2009 Subsim Werewolf Hunt Ticker: Unhappy Hour at Mercy's Inn

[Onkel Neal]

I'll finish my post mortem and behind the scenes soon, until then, here is the original random order roster.


Random order --- ID --- Rank
19. JCWolf --- Guardian --- Gemeiner
18. lesrae --- Guardian --- Shepperd
20. Contact --- Guardian --- Mayor
21. mookiemookie --- Guardian --- Postman
26. Aramike --- Hellhound --- Seaman
3. A Very Super Market --- Human --- Gemeiner
6. Oberon --- Human --- Gefreiter
7. Chad --- Human --- Oberst
8. UnderseaLcpl --- Human --- Oberfeldwebel
9. Letum --- Human --- Gemeiner
10. Laufen zum Ziel --- Human --- Gemeiner
11. stabiz --- Human --- Gefreiter
4. XabbaRus --- Human --- Sailor
5. Weiß Pinguin --- Human --- Wachoffizier
12. Jimbuna --- Human --- Kapitänleutnant
13. Raptor1 --- Human --- Chief Engineer
14. Fincuan --- Human --- Oberfähnrich zur See
1. Penelope_Grey --- Human --- Barmaid
2. SandyCaesar --- Human --- Fisherman
15. NealT --- Human --- Fisherman
17. Gorduz --- Seer --- Funker
16. Nokia --- Seer --- Innskeeper
24. Hitman --- Werewolf --- Hauptmann
22. Nisgeis --- Werewolf --- Leutnant zur See
23. Task Force --- Werewolf --- Seaman
25. Firewall --- Werewolf --- Seaman

[Weiss Pinguin]

Firewall was a werewolf too? So two wolves were cannibalized then... lol, and the first person I voted to kill was one of our seers

[baggygreen]

A very enjoyable game to watch!

[A Very Super Market]

Oh, I suspected FIREWALL for quite a while. And I was made into a guardian because lesrae dropped out.

[Onkel Neal]

Here are, according to my notes, the Night Actions:
http://www.subsim.com/1_12werewolves.htm

As you can see, things were going well for the forces of evil, until they lynched Aramike, and then Nisgeis took out two of his own werewolves

[SandyCaesar]

Quick comments:

Ouch! It seems that Nisgeis was very, very unlucky. Three valid kills, then two friendly-fire kills, and after that all of his attempts were on guardians.

As untrue as it might be, I'll always think of the night of my death (Night 4) as the turning point. The wolves suffer their first KIA, and then a whole flood of deaths after that.

And it seems U-13 has a cursed crew: aside from Hitman, all of the wolves were from its roster.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Hell's yeah! The investigation's first real suspect was Aramike.

[Chad]

Wow, that was a very fun experience, my first text based RPG too


I have to admit at the beginning, and I'm sure Undersealcpl can attest to this, I was very nervous about screwing up and ruining your guys' playability.

[Onkel Neal]

You guys did great. The main thing was to have fun.

Subsim Werewolf Hunt – Behind the scenes

Assigning secret identities and ranks
When I started the Subsim Werewolf Hunt, I was hoping to attract at least 20 people. Very quickly 26 people signed on. I wanted to make my involvement in the game as neutral and unbiased as possible, even though there was no one to really audit me. So, in my view it was crucial that the players drew their identities and ranks without any input from me.

I made a column in a spreadsheet and recorded all the secret IDs, in alphabetical order:




I took all the names of the players in a column, in alphabetical order, and ran them through this random list generator. Then I paired the column of names in their random order with the column of secret IDs:





I then did the same with the ranks—entered them in ABC order in the randomizer and then attached them to the final column:



And we were ready to go! I did not make any changes, for example, to make Jimbuna the U-boat commander, or Hitman a werewolf, it just turned out that way with the random list generator. The only change I manually made to the list was to assign Penelope the rank of barmaid. Nothing sexist, I assure you, I just thought it would be fun putting a lady in charge of the beer!

Balancing the werewolves vs humans
In the game design, I chose to have 4 werewolves and one hell hound. There were 26 players in total, so wolves made up 19% of the hunt. The werewolf/mafia guidelines I read suggested 4:1 humans to werewolves, so this was actually a little better for the humans with the wolves being outnumbered 5.2:1.

However, the Subsim players, not being active RP people, were reluctant to discuss who to lynch, or if they did it, they did it behind the scenes in PMs, and there was very little discussion in the story to analyze. I brought this up several times in the Q&A thread, we were learning as we go. The lynch votes went to humans the first four times. That could happen by pure chance, of course; in any case, it was disastrous for the human cause.

Naturally, if the humans had lynched a wolf right out of the gate, and if in the first night phase a wolf had attacked another wolf, we would have been down to two werewolves and a hellhound, and if the human had gone on to win, the wolves would have complained that with a ratio of 5.2:1 they never had a chance. The losing side always feels they had the odds against them, and a few human players complained to me in PM that the deck was stacked against them.


Trust me!
The core mechanic of the whole game is trying to determine who to trust. It allows a lot of interesting tactics. Acting shy, or humble to gain trust. Sending out false signals i.e., “RunnerJoe told me he was a werewolf in a PM, he thought I was a werewolf” when none of that occurred. I was told some players sent screenshots of their PM from me assigning their secret IDs! Like that wouldn't be easy to fake, lol. It is really a fascinating exercise to watch. It’s a game, of course, so the deceptions are part of the fun.

The game started off with some outstanding roleplaying! Subsim people are very witty, imaginitive, and funny as hell. I’m always impressed by their comments. Letum posted a really funny Investigative Report to Chad (someone post the link, I cannot find it). There were a lot of great jokes and witty remarks in the story. Task Force gave me the best laugh of the hunt:

Goes up on u 13s bridge.

"whats all that noise."

Letum woke up.

Oah. (gets revolver with silver bullets.)

People really got into their characters and fleshed out the story. The basic premise never varied. There were some werewolves among us, we don’t know who they are, so we have to talk and study each other’s comments, then do the mob thing and lynch one, hoping to get a werewolf.

There were three natural groups in the story (villagers, Kamp guards, U-13 men), with werewolves, guardians, and seers randomly sprinkled in among them. This added an extra layer of complexity to the game, but in reality, it made absolutely no difference. If you were a Seaman on U-13 and your fellow seaman was suspicious, you should vote to lynch him and lobby like hell to get the other players, no matter what group, to go along with you. I knew that some players would trip up and get so immersed in the roleplaying that they would hesitate to accuse another within their group. That was awesome to watch! If you make a competition easy, then everyone excels. Make it tricky and rigorous and only the cream of the crop will rise up.


Right off the bat, the werewolves attacked three people (one WW was a no show, never PMed me, and one “passed”…whatever). One werewolf attacked Penelope, who was protected by Guardian Lesrae (it would be the only action he took in the game before going MIA), so Penelope lived. I PMed her that “she discovered some coarse black fur at her window”, a little hint that she had been threatened.

The other wolf, Nisgeis, took out Raptor1. Aramike the Hell Hound attacked Letum. In one of the very few manual game decisions I made, I opted to leave Letum “in a coma”. This way, he could not vote on the lynchings, but he was a neat storyline. By having him gouged and injured, it left a lot of doubt in the other players’ mind; was he an innocent comrade who needed their help, or would he become a werewolf and slaughter them? When he awoke, would he be able to tell people what he had seen? Nice! I noted that his survival was conditional on getting a blood transfusion and PMed UnderseaCpl advising him to ask for volunteers. (Another twist could have been: could a blood donor possibly get infected by giving a blood transfusion? Who knows?). Wow, UnderseaLcpl broadcasted the need for Type A- blood several times but no one picked up on it. Were they all the wrong blood type, or were they too busy sending each other PMs?

Ha ha, finally, Weiß Pinguin volunteered to give the blood and Letum was able to continue. I PMed Letum he would awaken after the next lynching and told him he could play it any way he chose (I wanted a little mystery for myself!). So he woke up and played it crazy, chewing up the scenery in a way that would have made Shatner blush, and promptly got himself shot, thus extinguishing a great source of story potential. It was like a bus packed full of nubile teenage girls headed to Crystal Lake and Jason steps into the road and they flatten him like a overripe pumpkin. Alas.

I put a lot of careful thought into the narratives I wrote. How to include scenarios with the players, yet not give any clues or false impressions that would give away anyone’s true identity (although on Night 4, I pretty much spelled out that SuperMartket and mookies were guardians; by that point in the story, it made little difference).

Feb. 10, 1945 03:25

“What the hell? Gefreiter stabiz jumped with surprise. “You nearly scared me out of my wits, zum Ziel. What are you doing down there?”
Gemeiner Laufen zum Ziel looked up at his comrade in the well-armed east guard tower. “Hauptmann Hitman has ordered increased foot patrols. I have been down here for nearly an hour, did you just now hear me? You crazy bastard, you better not be sleeping up there.”
“I’m not sleeping,”said stabiz with less convition than zum Ziel would have hoped for. "I'm giving JCWolf a break, his eyes were nearly shut."
“All the same, if you hear me shouting, throw down that rope lapper, I’m coming up, you hear?”
“Ja, ja.”
“Where did all these damned sheep come from?” asked zum Ziel. Every time I turn around one of these little ****ers is bumping into me. Shine that seachbeam down here.”
“It’s not operational. Oberst Chad gave an order to have it repaired but apparently no one did it. Did you bring any fresh coffee? I’m out,” stabiz shouted down.
“Nein,” said zum Ziel glumly. I gave my last pouch and 10 liters of diesel to NealT, in exchange for some fresh haddock and a Swedish girlie magazine.”
“Damn, I could use some coffee now, I haven’t had much sleep since this ordeal began,” groused stabiz.
“Who has? But don’t worry, friend, I am meeting some of the U-13 crew and will swap some of Oberst Chad’s brandy for some real Brazilian coffee.”
“That’s quite a black market you have going there, ha ha,” said stabiz.
“Right, you just stay on your toes and don’t shoot them, ok? Only shoot the seven foot tall hairy bastard Xabba keeps babbling about.”

I established the fact that there was a lot of inter-group liaisons and smuggling, that there were sheep all over (lesrae the Sheppard’s sheep), and that stabiz was not likely to be a witness to zum Ziel’s demise although he was at the scene.

03:40

There was no solace to be found, not even on the black waters of the fjord. Waves lapped gently at the side of the small boat rowed by two men.
“Ok, can you see anything?”
“Nein, and keep your voice down, Oberfähnrich zur See Fincuan. The old man has sharp ears, I would not be surprised if he is sitting on the pier with a rifle. He did not come back to the boat tonight,” said Leutnant zur See Nisgeis.
“Aye, sir,” replied Fincuan in a whisper. “I don’t know if this was such a good idea, we have orders to guard the boat.”
“We are guarding the boat, it’s just behind us. Think of this as a patrol. Shoot anything in the water, and maybe you’ll get lucky and hit a cruiser.”
“Ja, I suppose. I’m not sure which worries me more, the creature that is killing everyone on shore, or Kapt. Jimbuna if he finds out we’re picking up stolen liquor from Obert Chad’s storeroom.”
“Well, we’re U-bootmenn, we cannot survive without alcohol.” They both laughed under their breath.
“Ok, I see it, I see the wharf. I see the light by the pumping station,” said Nisgeis. “Steer for the big diesel tank, mate.”

With dawn came the dreaded sirens, breaking everyone’s sleep. The men and villagers raced to the source, the familiar killing ground behind the fuel depot. Stabiz, white with shock, switched off his siren and slumped in the guard tower, pointing below with his trembling rifle. Pieces of flesh, bone, uniform, and hair were strewn across the slab and splashed across the machinery.
“It’s Gemeiner Laufen zum Ziel... and Oberfähnrich zur See Fincuan,” said Gemeiner Super Market.
The carnage was unlike any of the soldiers had ever seen. It was…well, unnatural.

Odd, none of the players seemed to notice that Nisgeis, who was in the boat with Fincuan, was not hurt and never spoke up about what had happened. Sure, the other players were not present as characters in the boat, but that should not have stopped them from questioning him in the lynch debates. Perhaps it was because of Nisgeis’ skill in crafting very convincing diary entries in his posts.… he was very clever, I would be wary of playing in a game with him.

Some people asked me if “so and so” in the narrative did this or that, did that mean he was/was not a werewolf? Players would be correct to depend on their own conjecture over any details in the narrative. As you can imagine, to have a decent narrative, I needed to impose on the players and have them appear in places and say things that add to the story, support the mystery, and increase the intrigue, without directly giving away their true identity. So, I may have three guys discussing a strategy to discover the werewolf, when in reality, one of them may be a werewolf. Or I may have a character say he protected another player, when he may or may not be a Guardian. Players may say these things and assume these postures in their own posts, so they could be written into the narrative the same way.

Lesrae was a special case. On the 2nd day, he PMed me and said he has some real life issues that meant he would not be able to play. Since Lesrae was a Guardian, I felt that losing him so early in the game would possibly cause balance problems so I wrote into the narrative when Gorduz (another guardian) was lynched, a small talisman fell from his pocket:

The firing squad took aim and in a blast, ended his life. A small object, apparently dislodged by the bullets, falls from his breast pocket. Nokia the Innkeep walks over and picks it up.
“It is a small silver talisman…does anyone know what to make of this?” he asks.
“Aye,” says mookiemookie, the postman and new head of the village. “I would say that is a Guardian piece, and look, it has your name scrawled on it, Nokia.”
The color drained from Nokia’s face. In disgust, he threw the tiny silver piece as far as he could. The crowd look around; at the mortal man dead at the post, at each other, at the woods, and finally, at the ominous darkening sky.

I waited for someone to “find and retrieve the talisman.” When that didn’t happen, I picked a human from random: Super Market. I PMed him that he had picked up the talisman and would now serve as a Guardian.

Now I had the question about how to erase Lesrae’s character from the game. Since his character was in the game when it began, I made the narrative decision to have him disappear mysteriously. I had his sheep milling around and finally someone noticed and mentioned it. I decided that he had been shot by another player with a silver bullet, even though he was not a werewolf (but I would not tell the players this) and his body thrown down the town well. I mean, the well was clearly marked on the map, yeah? Someone would surely investigate it, along with the other landmarks. If not, ok, then his disappearance would be an unsolved mystery. Oberon, a most clever player, was writing some dialogue about peering down the old well. So I PMed him and told him he found "Lesrae's body and there was a single bullet hole in the chest. The bullet was silver."

The bullet wouldn’t stay there long. Underseacpl removed the bullet in the autopsy (a normal thing to do in a world where there are no werewolves, I suppose). I did not direct him to do this, and JCWolf was warning him not to in the story, but I thought it was great. It introduced more uncertainty. What to do with Lesrae’s body. Would it reanimate as a werewolf now that the silver bullet had been removed? Was he ever a werewolf to begin with? Who shot him? I knew who I was going to script as his assassin: NealT, who was always carrying on about his old gun and silver bullets (actually, everyone had invented silver bullets in the story, I could take my pick!). Then someone wrote that Lesrae’s body was gone. Fabulous! Who took it? Human or werewolf? Or did it get up and lope off on its own. Unfortunately, at this point some players were getting confused and frustrated. Lesrae’s dead? What? What happened? Where’d he go? I don’t understand, someone explain this to me. So I dropped the idea of following this story line.

The guys who play the wolves PMed me their choice person to attack each night. The guardians and seers also PM me each night to with their choice of who to protect and investigate. I used these actions to create the results in my narrative. With the exception of Letum’s coma, all of the actions in the narratives were the results of choices made by the players.

Once I got the PMs, I fit the results into the narrative. For example, on night 4 Task Force (WW) opted not to attack anyone, he said he thought he should "lay low"...not sure how he thinks that will help him but ok. Guardian Super Market PMed me he was going to protect Chad (human) and guardian mookie PMed me he was going to protect Super Market. Then the hellhound attacked Chad, so normally that would kill Chad and Supermarket, but with 2 guardians on that, I figured Super Market would survive.

Nisgeis attacked Task Force (obviously he was unaware that TF was a WW), so TF had to die, and I wrote it into the story that way. Later he wiped out Firewall too. That was the turning point for the humans

JCWolf was writing some really weird stuff, I wasn’t sure where he was going with it. I think some of the players thought he was making himself a target for the wolves, so he was either a guardian, or a wolf himself. I was beginning to think he was a wolf myself, I had to keep checking the roster. Of course, he was a guardian and invulnerable to all except the hell hound…and lynchings, but no one seem to pay any attention to him until near the end. He was right on the money about NOT removing the silver bullet from Lesrae’s body. Anyone familiar with werewolf movies knows that’s a bad idea.

Aramike was a genius. I don’t know how, but somehow he conned a guardian into protecting a player on his recommendation—then Aramike, the hell hound, took them both out! When he PMed me his choice for night 4, he said he was afraid people were on to him. I thought, hell, he’s the most dangerous guy in the game and he’s like the invisible man.

Jimbuna was a very loyal U-boat captain. “.....let me ask but a few questions here. Who has stood by his men from the outset whilst everyone else was felt in the relative comfort zone over the early days seeing the U-boat crew crew being picked off one by one? Remember.....the first three victims were my crewmen.” Yeah, but four of the werewolves also just happened to be from you crew! Oh, wait, you had no way of knowing that. Jim was cagey and managed to have the last seven players doing his bidding, without putting himself out there by voting. In fact, Jim was skipping the voting process or waiting till the last minute to commit himself, and he got away with it. Watch this guy!

Penelope seemed determine to take control of the game and win it for the humans, and she pretty much did. Right at the end, all the posturing and head games was almost too much for her, but she hung on to survive. I loved the way she started the rumor that the mayor's election was rigged; plus she put Jimbuna's booger fantasy into a dream sequence and wrenched the story back on track. Oh, BTW, did anyone catch that I inserted a big chunk of a Churchill speech into one of Penelope's speeches in one of the narratives?

Weiss Pinguin was very cool and stayed under the radar until the end. He got caught in a vise between Penelope and Nisgeis and almost got lynched on Day 7.

Mookie was another stealth player, he managed to get through the entire hunt without a single lynch vote! And he voted in every lynch poll, usually early. I think this guy has done this before.

Nisgeis was a one man wrecking crew in the beginning, killing the first casualty in the game, Raptor1, and going on to score kills against Laufen zum Ziel and stabiz. Then his luck ran out and he friendly fired Task Force and Firewall, and then stubbed his toe against Guardians Mookie and Super Market.

Chad, UnderseaCpl, and Hitman all did a marvelous job in their roles. Hitman is such a respectable guy, it seemed hard for the other players to imagine him as a werewolf. Undersea wonderfully attended to the comatose Letum and did a lot (for me) to keep the story moving along.

Oberon was very ingenius and took a lot of pride and initiative with his character. You may notice in the story, he posted he found some Aconitum flowers and used them to check if Penelope was a werewolf !

Aconitum flowers, also known as wolfsbane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aconitum
"The wolfsbane flower was used to identify supposed werewolves. If the flower cast a yellow shadow on the suspected shape-shifter's chin, the werewolf test was positive."


He PMed me with this bit:
Quote:

Oberon has just presented Fraulein Grey with a bunch of Aconitum flowers he found outside the school. Aconitum also goes by the name Wolfsbane and was supposedly used to identify werewolves, the test is if the shadow of the flower on the persons chin is yellow, then that person is a werewolf.



He came up with this on his on. Fair enough, good initiative without breaking the story, so I gave him a bonus point; I replied: "Her chin is not yellow."


In the end, I was afraid the game was going to go into a stall. With only 6 players, the number of posts naturally was much fewer than when we started with 26. I worried that smaller number of posts would give the appearance that the game was getting stale, but the surviving Five managed to pull it together and lynch the last werewolf!

Well, I tried to cover everything I could think of with this recap, and I'm open to any specific questions. Maybe after a few weeks, we can orgainize another game like this!

Neal

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Mookie was another stealth player, he managed to get through the entire hunt without a single lynch vote! And he voted in every lynch poll, usually early. I think this guy has done this before.

I want to help run the next one.

[A Very Super Market]

Aww, but helping run things would leave you out of the game...

[baggygreen]

Thats ok, I'll take his spot

[Weiss Pinguin]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

The firing squad took aim and in a blast, ended his life. A small object, apparently dislodged by the bullets, falls from his breast pocket. Nokia the Innkeep walks over and picks it up.
“It is a small silver talisman…does anyone know what to make of this?” he asks.
“Aye,” says mookiemookie, the postman and new head of the village. “I would say that is a Guardian piece, and look, it has your name scrawled on it, Nokia.”
The color drained from Nokia’s face. In disgust, he threw the tiny silver piece as far as he could. The crowd look around; at the mortal man dead at the post, at each other, at the woods, and finally, at the ominous darkening sky.

I waited for someone to “find and retrieve the talisman.” When that didn’t happen, I picked a human from random: Super Market. I PMed him that he had picked up the talisman and would now serve as a Guardian.

WAT

You mean I could have picked that up and become a guardian?! Darn, how cool would it have been to actually be able to do something besides gossip...

I envy you, Super market!

[A Very Super Market]

Hee hee, I was also a seer for one night as well. Neal got confuzzled and thought I was checking UnderseaLcpl. The only reason I actually trusted him, since I was trying to be a loner as long as possible.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Aramike was a genius. I don’t know how, but somehow he conned a guardian into protecting a player on his recommendation—then Aramike, the hell hound, took them both out! When he PMed me his choice for night 4, he said he was afraid people were on to him. I thought, hell, he’s the most dangerous guy in the game and he’s like the invisible man.

Aramike was an obvious ****ing traitor and I had him figured from the moment Gorduz died.
Why on earth it took two more days to lynch him is utterly beyond my thought capacity. Imo, it is not wise for a werewolf to try to pass himself off as a seer in the face of an organized investigative effort.

That being said, Aramike is very smart. Somehow, he knew(or appeared to know) that I was the leader of the investigation, despite my telling him that I was only carrying out my superiors' orders when I questioned him. Either I am a poor liar, or Aramike is very perceptive, or both.

----------------

The Investigation

Originally envisioned as "The Inquisition" I decided to abandon that name in order to avoid the negative connotations it might generate. It consisted of the members of Kamp Letze Jagd's garrison, with the exception of stabiz. JCwolf kind of faded out of it, too.

The goal was to create solid block of votes that, when combined with various methods of persuading the others, could offer a guaranteed death sentence to any who resisted, thus giving the investigation a free hand in enlisting supporters and persecuting traitors.
Needless to say, it didn't work as well as I had hoped. I was completely unable to cope with the flood of PMs, and was only able to maintain marginal control over the effort. Hitman completely escaped my notice and likely would have killed many more had I remained alive.

Our star pupil was A Very Super Market, who managed to survive the game and directly contributed to the death of Aramike (finally).

-----------

Neal's narratives and directives

To be totally honest, I usually disregarded anything Neal said completely.
As soon as he began to hint that Letum might be a werewolf, I just stopped listening. I was under the impression that he was trying to "rock the boat" so to speak.
Letum was already obviously suspicious, because he survived a werewolf attack and then Neal emphasized the possibility by giving Letum a script that would imply that he was a werewolf. Automatic disqualification in my eyes. Why ruin your own game?
Then he told me that maybe Weiss Pinguin was a werewolf because of Letum's reaction to the blood transfusion, which was also scripted. Another auto-disqual of Letum as a suspect.
That being said, I would have had Pinguin shot anyway. He was just a tad too eager to avoid the attention of the investigation.


There's my story, let's hear some others.