Yet another Assassins roundup
Nov. 19th, 2012 12:31 amLooks like I'm not getting any actual work done tonight, so may as well write this up.
So Justine ran a game of Assassins in Truth House this past week. It was... kind of a bungle. Not so much due to a particularly bad ruleset as to a failure of such basic principles as have a full ruleset decided on beforehand which you have actually thought through and don't change in the rules in the middle and announce when someone has won the game and you should probably at least people know the starting roster[0]... yeah. I hadn't played in previous games of Assassins here due to misgivings about the rulesets used, but this time I decided to play anyway, and found that not only did I not like the ruleset, but it was mismanaged in addition!
Still, despite the mismanagement, it was fun. It went pretty long -- it started Monday, and ended sometime before Saturday night (I don't know exactly when due to lack of announcement). It started out fast and bloody, actually; it was just the final few that took a long time.
(Actually, after sending out initial targets, Justine apparently didn't write down who they were, and had to ask people to email her with their targets. Angus and Ryan deliberately replied to the whole mailing list, with false targets. Well, Angus was pretty obvious about it, but for a time it was unclear whether Ryan had messed up or not.)
My initial target was Brittney. Not an easy target -- we were playing with a witness rule, a rather stricter one than we used back in Tufts House; nobody could witness the kill. Brittney was hard to find alone. Didn't manage it on Monday.
What did happen on Monday was that Ryan Tea came to me looking to trade information. He'd been playing central intelligence, telling people his target in exchange for theirs. He needed me to complete the circle, and offered me a better deal -- he'd tell me who was hunting me in exchange for me telling him my target. It took him a while to convince me but ultimately I went along with it. But what assurance did he have that I would tell the truth, or that his other sources had done so? Simple; he demanded to see the actual paper slip our target was written on. D'oh! Justine didn't make a "tell but don't show" rule. I didn't even think of that. So, I told him I was hunting Brittney, and he told me Felicia was hutning me. He was telling the truth about that -- though I don't know if it was true that I got a better deal than everyone else, as Marc seems to have gotten the same deal as me. (Actually, aside from the attempt at misdirection with the initial targets, people seem to have been pretty honest in general this game.)
The next day Marc texted me with something of a lead on Brittney. What did he want in exchange? I'd owe him. Well, OK. (As it happened, Marc died soon after this episode due to making an invalid kill on Cody; he decided to continue helping me anyway.)
I was in East Hall at the time but I came home to find Brittney in the kitchen with Nick. I snuck into the back of the kitchen via the basement. I made it to behind the stove and wasn't detected, but making a clean kill would be hard with Nick and now also Chad also around. And indeed Brittney did not leave herself alone in the kitchen at any time, but eventually went out into the dining room to eat. How was I to get her now?
When I heard Angus call "Fridge!" I had an idea. First I waited for Angus to leave -- with him gone, Brittney was sitting closest to the kitchen entrance. (Actually, I called in Marc to ask him to get Angus out of the area, but this turned out to be unnecessary.) When noone was looking I opened the leftovers fridge and deliberately failed to close it. I couldn't get it to stay very far open, though; people wouldn't notice it from that far away. So I propped it open with a cutting board.
Unfortunately, the plan still didn't work, because still nobody noticed the fridge was open. Even when Vijay walked into the kitchen, he failed to notice the fridge was open. Not until John Choi actually went to get something out of the fridge did anybody notice the fridge was open. At that point I abandoned the plan due to too much interference. Shortly afterward Felicia showed up and I fled.
Actually, before that I had texted Marc asking for more help -- I instructed him to observe the meat fridge, but from further away from Brittney. But he wasn't familiar with the old convention of referring to the leftovers fridge as the "meat" fridge -- it's not an accurate label, really, though we had stickers with the old inaccurate labels up on the fridges until recently -- so he didn't know what I meant. Why did I say the "meat" fridge? Because I thought I needed to be fast and "meat" is shorter than "leftovers". Why didn't I clarify later? Because, I don't know, I messed up.
So, that failed. As it happened, Brittney died later that day for unrelated reasons, making my new target Jon Fitzgerald -- an even harder target, as he's not around very much. Also that day Justine instituted an anti-turtle rule: You have to kill someone every 48 hours (starting only with the announcement of the rule) or you die. Not my preferred form, but it'll do. And, as I mentioned above, Marc also died later that day.
That night I had to grade exams, so little chance for further kills. I came back to find out that we were down to the final 6 (this Justine had announced). See, she was annoyed that people had determined the full cycle (apparently everyone knew it, though I didn't), and so declared that once we got down to 5, she would shuffle the targets. (The final 6, I would learn the next day, were me, Felicia, Noelle, Angus, Eline, and Jon Fitzgerald.)
On Wednesday shortly after dinner one more person died and the shuffle occurred. (I think it was Felicia who died, though at the time I didn't know that.) My new target was Eline -- an easier target, thankfully. (I think the full cycle was Me->Eline->Fitz->Angus->Noelle->Me; at the least, this is consistent with what I know.)
My first real attempt on her occurred after dinner that day. I thought she was in her room; to verify, I knocked on her door and hid. (I used a big plastic lid Travis left in my room to extend my reach a little for the knocking. I don't think this actually really helped any.) She answered, confirming my suspicions. Of course, I'd given away that someone was there and after her -- she could see that someone was hiding in the area and where they were, but couldn't make out enough to tell it was me -- but I figured that was OK. She'd have to go to the bathroom or something eventually, and then I'd get her. And she didn't know it was me, at least.
Eventually she did come out, not to go to the bathroom, but to go somewhere outside the house. I waited to make sure she was really leaving the room, waited for the door to close so she couldn't get in so easily, rushed at her... and saw Hannah down the hall, who had sight of the whole thing. It wouldn't be a valid kill. I tried to retreat before Eline could turn around but of course that failed and she knew it was me. I'd have to wait for later; the rules we were playing with was that anything outside Truth House property was safe (pretty lame, I know).
I was able to kill Eline sometime after midnight that night when Marc gave me a lead on her being in the kitchen. I entered through the back, verified that she was alone, and tossed the sock; she didn't even react until it hit her. (Marc also closed the doors for me before I attacked, but this didn't really affect things -- it wouldn't have been seen anyway. That said, I probably wouldn't have gotten the kill at that time without Marc, as he gave me the lead.) As it turns out she was pretty high at the time. (She didn't even notice Marc closing the doors.) Well, that's a quick way to lose. With that I made my one and only kill (and thus avoided dying at noon on Thursday). My new target? Fitzgerald again. Blech.
On Thursday I learned from Angus that he was out and we were down to the final three -- me hunting Fitz hunting Noelle hunting me. I couldn't find Fitzgerald at all. But Noelle was around, and that night I had to do midnight clean, so I'd have to worry about her getting me afterward (you had immunity during house chores).
For the final part of midnight clean I closed the doors and exited the kitchen through the back. She didn't try to get me there. Now to return to my room. Of course I went via the back stairs, as they're less good a spot for an ambush than the front stairs (if only by a little). I approached my room, looked around the corner -- and there she was, at the end of the hall, looking right at me. Crap. I probably could have made it inside had I gone for it, but I decided to flee instead, and hid out in the first floor bathroom for a minute or two (bathrooms were also safe, and who would think to look for me there in a case like this anwyay?).
Now I had to go back upstairs. But via the front stairs or the back? The front stairs remained a better spot for an ambush, but she knew I'd just come up the back. So as I caught Nate coming down the front stairs, I asked him, "Hey, is Noelle still lurking up there?". "No, she's gone," he said, while privately indicating to me that in fact she was still there. So, back stairs it was.
This left the question of whether to approach via the right or the left hallway (or even try scoping out both). I decided to approach via the right hallway as it would allow me to get to my room quicker if it came down to it. I tried to move silently but didn't do very good at this. Ultimately, it was irrelevant -- Noelle was hiding out in the alcove at the end of the right hallway. The shadows concealed her well and I didn't see her at all until she got me from several feet away. "Nate told me you were at the top of the stairs," I said. "I was," she replied. Presumably she had heard me asking. Oops.
People were surprised to find I was out -- I think Marc and I were considered something of favorites to win the game, because we took it the most seriously. So it was down to just Fitzgerald and Noelle, and since Noelle had the more recent kill, she was able to win by running out the clock. (IMO, you should be able to win by running out the clock if you have *more* kills, not a more *recent* kill, but whatever.)
So Noelle won, to everyone's surprise, turning out to be rather more formidable than expected. (Now tomorrow I had better actually get back to work...)
-Harry
[0]No starting roster, no notifications when someone died -- very hands off. I mean, not doing notifications when someone dies I can see as legit, but no starting roster? At least we were told the starting number, which was 19.
So Justine ran a game of Assassins in Truth House this past week. It was... kind of a bungle. Not so much due to a particularly bad ruleset as to a failure of such basic principles as have a full ruleset decided on beforehand which you have actually thought through and don't change in the rules in the middle and announce when someone has won the game and you should probably at least people know the starting roster[0]... yeah. I hadn't played in previous games of Assassins here due to misgivings about the rulesets used, but this time I decided to play anyway, and found that not only did I not like the ruleset, but it was mismanaged in addition!
Still, despite the mismanagement, it was fun. It went pretty long -- it started Monday, and ended sometime before Saturday night (I don't know exactly when due to lack of announcement). It started out fast and bloody, actually; it was just the final few that took a long time.
(Actually, after sending out initial targets, Justine apparently didn't write down who they were, and had to ask people to email her with their targets. Angus and Ryan deliberately replied to the whole mailing list, with false targets. Well, Angus was pretty obvious about it, but for a time it was unclear whether Ryan had messed up or not.)
My initial target was Brittney. Not an easy target -- we were playing with a witness rule, a rather stricter one than we used back in Tufts House; nobody could witness the kill. Brittney was hard to find alone. Didn't manage it on Monday.
What did happen on Monday was that Ryan Tea came to me looking to trade information. He'd been playing central intelligence, telling people his target in exchange for theirs. He needed me to complete the circle, and offered me a better deal -- he'd tell me who was hunting me in exchange for me telling him my target. It took him a while to convince me but ultimately I went along with it. But what assurance did he have that I would tell the truth, or that his other sources had done so? Simple; he demanded to see the actual paper slip our target was written on. D'oh! Justine didn't make a "tell but don't show" rule. I didn't even think of that. So, I told him I was hunting Brittney, and he told me Felicia was hutning me. He was telling the truth about that -- though I don't know if it was true that I got a better deal than everyone else, as Marc seems to have gotten the same deal as me. (Actually, aside from the attempt at misdirection with the initial targets, people seem to have been pretty honest in general this game.)
The next day Marc texted me with something of a lead on Brittney. What did he want in exchange? I'd owe him. Well, OK. (As it happened, Marc died soon after this episode due to making an invalid kill on Cody; he decided to continue helping me anyway.)
I was in East Hall at the time but I came home to find Brittney in the kitchen with Nick. I snuck into the back of the kitchen via the basement. I made it to behind the stove and wasn't detected, but making a clean kill would be hard with Nick and now also Chad also around. And indeed Brittney did not leave herself alone in the kitchen at any time, but eventually went out into the dining room to eat. How was I to get her now?
When I heard Angus call "Fridge!" I had an idea. First I waited for Angus to leave -- with him gone, Brittney was sitting closest to the kitchen entrance. (Actually, I called in Marc to ask him to get Angus out of the area, but this turned out to be unnecessary.) When noone was looking I opened the leftovers fridge and deliberately failed to close it. I couldn't get it to stay very far open, though; people wouldn't notice it from that far away. So I propped it open with a cutting board.
Unfortunately, the plan still didn't work, because still nobody noticed the fridge was open. Even when Vijay walked into the kitchen, he failed to notice the fridge was open. Not until John Choi actually went to get something out of the fridge did anybody notice the fridge was open. At that point I abandoned the plan due to too much interference. Shortly afterward Felicia showed up and I fled.
Actually, before that I had texted Marc asking for more help -- I instructed him to observe the meat fridge, but from further away from Brittney. But he wasn't familiar with the old convention of referring to the leftovers fridge as the "meat" fridge -- it's not an accurate label, really, though we had stickers with the old inaccurate labels up on the fridges until recently -- so he didn't know what I meant. Why did I say the "meat" fridge? Because I thought I needed to be fast and "meat" is shorter than "leftovers". Why didn't I clarify later? Because, I don't know, I messed up.
So, that failed. As it happened, Brittney died later that day for unrelated reasons, making my new target Jon Fitzgerald -- an even harder target, as he's not around very much. Also that day Justine instituted an anti-turtle rule: You have to kill someone every 48 hours (starting only with the announcement of the rule) or you die. Not my preferred form, but it'll do. And, as I mentioned above, Marc also died later that day.
That night I had to grade exams, so little chance for further kills. I came back to find out that we were down to the final 6 (this Justine had announced). See, she was annoyed that people had determined the full cycle (apparently everyone knew it, though I didn't), and so declared that once we got down to 5, she would shuffle the targets. (The final 6, I would learn the next day, were me, Felicia, Noelle, Angus, Eline, and Jon Fitzgerald.)
On Wednesday shortly after dinner one more person died and the shuffle occurred. (I think it was Felicia who died, though at the time I didn't know that.) My new target was Eline -- an easier target, thankfully. (I think the full cycle was Me->Eline->Fitz->Angus->Noelle->Me; at the least, this is consistent with what I know.)
My first real attempt on her occurred after dinner that day. I thought she was in her room; to verify, I knocked on her door and hid. (I used a big plastic lid Travis left in my room to extend my reach a little for the knocking. I don't think this actually really helped any.) She answered, confirming my suspicions. Of course, I'd given away that someone was there and after her -- she could see that someone was hiding in the area and where they were, but couldn't make out enough to tell it was me -- but I figured that was OK. She'd have to go to the bathroom or something eventually, and then I'd get her. And she didn't know it was me, at least.
Eventually she did come out, not to go to the bathroom, but to go somewhere outside the house. I waited to make sure she was really leaving the room, waited for the door to close so she couldn't get in so easily, rushed at her... and saw Hannah down the hall, who had sight of the whole thing. It wouldn't be a valid kill. I tried to retreat before Eline could turn around but of course that failed and she knew it was me. I'd have to wait for later; the rules we were playing with was that anything outside Truth House property was safe (pretty lame, I know).
I was able to kill Eline sometime after midnight that night when Marc gave me a lead on her being in the kitchen. I entered through the back, verified that she was alone, and tossed the sock; she didn't even react until it hit her. (Marc also closed the doors for me before I attacked, but this didn't really affect things -- it wouldn't have been seen anyway. That said, I probably wouldn't have gotten the kill at that time without Marc, as he gave me the lead.) As it turns out she was pretty high at the time. (She didn't even notice Marc closing the doors.) Well, that's a quick way to lose. With that I made my one and only kill (and thus avoided dying at noon on Thursday). My new target? Fitzgerald again. Blech.
On Thursday I learned from Angus that he was out and we were down to the final three -- me hunting Fitz hunting Noelle hunting me. I couldn't find Fitzgerald at all. But Noelle was around, and that night I had to do midnight clean, so I'd have to worry about her getting me afterward (you had immunity during house chores).
For the final part of midnight clean I closed the doors and exited the kitchen through the back. She didn't try to get me there. Now to return to my room. Of course I went via the back stairs, as they're less good a spot for an ambush than the front stairs (if only by a little). I approached my room, looked around the corner -- and there she was, at the end of the hall, looking right at me. Crap. I probably could have made it inside had I gone for it, but I decided to flee instead, and hid out in the first floor bathroom for a minute or two (bathrooms were also safe, and who would think to look for me there in a case like this anwyay?).
Now I had to go back upstairs. But via the front stairs or the back? The front stairs remained a better spot for an ambush, but she knew I'd just come up the back. So as I caught Nate coming down the front stairs, I asked him, "Hey, is Noelle still lurking up there?". "No, she's gone," he said, while privately indicating to me that in fact she was still there. So, back stairs it was.
This left the question of whether to approach via the right or the left hallway (or even try scoping out both). I decided to approach via the right hallway as it would allow me to get to my room quicker if it came down to it. I tried to move silently but didn't do very good at this. Ultimately, it was irrelevant -- Noelle was hiding out in the alcove at the end of the right hallway. The shadows concealed her well and I didn't see her at all until she got me from several feet away. "Nate told me you were at the top of the stairs," I said. "I was," she replied. Presumably she had heard me asking. Oops.
People were surprised to find I was out -- I think Marc and I were considered something of favorites to win the game, because we took it the most seriously. So it was down to just Fitzgerald and Noelle, and since Noelle had the more recent kill, she was able to win by running out the clock. (IMO, you should be able to win by running out the clock if you have *more* kills, not a more *recent* kill, but whatever.)
So Noelle won, to everyone's surprise, turning out to be rather more formidable than expected. (Now tomorrow I had better actually get back to work...)
-Harry
[0]No starting roster, no notifications when someone died -- very hands off. I mean, not doing notifications when someone dies I can see as legit, but no starting roster? At least we were told the starting number, which was 19.
