CoreWars 2074 (Inactive)

Game Master loimprevisto

A place for OOC discussion that we don't want to clutter the gameplay thread with...

dotting! Shall post soon. :)

You heard Master Control, whoever does that is done for!

To clarify the first challenge:

• You all have separate encrypted files
  
• You will need to work together to decrypt the information and combine it into a single file
  
• One program will then run the file, producing the solution to the challenge and crashing that program

This is basically just the flavor text for the voting process. The IC process of voting will simulate working together to crack the encryption on the file, then nominating someone to load the file. Depending on the personality of the person voted for that might involve everyone ganging up on them and forcing them to load the program, or a noble self-sacrifice.

Dot

Just letting everyone know that I'm here. I just don't have time to post at the moment. I'll be in before round end.

Updated Cast:

Ioimprevisto (GM): MCP

DougFungus: TBD 
Smashtag: harr.e.hunter 
Meowselsworth: Meowselsworth 
Mahorfeus: Answerer 
DSXMachina: Uriel Phoenix 
Treppa: IEFBR14 
Xzaral: Eldon Gorski
Bombadil: Java App 
pinvendor: tinker.dll
Chainmail: Wowbagger tIP

Thanks for that Treppa.

Meowselsworth has a theme song...

Hehehe!

I'll be away for the next day, going down to London for the Olympic Athletics.

Should be back by this time tomorrow.

There was a bit of an issue with the role assignment messages, I believe I have everything straightened out now and everyone who was affected has received a PM.

Voting will close today in 11 hours, at 2000 GMT. Any votes sent in after that will not be counted.

Sorry for lack of posting. Work is kicking my butt right now (traveling to do training). Hopefully I'll get more time, but doubt it before Monday.

I'd like to clarify another difference between this game and the previous games:

app.backup: The backup suite may protect one program from assassination every turn, but may not protect the same program on successive turns. They may also attempt to reverse engineer a program, though their methods are less efficient and they require 2 turns to determine the target's role with a 75% accuracy. Requires an enabler.

Unlike the Baner, the backup suite can perform both actions. They have to spend two full turns scanning and if they change their target after the first turn then the previous turn is wasted and they will have to spend two turn son the new target.

I screwed up the numbers assigned to people in my post.

1.1d10 ⇒ 6 = Java App

2.1d10 ⇒ 3 = Hamish Cunningham
3.1d10 ⇒ 8 = tinker.dll
4.1d10 ⇒ 5 = harr.e.hunter
5.1d10 ⇒ 10 = IEFBR14
6.1d10 ⇒ 9 = Uriel Phoenix
7.1d10 ⇒ 10 = Wowbagger tIP
8.1d10 ⇒ 6 = Java App
9.1d10 ⇒ 3 = Hamish Cunningham
10.1d10 ⇒ 1 = Wowbagger tIP

The correct list should read:

1.1d10 ⇒ 6 = Java App
2.1d10 ⇒ 3 = Hamish Cunningham
3.1d10 ⇒ 8 = tinker.dll
4.1d10 ⇒ 5 = IEFBR14
5.1d10 ⇒ 10 = Wowbagger tIP
6.1d10 ⇒ 9 = Uriel Phoenix
7.1d10 ⇒ 10 = Wowbagger tIP
8.1d10 ⇒ 6 = Java App
9.1d10 ⇒ 3 = Hamish Cunningham
10.1d10 ⇒ 1 = Answerer

This doesn't change the subsequent dice rolls, but I just wanted to make sure you knew I screwed up that list, lol.

Meowselsworth's sad cat link wouldn't load for me, but I found another link to it if anyone else is having the same problem: http://meme.wikia.com/wiki/File:Sad_Nyan_Cat

lol, that link is also non functional.

It has come to my attention that the section of rules indicating the number of each role based on players was absent from this version's recruitment section. Was that intentional or an oversight?

I was just trying to get a grasp on what the odds are for harr.e.hunter or Eldon having a special role or having been a virus.

It was left out because it wasn't set in stone until I knew how many players there would be. I felt that the 'every 5 players' milestones were not granular enough and led to too big of a swing in the odds between 14 and 15 players or 9 and 10 players.

Everyone was assigned a role of some sort, and some people had multiple roles. There were 2 viruses, 2 debuggers, a whitehat, 2 decompilers, a forensics suite, the two halves of the binary program, and a backup with two enablers.

Is the Monday/Friday/Monday voting cycle working for everyone? I went with it because it is what we used for the first few games, but if people feel that it is not enough time to vote and RP we could extend it...

That's fine for me. I think elsewhere pinvendor said he's usually away for weekends (& Doug is this week?) But if we finish on Monday when the intense voting occurs then it should be alright.

Also regularity is good for the soul.

And the bowels.

@Wowbagger: Please consign your OOC speculative posts to the OOC thread. Please.

Thanks for the fun everyone! I can't see any way out of this, so a little RP as evil tinker.dll is what we got now, lol.

Good luck to the rest of you.

Great post as the evil Tinker! I'm sure there is an avatar image that matches her new style. Starting with Alessandra's post as the wolf, the final post by the bad guys in their death throes has been a highlight of these games.

I have received a proxy vote from Uriel Phoenix and will process it unless anyone has an objection...

08:52:01 * dsx joins mafia

08:52:47 ‹dsx› hey at festival cannot access paizo
08:53:32 ‹dsx› cod someone make uriel vote for java app?
08:53:52 ‹Treppa› We can try!
08:53:57 ‹dsx› i like forgot

Last minute heads up: voting will end in 25 minutes.

Four casualties in one round, holy cow.

It was fun guys. :D

Max damage!

Should have taken the deal!!!

Who is even left alive? o_o

As I think this could be the last round, I'd like to offer to run the next game. I was thinking of either doing straight werewolves with some of my own rule tweaks, or doing prisoners in a reality TV deathmatch, among them are a couple/few killer robots. If anyone has suggestions for what they'd like to see, too, I wouldn't mind hearing about it!

What, like a Running Man game?

More like... 'Survivor' except less symbolic deaths with the putting out a torch, and more 'killer robot chopped you in half in the night' deaths.

I'm up for another game, as long as I don't have to run it :P

I'm partial to the reality TV idea.

I could see it being fun for everyone to come up with some wacky (or hardcore srs) deathmatch competitor. It could definitely work - if there's one thing I particularly appreciated about this game, it's the way that the votes and rounds have been flavored.

Although, I imagine that roles would have to be modified significantly to accommodate the scenario. I'll leave my more detailed opinions regarding this game after it's all said and done.

At any rate, I will more than likely whatever game comes next.

or doing prisoners in a reality TV deathmatch, among them are a couple/few killer robots.

+1!!!

This game is creepy similar to the Mutants on the Cold Star game. Wowbagger and Jiminy trying to find the Mutant Meows that Hamish had labeled right before getting killed. If we had Taraz and Jin it would be a mirror image.

There are some important differences, though! But I suppose we'll talk about those when this game is actually finished.

It will be funny if Death to Cats becomes the most famous red herring ever.

Like Hamish says no I meant Health to Cats - that's what you get for having a defective Babblefish. Or using your cell phone autocomplete feature while posting on the road.

Viruses were chosen randomly from the four possibilities. Two of the same type of virus would have been a valid option.

I wished we'd had more time to see how the forensics role would play out. One of my considerations was:

What if everyone Immediately declared their role publicly, so at the very least the debuggers and backups would not be voted out?
That would leave a 50/50 split, where it would be a race with the viruses vs. everyone else... and they'd still have to worry about the binary program. Seemed balanced.

What did people think of the major changes this time around? Probabilistic lovers? Roles not announced at death?

Any major issues with balance? I made a mistake when I was sending out the role PMs that resulted in The Answerer being a whitehat as well as an enabler, and I'm worried that might have tipped the balance toward the apps... but it was still a very close game even with the Binaries accidentally giving themselves away. In future games I'd recommend allowing those who are voted out to write their going away scene and PM it to the GM so it can be approved as spoiler-free and posted as an epilogue to the vote results so we won't have to worry about confusion due to a last-minute change in the vote or whitehat effects.

I think it would have been better to not know whether the Lovers/binary role was included or not. I'm glad we did not know the types of viruses.

The debuggers got the exact same erroneous results every time, which made it obvious that they were in error. Mixing up the virus types in the results would have been more confusing.

I'm rather curious about whether I was scanned as blackhat, as was said in the game, or if I was scanned as proxy when I was successfully scanned? That whole setup was to be advantageous to me if someone scanned me, because I'd come up as proxy and people were looking for blackhat!

You were scanned as blackhat, and we didn't know of the exact viral roles. Of course *everyone* scanned as blackhat!

I do feel as though I was in quite the advantageous position. On one hand, right off the bat I knew that three of the applications including myself could not have possibly been viruses, since I knew the identity of both my fellow enabler and the one whom I was enabling.

The surprise that came was when Uriel accidentally exposed himself as a binary program, which I assume he announced since the vote was against him, and he did not know that I was the whitehat. Ironically, had this not come up, I would have continued to vote in his defense, likely giving the viruses a huge advantage.

It seems like Hamish and I were derezzed simultaneously by pure coincidence. I can't help but find it funny.

This one was much closer. Hamish saved the day as Java App scanned as a virus. Luckily JavaApp asked to be scanned again and established a solid voting record.

Well done and well balanced. With the communication rules, the enabler dynamic, and yes, even the binary program dynamic, it was quite exciting. Kudos to the GM on this one. Well done concept flawlessly executed with great flavor text.

Also, I think the viri hit their targets quite effectively. Having debugger with a good role definitely adds to their power. (Though they scanned wrong more than right this game)

I like the rule of no PMs during the game (except for the special roles that permit that), having everything play out on the boards makes for a better game. I don't think I'll ever like the binary/twins/lovers role because of the chance to completely unbalance the game, but I will admit that the way this game played out with Tinker and Uriel was great, so I'll concede that I could be wrong in my assessment of that role(s). I have to give huge props to Meows, cheezeburgerz for you, these last three games have all ended with your demise and you remain the feline face of grace, very well played little Meowselsworth!

The thing I worried about as a virus was everyone coming forward and just stating their roles. In that case, I would have been forced to state a non-virus role, which means I would have had to claim the same role as someone else. In the best case scenario for the viruses, this would mean each virus claimed a different duplicate role, and that duplicate role did not also exist in one of the preconnected networks (like with the Answerer being an enabler and whitehat). Indeed, most did come forward, and in the end, it was people who were publically exposed the whole game versus myself. I had to conceive of a plausible lie, and backup was the only role left unaccounted for. I knew it was Hammish. Hammish's death was more of an advantage in terms of me taking his place than it was because he wanted cats to die. I almost wanted him to live after that statement! With the enablers all dead and the protector gone, then and only then could I plausibly assume a role. Complete openness would have been hard to beat.

I'm a bit sad nobody was taken into my carefully constructed deception though! That was the best possible lie!

Also, in the stuttered speech paragraph, the last spoken by Meows this round, if you count the letters, the letter is lower case if and only if its numerical position is prime!

It was a great lie, Meows. I think there was too much information given about roles. If we only knew the number of viruses and the number of apps and had no information about the absence/presence of a binary, it would have been very challenging. In that case, though, I think we would have had to know infection status upon derezz.

Wheeeeeheeeeeheeee!!

Recruitment thread for my new game is up!