ESPIONAGE: Campaign Round - DETECTIVES AND CIVILIANS WIN!

[shinichi'sapprentice]

@REAL DETECTIVES: WHO EXACTLY DID YOU GUYS CLEAR AND WHEN? kinda know Jecka's already but Fujiwara, i'm lookin' at you xD

@Day 4, when Jecka, the REAL DETECTIVE, was killed, what was going on your mind Fujiwara?

@Jd-! man! thank you! @__@ THOUGH, WHAT THE HYPE WAS YOUR PLAN AT THE START OF Day 4?! I NEEDZ TO KNOWZ!

@dumytru! my sleep-deprived buddy! xD o/\o

@Kaito Lady: aside from Jd-, i seriously considered you being a possible REAL detective! so, good job on what you did even if you probably don't know what you did? xd

@MoonRaven: phew! xd

@Jellitto: thanks so much for this!

...

HOW IN THE WORLD DID THE OTHER SPY FIGURE OUT THAT I WAS NOT REALLY THE DETECTIVE?! @_@

This one theory came to my mind this morning after I had seen the current situation:
D3, the other spy tried to kill Raifuujin and that way understood that she was the other spy. Then when you said you had cleared Raifuujin, both spies knew you were lying and didn´t want to waste a kill on you.

As for my list, I do have Jecka there.

@Jecka: ...you were being obvious as a detective and i tried to save you but you died anyway ;_; though with that, i got to know that Raifuujin is a spy ;-; \o/

@Osaka Detective: what is going on in your mind?

@k11chi! btw on D1, i gave you and MDavid a +1 vote as a gift for your first time playing Espionage! xd hope to see you in future rounds maybe!

@Raifuujin: nice 'list' you got there... xd

@Raiden: too bad you're not spy this time! xD

@Stopwatch: again, sorry for the aggressiveness! i needed you to talk if you were the real detective! and also thanks for opposing so hard you made me reconsider and go crazy xD

@Togop: man! you gotta stop dying Day 1! T-T see you next round!

@Nemomon! I AM SO VERY SORRY! especially at that time when i kinda got rude. *accepts the green tea now even though i still prefer coffee* xD *gives beer to Nemomon* o/\o

@THE SPIES! GREETINGS YOU BOTH! CAN YOU SHARE WHO YOU KILLED AND WHEN? AND WHAT WAS GOING ON IN YOUR MINDS?

@MDavid!! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR PLAYING MAN! THAT WAS AWESOME SPY PERFORMANCE!! SEE YOU NEXT ROUND

*can now go to sleep*

\o/

*beaten by so many posts *goes to read*

[shinichi'sapprentice]

OH! I FORGOT Xd

@Edogawa4869: THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS ROUND POSSIBLE!

[shinichi'sapprentice]

XD @ awards

So I was thinking about it, and I think I know what it was.
But before I answer that.....

So what happened on day 2, as I said earlier in the game:
I came home (kinda crappy day because too much work) and I said, "oh it's already 2, I gotta remember to send in my votes and inv." *Some stuff comes up*
5:30-ish "omg Espionage DDDD:" *multiple head desks*
So yeah.

Now the thing I think SA was asking: Why did I say "Aww" for Raiden and not the others? Because I thought that Raiden was town, but I didn't want to say it unless I was sure. The only people I got back were Yuri and Jd- as "Not Spy"

@Moon: no I didn't clear you. Actually you were one of my suspects for part of the game

ah! damn! xD i thought you cleared Raiden! i was reading all your posts even before you were killed and thought that was a clue

[Jd-]

I have never and I mean NEVER been so interested in the outcome of a round before--even after dying like four phases ago! I've been keeping up with every post (even SA's helpful-yet-gigantic Thought Tomes™) and all of the results as they're posted. As I told Edo via PM, this kind of became its own TV show this week (and was more exciting than ones I've been keeping up with, even). I didn't hear from him or anyone who the remaining Spy was, so I was playing along silently here.

I mean... wow. Seriously. This came down to the last hours of the last phase with everything on the line. We've had a lot of really fun rounds on the forums in the past, but... Nothing quite like this. The best part of these Espionage rounds is that they write their own storylines as they go on. You can't make this stuff up. Very well done, everyone! It was unbelievably fun to watch.

---

Edogawa4869: The perfect GM, my son. Really a fantastic job keeping up with all of the numbers and ensuring all of the rules were in place for all possible outcomes. He really took a pretty abstract concept for a round and made sure it went off without a hitch. Three cheers!

MDavid: You did a really, really, really excellent job. I wasn't sure who to believe in the end.

Fujiwara: Thank you for not being a Spy! That was my chief worry from the moment I died, because if you had been, everything would've been done for. Finally, we were on the same team. BFFs foeva!

shinichi'sapprentice: There is no doubt, as far as I'm concerned, that SA is a madman. Lying about being the Detective and then still surviving all the way to the end! He is both adept and out of his mind. You can only respect the tenacity.

Osaka Detective: Apologies for using your inactiveness against you. The full story is replicated below. Hopefully you'll trust I had our side's best interests in mind at the time.

MoonRaven: I thought you did quite well at helping set yourself and SA on the right path at the end.

Raifuujin: Seeing you voted out suddenly was a shocker; you really were a pretty quintessential invisible Spy.

Stopwatch: Interesting story for your part in the game. Typed in detail below.

(I have more notes to mention, but I gotta go now, so I'll leave this part of the post here and post more later. Onward!)

---

Here are a couple of interesting little notes from around when I died:

During Day 2, riiiiight at the end, Stopwatch posted something that she deleted that could've very easily been misconstrued as a post from a Spy. Something akin to: "Jd-, have you ever considered why I am doing this? You had better co-operate. ^^" There were still a few hours left, and I had the message on my screen. On a hunch, I opened another tab to see if she'd deleted it, possibly realizing that it could be taken in all the wrong ways. Sure enough, it disappeared. At that point, I could've used that to have her arrested even that phase (if not then definitely the next, even if I died--maybe especially if I died), but... I would never expect the Spy to give themselves "away" like that, and since it was deleted so quickly, I figured she also assumed it would be taken the wrong way. If the voting strategy were to be hijacked by the Spies after I died, I thought it would be helpful to have a wayward voter out there to shake them up. So, in essence... I was ready to support someone in breaking up my own strategy in the event it went horribly wrong--if that's not Espionage, I dunno what is! The post did give me a little pause, and while I still kept her up there on my list of Spy suspects until further notice, I definitely wasn't about to see her arrested if she could later come back and help save the game.

As for the strategy itself: I figured that someone would propose this strategy eventually, and I suspect that when I made the post, most of the players came to realize that we didn't really have any choice and most of us were thinking about it in some form leading up to that point, anyway. There was one specific thing that MDavid was quite right about, and that was that choosing Osaka Detective as the potential Spy was strange given that Osaka Detective was so inactive. As I'm sure many suspected (specifically Fujiwara, if my reading between the lines of her post was correct), the whole thing was more of a "there's no harm in doing this strategy this way in order to cement it as a community initiative going forward" instead of just "this is the best way to get a Spy, right now". I was upfront, all along, about how this would in no way guarantee us getting a Spy in any way. What we really needed, in my opinion, was simply an initiative that could be called upon for future phases. Since I was almost definitely going to die after making myself such a non-Spy, I wanted to try to leave at least that one thing behind. It working once would be proof that it could be used again, so removing the random element seemed like our best course of action for the time.

Getting everyone to go along with it was not likely, so when I saw Stopwatch's skeptical post from before I detailed the idea, I decided the safest bet was to go with the most inactive player that I could frame a story around to help get the strategy in motion. This way, even if the inactive target showed up later for a few minutes, unless they coordinated directly with the person who opposed the strategy, it was unlikely they would be able to disrupt it entirely. Conveniently, Osaka Detective had voted in a way that could be construed to be a Spy's "blending" behavior, so I took that and ran with it. In all, Espionage is about trust, but I would never say it's simply about "the truth". What you have to trust, as far as I'm concerned, is that people will act in the interests they are purporting are their own, not necessarily act exactly as they put forward. The information you put out there is being consumed not just by your allies but also your enemies, so there has to be a nice balance between those two ends of the spectrum. That ambiguity was used really well by shinichi'sapprentice in this round, as we all saw. He made an art form out of that, even.

After I died, I messaged Edo to say that it'd be a lot of fun if SA was one of the Spies, along with Stopwatch and possibly Fujiwara, the latter of which was my greatest fear in the round. I decided to go with my gut, earlier, and trust Fujiwara 100%, thus why I put as much support behind her as possible. If she had been a Spy with SA, it really would've been a bloodbath for our side (just imagine a round in which those two are the Spies together. Woah, dude) As it turned out, though, we had the perfect combination of Spies in MDavid and Raifuujin: two players that you normally wouldn't suspect and have a lot going for them, in playstyle, that can really help them suceed as Spies. You all did excellent jobs in all of your roles. More cheers!

---

So many players did a great job at representing their roles and trying to win. Both the new players and old had a really nice showing. All in all, a very fun round to observe and in which to be a participant.

I had intended for this to be my last forum game due to other commitments and stuff. However, this was so much fun and so interesting that I think there may be a new round idea on the horizon... and, perhaps, I'll GM that next round? I have an idea for what could tentatively be called the Election Round... If you guys are interested, we can surely proceed--perhaps as soon as everyone's free from their exams and whatnot.

[Iwamoto Yuri]

Yes, this game was really intense, but I'm curious to see how it can evolve.

[shinichi'sapprentice]

*got told to eat first* *will post more later* ;D

[MDavid]

My apologies to my victims.

Day 1: Togop
Day 2: Raiden
Day 3: Jd-
Day 4: Iwamoto Yuri
Day 5: Fujiwara

[Edogawa4869]

*got told to eat first* *will go to bed immediately afterwards*

Fixed.

[Raiden]

@Raiden: too bad you're not spy this time! xD

... because you wanted to be my 'accidental informant' this round, right? But really, I was secretly a third spy! I had just successfully infiltrated the town, and even fooled the GM into thinking I was a mere civilian. 8D

@The Spies: I would still very much like to hear your side of the game ─ strategies & tactics for kills and blending in, how you found the detectives, etc.

@Jd-: Election Round? :O You got me curious now. *_* Also, more curiousity, who did you think was the spy before the final phase was posted and everything revealed!?

[Kaito Lady]

@Kaito Lady: aside from Jd-, i seriously considered you being a possible REAL detective! so, good job on what you did even if you probably don't know what you did? xd

I'm actually curious as to what lead people to think that :x

Also, thanks Edo for this awesome round!

[Jellitto]

O.O I ACTUALLY DID THE RIGHT THING!

And that story was awesome!

[dumytru]

Thanks for GMing, Edo!!

@Fuji: viewtopic.php?f=30&t=12569&start=420#p843960
I wasn't really sure about it until the end, but: viewtopic.php?f=30&t=12569&start=435#p844023
Stop and SA are my last suspects, so your post did its job.

@Raiden, it might've been obvious for you, but for us, who couldn't trust anybody, wasn't that obvious.

And I have more to say, maybe I'll write some more later

Also, @SA: nice going there. You were awesome.

[Jd-]

Off the top: Someone asked earlier (I think) who I thought was the final Spy before the phase change. Personally, I wasn't sure who it could be, but I did kind of want it to be SA just because of the pure theater he was putting on. I'm really glad it wasn't him in the end, though, because his performance there as a civilian was way more interesting in retrospect as a good guy than bad. I was pretty sure it wasn't Stopwatch, Yuri, or dumytru, but I don't think I'd have settled on MDavid as the final target alone even if I were still in. He was doing really well at hiding it. Speaking of which...

My apologies to my victims.

Day 1: Togop
Day 2: Raiden
Day 3: Jd-
Day 4: Iwamoto Yuri
Day 5: Fujiwara

EVIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

(Really nice job!)

@Jd-! man! thank you! @__@ THOUGH, WHAT THE HYPE WAS YOUR PLAN AT THE START OF Day 4?! I NEEDZ TO KNOWZ!

My idea going into that, if I survived (which started to feel less and less likely and then I woke up deadzorz), was to ask for a Detective to identify themselves if we had another massacre. If we did, I wanted to know who we could trust, outright, and who we couldn't. A crazy move, surely, but then you took it in a completely different (and ultimately much more compelling) direction by just pretending to be a Detective. We were kind of on the same path there. I'm still incredibly impressed you survived faking that--a masterful turn of events, my friend.

@A comment on Jd-'s voting strategy: Biggest flaw of the system, as so cleverly demonstrated by both Stop and Fuji during the game, it's too easy for one player alone to manipulate the voting by changing their vote in secret; whether that's done intentionally or not matters little.

I would love to hear KaiRai and MDavid's angle of the game!
How did you decide your kills (what was your decision to kill me, MDavid? Testing to see if I was bluffing?! 8D)

I only got to see Fujiwara's change right there at the time along with everyone else, but I was already certain Stopwatch was going to try to stop it even before I mentioned it in public. In fact, SA made a post saying that Stopwatch may not vote or something and I already had a reply ready that said something along the lines of: "There is no possible way that is happening. She'll vote and we'll have to deal with that when it happens." I had a feeling that if I died and left it at that, she would be vilified further and we'd just lose another civilian to an arrest later. Restraint turned out to be an even more important strategy in this round (given the earlier deleted post I mentioned in my former write-up). As mentioned in the aforementioned post, I ultimately settled on Osaka Detective (one of the most if not the most inactive players) in order to offset the prospect of having someone just try to give +5 in the event we didn't get everyone else onboard. We had to gamble a bit, but thankfully everything worked out nicely.

Annnnnnnd as for the Election Round... I shall jot up the rules whenever this one settles in and our minds are less blown. This was a really fun experience; I actually had more fun watching it than I did playing, given everything that was happening for these last few phases. GMing a round sounds like it could be a lot of run, and hopefully everyone from this round will get to join if they have time--and will be accompanied by former GM Edogawa4819348!? MAKE IT SO!

[Iwamoto Yuri]

don't think I'd have settled on MDavid as the final target alone even if I were still in. He was doing really well at hiding it.

A
haha
hahaha
ha

No he really wasn't :V
He acted weird from end to start even though he was active. I'm actually kind of surprised I was the only one who picked up on that.

[Jd-]