on c0 the framers had a server of 6 and thought that no neuts/recruiters wanted to come to our server, and that it was likely we were always supposed to be one of the earlier uniting servers. bass revealed he was unrecruitable on either late c0 or early c1 when ln also claimed to be an unrecruitable ice type, which lent credence to the idea we were meant to lead the FL charge. i also decided to hard send my one-time transform on c0 and picked up the OKC role (isj/maushold), which we then misunderstood to be making someone else's vote count for more, so i vote bombed bass by mistake a couple times lmfao.
and thus the framelancers were born.
we hit a snag start of c2 when we lost one to a rand recruit, but fortunately it was by a mason, who had gragson out so the other 5 of us could unite and provide an in for fire-FLer relations and protection for NE since he was outted. this led to me reckoning the fire recruiter must be an old and possibly someone who knew i can be a sentimental player, and might encourage kingmaking for fire if the game came to such a situation.
framers and inspectors both united, which also gave us the regi trio alice came with. we vetted inspectors a bit to confirm it wasn't some trick and then came together. we whiffed on uniting bgs because ecat lied hard to alice and ln forgot he had aska prio boost internet, so we thought joey was recruited, and whiffed on uniting sgs because laurel has -500 villager aura. gk was the only isj left and she got turbo killed. we got the rbers and mayors, though.
we also discovered the mafia hit their caps and it took the wind out of our sails a bit because we realized this game was a little TOO crafted in its narrative. we were never supposed to be able to block recruitment by uniting efficiently; only the masons would have suffered from this, the mafia were never in any danger. they were always getting so many and then we would pile in the straggler FLers.
i think we spent more time talking to fire than electric by a good margin (especially since electric got hit so hard and was forced to just turtle, they didn't have as much to 'offer' offensively) and that was a mistake, because it led electric to believe we were solidly in bed with fire. this was semi-true, we did see a wincon with fire if we could wipe water, and would have kingmade for fire prior to their snake without much deliberation, but only because electric felt like an unviable wincon to go with for much of the game. they didn't hold the voting power fire/gragson did or the numbers. still, it was an error on our part not to throw electric some more bones so they didn't feel they were hung out to dry/needed to hard-side with water.
the framers contributed to six kills total i believe by framing frostbitten targets so they could not be healed (well, they could be, but it required prio boosting 2 inspects to pop the frame):
OKC
Lansing
Sacramento
Concord
Carson City
Trenton
the latter two neutrals misplayed by making themselves so obviously against the FLers and going for the wipe. once we ran out of frame-able grass/water it became a no-brainer to frame and frostbite the neutrals since we had nothing better to do with alice's triple frames lol. it's like how bass misplayed the endgame of mm3 by repeatedly hooking villagers, instead of telling us he would hook the mafia, and simply idling the hook, so we FELT like he wasn't that against us. when you make it so evident you are against a team, you will get hit. especially once the framers run out of legal frames lol.
i think my picking up an isj primary that let me kill solo was a notable factor, since that gave us two extra kills (could've been 3 on nashville if we boosted me to +3 on c8 instead of going for the defensive play lol) we otherwise might not have gotten, or with the same high priority i was able to run at to clap liepard. the vote bomb wound up being less remarkable than we thought because i could be hooked at priority pretty easily, or sam decided the target being bged negated the vote bomb.
this game had some great newcomers and play from revival-era players!
adam, little psycho, kept trying to glaze me he was FLer even after we figured out he was the c0. i love this guy's moxy. never gave up on it until the sg unite went through.
skip got discord!! he got to be a part of the viva experience this time!!
hayes and aunder were lovely FLer first-timers, i hope you both stick around!
gragson seemed very keen with the setup/social elements as well and was another great first-timer.
gk was able to clear herself off vibes as the last FL isj though she unfortunately got turbo-killed lol
alice stepped up BIGLY TREMENDOUS in action planning and sheeting. she was right there with us in charting things out and had a very detailed sheet to track the servers' recruiting and such. she was a perfect fit to be on the regi trio where she managed the framer server/framelancers and then her triplets' info. very proud of her this game.
i also don't think she is wrong that we (and largely the olds) devolve into negativity very quickly in games. we should do better. i def went on what must've seemed like a mad random rant in the FL/fire chat and then started arguing with sam. i was processing some tragic news from work and a lot of that came out in the game.
there is a reason i wished to excuse myself from playing a sam game. i know how these things go, and that i will find myself overwhelmed by the complexity of the game while sam starts making snarky comments about players' actions being suboptimal, and i know i will put the pressure on myself to not let the team's actions suck/to keep trying. i should do better to not discourage the newbies and make them think circus is a pit of negativity but i also think sam's setups could do better at not discouraging newbies from participating because everything is too complex to wrap your head around.
while the FLers do not entirely agree with former's critiques, we recognize that he was suffering the same burnout and frustration in trying to understand the game as we were, and we had more people who were attempting to wrap our heads around the tomes. it was probably also frustrating for him to know on some level he wasn't making nearly as much headway with gmax as we were and to think he can just never compete with the social from bass/mekkah/ln (however much that is or isn't true). i think when every team has the same "this was exhausting and time consuming to try and understand and i still feel like i messed up actions" sentiment, the game was both too large and too complex.
this brings me to my main criticism of sam's hosting, which is something i think future OC hosts should avoid. he made a very complex game, he wrote two documents we needed to parse, long pms, gave everyone a primary, a secondary, and at times a passive as well, added PD points, and then complained about the volume of questions he received.
if you are signing up to host an OC, you are signing yourself up to answer all questions received. i never would have processed an update leaving a #host-questions channel on unread. if you design an extremely complicated and extremely large game, you are placing an enormous burden on your players to comprehend every interaction, and YOU made those decisions. YOU asked players to essentially make your game a second job in order to understand it and play it well, to tank their sleep schedules to social and to discuss actions. you owe it to the people you have asked that time and dedication of to answer all their questions, and should not complain about this obligation. if you feel this is too much of a burden on you, design a simpler game, or do not host.
there are two notable instances where his answer to a team did not match the rules and he then blamed the team, acting like they were stupid, for taking action off of what he told them:
- the freelancers (i) asked a question about frame/inspect, and then asked "do fire and electric count as enemies" (for the purposes of the inspect ensure); sam said "yes" (answering the question as "are fire and electric each others' enemies") and i said "that's weird, why do they count but neutrals don't?" (we previously asked if neutrals counted as our enemies for inspect ensures and were told no). this clarification went unanswered and i submitted 4x inspects on gmax, failing all our ensures. this was a large portion of my salt because i felt like i submitted terrible actions for my team after being explicitly told by the host (fmpov, knowing what question i actually asked) that inspecting gmax would work for ensures. i even asked gmax which fire alias would be the best to inspect.
- electric asked a question to clarify that, in order to receive the double-targeted sg +1, the sg-users needed to be two separate aliases. so nashville and olympia could both target olympia with a sg and receive the +1 primary priority, but nashville could not use two sgs on nashville. sam later told FL/elec that this was wrong, he misspoke earlier, and nashville COULD use two sgs on itself to receive the +1, which completely altered both how we planned our actions the prior cycle, and how we expected grass could act. he said this along with "well the rules didn't say it so you guys are dumb for thinking it worked this way."
i think this is unacceptable hosting attitude towards your players. if a team is seeking clarification of the rule, to make sure they understand it properly, and you tell them the wrong thing by mistake, your reaction should be "oh my god im so sorry guys, i misunderstood your q/i blanked on the answer," NOT to act as if the players are idiots for thinking they received an accurate clarification of your rules and didn't cross-reference it back to the rules to see if the wording matched exactly (which is probably what they were trying to clarify in the first place, to see if the rule wording was inclusive or exclusive).
sam designs games he wishes to play himself, and he wants to play complex negotiation games. it's very difficult for him to remain silent when (or to not remain silent lol) players are taking suboptimal actions he is aware of from his host omniscience. while he without a doubt put a lot of thought into this game, its design, and its numerous concepts, and i am sure it played out how he wanted with yet another close endgame, the endgame was almost identical to mm3's, and echoed a sentiment i had all game: we were actors playing to sam's script, and very little of this game was ever going to let one team gain a notable advantage by exploiting something. he overcooked this setup, imo, and it felt like we were beholden to how he expected the game would play out, as opposed to letting teams play great or bad and benefit or suffer accordingly.
my takeaway for hosts who want to host OCs going forward is that if you think you need a tome for your game (much less two), don't. unless it's a very small game like blazade's. the complexity requires you to answer many questions and is very taxing for the players to try and wrap their heads around. i encourage simplicity, or exploring one concept in great detail, as opposed to many (PD points/shop, the aspects, the primaries having additional perks). all the things to keep track of in this game became too much.
people talk about player agency and activity in relation to TvM and the village leader system but these complex OCs have proven that maybe about half the playerlist actually has the sauce/self-loathing to commit to understanding a massive game. a lot of people WANT to be along for the ride or don't have the ability to sink hours a day into an OC mafia. and that is okay! i've always thought that was okay! sheep are cute! but, it does mean games should be designed with this divide in mind. if you are expecting every member of the team to contribute equally and understand a different chapter of the tome, as opposed to 1 or 2 who wind up doing most of it and start emotionally self-destructing from the bad sleep and effort involved, you will be disappointed. design a setup that lets sheep bleat happily! a 50 player game, with that many slots/actions to keep track of, is an immense ask of the players.
additionally, NOOOO prio wars! please! it made secondaries largely useless because they would fail to +1 kills or to +1 or higher primaries. the secondaries were supposed to be in the FLer power budget but since the mafia had multiple primaries to delegate, and could delegate them to the same alias and only invest in boosting that one alias. it required many more ensures for us to boost an equivalent number of primaries/factionals to counter water/grass. virtually ever kill on us was at high priority. this meant we needed to boost tommy's primary AND aim correctly to save anyone, and skip/harmony's secondaries were worthless. correctly predicting where a kill will go is far more difficult than boosting a kill and sending it anywhere when it's a numbers game, and the FLers do not retain access to primaries like the mafia/masons do.
that's all i have to say about that.
gg to all:
especially my fellow framelancers who believed in the cause from c0 and supported me in speaking for the people until the bitter end. we did it, guys. we showed them all.
the freelancers!!! we had a great crop of people and a lot of us working together on actions/to decipher the tomes. it was an active bunch.
fire, i am still sorry the game ended for you as it did. i submitted the actions to accept your delegations to save gragson and prio boost skip, something not all of my teammates wanted to do. i also submitted the action that killed her, prio boosting electric to +3 primary. you deserved better than to go out trying to help us by voting water of electric and dying for it. you were good allies. we got a little too bold trying to wipe water, especially with the inspect ensures failed, but it was a nice thought.
electric, clobbered hard early and bided their time. the cross-wipe of water/fire forcing both of us to only have each other as an ally pushed us to hard-side together with no real viable wincon outside of that, and i think we had more fun working to that goal than keeping each other kind of at arms length the rest of the game. i did try to not snitch out either mason to the other or do anything that would get you guys harmed but that felt to you as favoring fire. still, when i was a defenseless little blob, left all alone amongst the corpses of my friends, your bodyguard was there for me. noble masons until the end.
water/grass, we didn't really have much to negotiate with each other about, we were just hard enemies, but twin and former both put a ton of work into the game to try and pull out their wins.
no gg to the neutrals though lmao NEUTRALS SUCK!!!!!!!!!! except jalmont, he can have a gg. ag and lechen, it made me happy to submit frostbites+frames on you.
and thanks sam for hosting and delving into some intriguing concepts that can be utilized in future OCs.
