---

Rico, I didn't get to take part in any of these crazy games or whatever that you made, but when we get our Internet back (still down from a big storm) then I am looking forward to taking a peek. Especially this Flash maze! I actually have a Flash maze myself that I bust out in games I host, it would be excellent to compare notes. 90 MB is too much though, I'm getting Internet from my phone's data plan right now, which is already over the limit, costing me five cents per MB.

I added the actual .fla file in the download, which is like 50MB, instead of just the .swf version, so that's why the whole package is 90MB.

It's really nothing. I pulled out tutorials and certain codes on how to do it and when I got a grasp, simply multiplied them for each level of the maze. It still gave me headaches, because simply replicating all the commands wasn't allowed either, so, for instance, for every MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, detectHits, I had to add something to differentiate, so I did: marsdetectHits for first level, jupiterdetectHits for second and so on. I chose the planets thing as a nice touch for a Manhattan-hinting puzzle.

Can't wait to see the Arkham host posts, now that Epig hinted at them. Definitely playing that. Maybe even win it. Yep, sounds like a game I have to win.

I liked doing the audio mixes more, it's closer to my music domain, even though I don't have actual mixing skills whatosever either. Puzzle 1 was very raw, because the electro-acoustic excerpt was taken as a whole and I just added Stockhausen bits. But Puzzle 4 turned out musical puzzle in itself, I threw everything in there, from Stravinski to Morse Code, but in a way it blended much better.

---

I deeply apologize to MM and DDL for being forced to deliberately target them for my last two lynches. Win con stuff. No hard feelings, I hope.

linki: G-Man was the first civ to target Russ.

I'm confused, how was I targeted?

Sorry, wrong vocabulary, it seems. I meant tunneling on lynching you (and DDL), despite believing (or figuring out) neither of you were Moloch. Actually, in your case, I didn't vote you in the end, out of some respect for your extra win con, which I think you still should have tried to achieve it way sooner in the game.

---

But here's the funny thing:
The message sounded so much like mafia chit-chat talking about ika's blowing up and such. Then it said distinctly that "he made a read on me yesterday so I'm going to make him look bad," followed by "I voted for espers to get some cred."

So me, in my dimly lit, World War 2 backwoods bunker thought "oh yis" and went to town looking at who might be attempting to frame someone that day, and who voted for espers.

!!!!!

I was wondering why you were so convinced that a teammate bussed espers!

The way I phrased it in my message, Russ, Cookie and Eloh all qualified as potential bussers (by voting espers/ika). I intended to point at Russ, because of his case on you the Day before that caused such a stir and started getting you in trouble. But then you started making a case on Eloh, she fought back and the message suddenly worked its magic on Scotty that way as well.

Puzzle 4 is by far the best result I achieved. Actually, I think the only result, heh.

[Ricochet]

Lastly, my usual data:

Gameplay

-- What I still don't get is how the kills were inherited and used, after Sloonei's death. Until clarification, I wrote that every Even N kill was Big Figure's.
-- No word on who silenced whom. Also, I wrote down the (speculated) silencings as "inc", standing for "incapacitated", because in my books, not posting and voting is an incapacitation. We have a version of silencing on this board that allows voting in the poll, so that's why I'm differentiating.
-- G-Man says he was blocked Night 5, but who blocked him? The mafia blockers were both dead.
-- No word from Tim/Jules if they searched for Manhattan, but that's alright.

Votes

I finally got a glimpse of G-Man's spreadsheet version of this and it looks so much better, I might copypasta his format from now on.

Theories

I didn't bother much with these, this time, and most of them, as you can see, were pretty lousy.

Logs

I went back to my Death Note style of keeping tabs on everyone's activity, because the first Days were fairly intense (I usually always start Day 0/Day 1 with tremendous anxiety about where to look and how to keep up with everything that's being talked), but I stopped updating them after Day 5.

Also, it seems nobody cared enough that I was always failing to do ISOs on MP at the end of doing ISOs heavily during a Day. Well, here's the thing. The first time I genuinely failed to finish the reads in time to do MP as well. The Day I should have pitched on Elo vs MP and probably vote for one of them, yet fell asleep, that was also absolutely genuine - in retrospect, also lucky (voting Eloh might have gotten me seriously eyeballed). Afterwards, when I promised I'd re-read MP? Yeah, I decided never to do that. The feeling pains me, but MP's massive backlog did in fact slowly made me unwilling to ISO him.

G-Man's catch-ups for pages 6-16 were also the most annoying thing I had to write in my log.

And for reference once more:

D10 Moloch search (all this was genuine resourcing, I didn't write it to influence the voting)

Puzzles link and explanations

[Ricochet]

Thanks Epignosis for hosting an excellent game and everyone for a strong and challenging play. I'm really glad to finally win a speed game, with a theme and setup I loved. Don't give up on reading me as pure civ, I swear it'll happen the next time and I'll play just as nice. The only shaky thing that could have gotten me in trouble was that my NK protection burnt quickly (and I was made aware of it by the Host, for some reason) and then I really didn't react well to the possibility of being killed and started talking about it and pleading with da killa to let me live.

[G-Man]

G-Man, I get that you didn't feel confident in reading people and, thus, focusing on trying to get yourself known to the world via your messages - it was easy for me to become very confident it's you entirely based on style (plus believing a Nite Owl might have lie detected your statements, once their roles flipped. LoRab in fact did, but then still "drummed" on you. boooo. )

My problem with them was that your suspects pool was too wide. As you noticed, players never believed Bernard could suspect himself in his posts (I never had an issue with believing this, though) and, until you finally said something of me too, they believed I was Bernard, not you, because you had taken shots at everyone else. I also got to work with that in my N9 puzzle. A messager should trust himself a bit more with reads. I think it might happen to help the civs more than lead them astray. MM, remember in Film when Bass would constantly read you bad (correctly) both in his Night messages and the thread? We were sweating too much to kill him.

Sorry if Puzzle 5 was too rough, in retrospect I overdid it with encrypting every letter of a bloody lorem ipsum fake text. But I expected you to spot the legible words and have it easier.

Did you even bother with Puzzle 8 after you received it along with getting night killed? That sucked, but the puzzle was also one of quickest and simplest I elaborated, so not that much of a loss.

As a data person, it sucks royally being the Chatty Kathy role. It also doesn't help that I've only played a few games here and don't know you guys like the back of my hand yet. Someone with a deep knowledge of other players' metas would be quite useful in that role.

I wondered about the X<----X---->X at the bottom of puzzle 5. I still tried to decipher it both shifting letters up and down. After I got five words in I all but gave up because it didn't decode to any English language words. The first three (Lorem ipsum dolor) gave me pause though because I knew I had seen them somewhere before. They looked like Latin but I never bothered Googling the phrase or I would have discovered the ruse. I never got in far enough to find the real words in the message. Sorry you spent so much time on it but I'm not sorry I gave up! :P

Now that I know it is filler text, I know where I've seen those words before. From 2006 to 2009 I worked in the public relations department of a company and I wrote the company newsletter. I used an auto-fill function that put those very filler words into my text boxes when I was working on my layouts!

I never got puzzle 8. My death probably prevented me from receiving it.

-- G-Man says he was blocked Night 5, but who blocked him? The mafia blockers were both dead.

G-Man's catch-ups for pages 6-16 were also the most annoying thing I had to write in my log.

I assumed that nothing went through Night 5 because that video Epi posted was all silence. Maybe someone else can explain what happened there.

As for my catch-ups... They were useful to me!

[G-Man]

Oh, and my Night 6 Bernard message:

...was created in a bit of a rush, so I just Googled "watchmen bernard" and rewrote the following panels with a brief intro to mourn the loss of Joey:

[Ricochet]

I wondered about the X<----X---->X at the bottom of puzzle 5. I still tried to decipher it both shifting letters up and down. After I got five words in I all but gave up because it didn't decode to any English language words. The first three (Lorem ipsum dolor) gave me pause though because I knew I had seen them somewhere before. They looked like Latin but I never bothered Googling the phrase or I would have discovered the ruse. I never got in far enough to find the real words in the message. Sorry you spent so much time on it but I'm not sorry I gave up! :P

Now that I know it is filler text, I know where I've seen those words before. From 2006 to 2009 I worked in the public relations department of a company and I wrote the company newsletter. I used an auto-fill function that put those very filler words into my text boxes when I was working on my layouts!

Well, as I've explained, I put legible words (upstep; pay; timmer!) in that mess of a text, one in each paragraph, precisely for you to catch on that those might be the only words that need deciphering. Only the fourth legible word was a bait, so you needed to decipher the real word from the nonsense pile.

Anyway, seeing you frustrated by it made me snicker a lot, at least.