1561

Or just have a rule so that fire can’t put evil first and then give them OC or EC ;)

1562

I did think about him at first but then finally had a chance to sit and work out some ‘What if?’ scenarios based on certain folks being Evil. RH and Aceris started standing out as pretty good at that point. rob was just TOO quiet…and never really answered my challenges. And kept invoking RH’s name for some reason.

1563

My bet was on clyve for #4 at that point.

1564

The vote on 2A looked bad, but I was encouraged that Joe had voted for it and Lantz against it. That combination made me think there was lkely not a visible evil party on the team. Still, it looked stinky, and I was also troubled by the grief I would get from Rowe if I didn’t NC the team, after I gave him the same kind of grief in a DIS-similar situation in the last game.

My call for input from the rest of the players was genuine, I really was looking to understand what other people thought. But Craig and Rowe’s responses decided me, in the following ways:

Craig’s response at #460 (and Aceris comments at #523, which I will get to) were for me the key to the rest of the game.

First, in Craig’s analysis of who might be evil on the team, and why, he never even mentioned Knightsaber’s name. This jumped out at me in a big way, because, of the 4 people on the team, Knightsaber was the least well vetted, having done nothing but tell people I was good. RH had confirmed Lantz. Aceris had dealt the cards to good players. It didn’t seem possible that Craig was ignoring KS because Craig was good; rather, it seemed clear he was trying to steer the conversation away from that possibility.

Second, and even more important, for no good reason I could see, Craig wandered into a thought experiment about whether Joe might be Merlin. Again, see Scott’s first rule of loyal knights. No good knight speculates blindly about Merlin’s identity - there is absolutely no good that can come from it. So Craig was unalterably evil in my view.

Rowe’s response #461 doesn’t strike me now as that bad, but at the time I saw it as nothing more than Rowe trying to taunt me into NC’ing the team, and making suspicious noises about me, without really offering anything else. With my confirmation bias fully in place, I thought it made Rowe more likely evil.

At this point I thought 1) the team might be good, 2) if not then KS was the evil party, but I could not convince people without some evidence in the form of a failed quest, and 3) NCing the team wasn’t going to produce another good team, it was just going to waste an NC card. So I decided to let the quest go forward.

1565

It’s always fun to read about all the mind games and feints and behind-the-scenes thinking that’s going on while I’m just trying to figure out at least ONE other Good knight!

1566

I was giving you grief mainly because I thought you were Evil. Obviously this game was unlike ANY other game we’ve played before! :D

The bit about Craig and Merlin stood out to me also at the time. I didn’t 100% know Craig was Evil but I penciled him somewhere around that time.

re: #461 - I still can’t believe Evil was voting Yes on a clean team when it was an automatic loss if it went through (and wasn’t NC-ed of course.) Just seemed too risky of a proposition from my viewpoint.

1567

Yeha, I wasn’t seriously trying to call him Merlin. Rather I was trying to discredit him as evil. Going back I should have played it differently. But I was really trying to gin up something against Joe. Not enough to tar him, I actually thought he might be evil!, but enough to make it more likely I was good.

It was a poor choice of phrasing on my end.

The other bit, about steering to Knightsaber? Now you know how hilariously wrong that was. I was doing nothing of the sort. It was my honest assesment of who was likely evil, and who was not. I didn’t preclude Knight, but I did weigh it the other way. Funny how that changed for you who did know something I didn’t.

1568

Of course, I couldn’t explain my suspicions of Craig or Rowe clearly, because the reasons pointed to Joe as Merlin, so I was stuck looking a bit unreasonable. That said, I realized that, if I were right about at least one of them, and that one wasn’t Mordred, not having reasons actually gave Merlin cover by making me look like Merlin. That’s why I said a few times that I had ‘reasons’, but didn’t offer a lot of hard evidence as I couldn’t.

When the team failed, I felt it was likely KS who was to blame. Then Aceris posted #523. I realized that he saw what I saw in Craig’s post, at least with respect to the invisible KS, and perhaps even with respect to the Merlin talk. This convinced me that Aceris was likely good, and made my suspicion of KS all the stronger as a result. At this point, I wanted the leadership back in the hands of good. Having RH SL the leadership meant at least 2 consecutive good leaders, and I had the NC card handy for after that. I didn’t want to give away my suspicions of KS yet, so I kind of nodded at Aceris as the possible guilty party.

This leads to the attempts to put a team together for quest 3. I had some knowledge and some suspicions which were at least supported by my knowledge, so I felt I had to offer #589 as advice to RH in putting together a team. Of course, this lead to demands for evidence from me, which I couldn’t supply. Of course, being wrong about Rowe, I ended up recommending cards for Rob!

This leads to a few rounds of recriminations, etc, and then teams get named, get evil votes, get NCed, etc. I’m more or less lost, trying to pretend I’m Merlin, certain about Lantz, mostly certain about Craig, very suspicious of Rowe, and otherwise lost. Feeling pressed to explain myself, I post #679, which leads to Aceris’s post #704.

This post blew my mind. It had not really occurred to me that I knew something no one else did (besides knowing Merlin) - I knew that Lantz was not Oberon, that he was a visible evil who could see other evils. Knowing this, I had very good reason to believe that RH was not a visible evil, and good reason to believe Aceris was not one. And, since the teams were all garnering evil votes, there had to be visible evil people on those teams, not just Oberon.

Knowing this would allow us to identify suspicious parties to avoid. Of course, I couldn’t say that I knew Lantz wasn’t Oberon (because Merlin couldn’t know that), so I had to convince people to assume it as the most likely alternative, which led to my post #747. Basically, Lantz was a visible evil, so KS was a visible evil, and one of Clyve or Rowe was a visible evil. I was only half right, but incredibly lucky in that the evil I missed was Mordred (who Merlin can’t see), and the evil that I caught was Craig / Oberon, who is visible to Merlin. So my Merlin act wasn’t compromised by the mistake.

1569

From here things degenerated into a long wrangle / negotiation to agree on a good team, which I think we never really got right until the end. I think my Lantz / KS / Craig suspicions were shared, but we couldn’t agree on who the good people were. I tried to sell a safe group (#1080) but was of course wrong about Rob still. When Clyve refused to NC a team, and Rowe NCed it, I started shifting my suspicions away from Rowe and over to Clyve, but I really couldn’t shake the idea that Rowe was evil at the same time, so I think I was probably incoherent in my thinking. I NCed a team to keep Rowe from getting the cards, but then he managed to put together a safe team at 3e. I was completely blown away when Rob revealed his evil nature. Again, luckily he was Mordred, so it didn’t hurt my Merlin cred.

Then, waiting for the stabbing, I was really worried at Joe as a dark horse candidate for Merlin. I figured the objection to me, if there was one, would be that I was way too obvious for Merlin; but that this would point people toward Aceris, who in a big way turned the game around with a few clear, cogent arguments at the right time. But then people were naming Joe as a suspect, and I was on pins and needles all night.

1570

Yeah, funny. I could see you thinking KS was less likely, but I couldn’t account for you not even mentioning him as a suspect unless you were trying to help cover him.

1571

Honestly I would have taken any contrarian position with you, to encourage discussion, as I knew you were Merlin or Percival. It just so happened that contrarian also meshed with my honest thoughts. I thought ReptileHouse was the bad apple.

1572

I think we’re the two most aggressive players so we always seem to butt heads. We started off so well in your first game too! I was Merlin, you were Percival (or so I thought) - fighting back the Evil hordes & all. Actually I guess your first game was when I was Oberon, leading off, and had to Establish Confidence but luckily picked you. And then the game went kaput and had to be restarted after we did a great job early on.

1573

I was planning to SL pretty much no matter what. I was hoping asking for guidance would help me figure out both who was good and who was, or wasn’t, thinking along the same lines I was and to guage how my action would tilt people in thinking one way or the other about my loyalty. Your response helped quite a lot. I went back and forth on Craig throughout the game, and this was at a downswing towards evil point in that dynamic. I did not want him to get card distribution, plus while in analysis I couldn’t positively finger Aceris as good, my gut and was saying he was, so I liked the idea of him naming a team after I did.

This leads to the attempts to put a team together for quest 3. I had some knowledge and some suspicions which were at least supported by my knowledge, so I felt I had to offer #589 as advice to RH in putting together a team. Of course, this lead to demands for evidence from me, which I couldn’t supply. Of course, being wrong about Rowe, I ended up recommending cards for Rob!

rob wasn’t going to get a card. I got lucky here, as there wasn’t much evidence, but I had him pegged as evil from very early on. I thought he was the assassin and trolling for merlin w/ his references to my posts.

I was suspicious one of clyve/rowe was evil, but had no idea which, and had a glimmer of hope neither was. Thus I figured one NC for each of them seemed a way to help sort which was which. I got lucky and landed cards on two good knights. The Eye to you was easy since I’d by this point decided that if you were evil, I was going to go down in a blaze of glory as victim to your masterstroke subterfuge plays.

This post blew my mind. It had not really occurred to me that I knew something no one else did (besides knowing Merlin) - I knew that Lantz was not Oberon, that he was a visible evil who could see other evils. Knowing this, I had very good reason to believe that RH was not a visible evil, and good reason to believe Aceris was not one. And, since the teams were all garnering evil votes, there had to be visible evil people on those teams, not just Oberon.

Knowing this would allow us to identify suspicious parties to avoid. Of course, I couldn’t say that I knew Lantz wasn’t Oberon (because Merlin couldn’t know that), so I had to convince people to assume it as the most likely alternative, which led to my post #747. Basically, Lantz was a visible evil, so KS was a visible evil, and one of Clyve or Rowe was a visible evil. I was only half right, but incredibly lucky in that the evil I missed was Mordred (who Merlin can’t see), and the evil that I caught was Craig / Oberon, who is visible to Merlin. So my Merlin act wasn’t compromised by the mistake.

Exploiting the visibility arguments in voting patterns was a lightning bolt for me. Amusing since it was pretty much the same sorts of logic I was using to, incorrectly, finger Lantz as Oberon. But it really opened up for me how to use the votes to infer things more than who individually trusted who. It ended up painting clyve as falsely evil in my mind (sorry clyve!), but even so, it was a whole new set of tools.

1574

Other thoughts:

I think Lantz was perfect at stirring the pot, and I also agree he got the outcome he wanted, KS being trusted enough to spike a quest.

ReptileHouse made great contributions, helping my thinking a lot along the way. I recall really trying to find a way to say ‘trust me, Lantz is not Oberon!’ But I guess that got through ok.

Aceris contributions to the team were, for me anyway, key. Great game!

Knightsaber did a great job of keeping me in his camp until he failed his quest, at which point he began to look suspect.

Joe’s Merlin-hiding was terrific. I kept trying to take some direction from his votes, but even knowing what I knew, I could not get any read from it.

Really a gripping game, at least for me. Thanks to all the players.

And thanks again, fire!

1575

Funny, I never caught that! Not at all.

1576

Agreed. I thought going in that openly evil Lantz would be the most fun. Nope. This was at least as good, if not better.

ReptileHouse made great contributions, helping my thinking a lot along the way. I recall really trying to find a way to say ‘trust me, Lantz is not Oberon!’ But I guess that got through ok.

Thankee, sir. I really enjoyed our back-and-forths. And yeah, eventually it sunk into my thick skull. I didn’t internalize it enough, unfortunately, but oh well.

Aceris contributions to the team were, for me anyway, key. Great game!

Knightsaber did a great job of keeping me in his camp until he failed his quest, at which point he began to look suspect.

Joe’s Merlin-hiding was terrific. I kept trying to take some direction from his votes, but even knowing what I knew, I could not get any read from it.

Really a gripping game, at least for me. Thanks to all the players.

And thanks again, fire!

Completely agree. Absolutely fantastic all around and great fun.

1577

I’m always strong when sheer dumb luck is with me.[emoji6]

1578

This in spades. A couple games ago I thought I’d pulled off a coup, maneuvering 2 evils onto Quest 4. But I was wrong about Oberon! So there was only 1 evil, and we lost.

1579

Very, very wise. Well done!

1580

I think you were right not to - it would have outed you given the squeeze we had on that quest, with the Spotlight on RH.