*i

The Anama Priest, Gladwell, and the current holder of the Holy Spirit cannot be harmed by Vahkos' spirits. It now should be easier to coordinate an attack that can kill Vahkos. However, it will require cooperation.

Vahkos does not learn the roles. What I have there right now is literal. If anyone dies for any reason, he gets that person's spirit. The first strike rules have the following precedence: Always Normally Unspecified Never When two players have the same first strike precedence, the two cancel and normal battle rules apply.

From general comments, I think we'll go with the Trickster. I settle on more specifics. Also check out Fae and Vahkos. They have been updated.

The Trickster is pretty powerful, but balanced out by his victory condition in the number of people he can help. He really is not solitary since he is quite useful to any smaller alliance -- better motivation to help the little guy. His downfall is that the alliance cannot be large. For him to win, the big tent must necessarily fall. Trickster will also be a magic user so I guess he is a potential Anama target.

So here are a couple ideas to replace the Necromancer. Avenger Nationality: Empire Skill: Stealth Attack: Physical Immune: None Ability: Target a dead person. You will learn the dead person's role and the attack type that killed the person. This ability does not count as an action. Victory: On each day starting with day 2 up through day 4, target a dead person who died within the last 24 hours (if no one dies on a given day, no target is necessary). You are then bound to correctly identify that person's killer to the moderator and ensure that person dies by any means. Failure to pick someone on a given day will cause the moderator to randomly assign a target to avenge. No information about the person's role or cause of death will be given in this case, however. Trickster Nationality: Avernum Skill: Standard Attack: Magic Immune: None Ability: May redirect the action of one player onto another. You must specify the player whose action you want to redirect as well as the new target. Victory: No more than four other players win.

I was indeed loyal to Xelgion. He died and after that, there was no further choice but to cooperate with everyone else.

This is the list of possible roles for Game 9. Only 16 of these will be used. The roles will be chosen as follows: Roles 1-10: Anama Priest, Bound Servant, Darkside Blademaster, Darkside Mage, Dionicio, Domont, Gladwell, Machrone, Micklebur, Shanker. Role 11: Adventurer or Empire Spy (50% each) Role 12: Alchemist (25%), Craftmaster Strine (25%), or Oliver (50%) Roles 13-16: Randomly chosen to be any role not currently used. The magic users are: Aimee, Craftmaster Strine, Darkside Mage, Gladwell, Sacred Item Cultist, Shanker, Trickster, Vahkos. People who may join the Anama are: Adventurer, Alchemist, Anama Hunter, Dionicio, Empire Spy, Fae, Infiltrator, Nephil Activist, Oliver, Pure Spirit, Ronaldo, Skribbane Addict. People who may join Gladwell are: Adventurer, Anama Hunter, Craftmaster Strine, Dionicio, Empire Spy, Fae, Infiltrator, Nephil Activist, Ronaldo, Sacred Item Cultist, Skribbane Addict, Trickster. The roles, in alphabetical order, are: Adventurer Nationality: Avernum Skill: Stealth Attack: Physical Immune: None Ability: Once per game, may steal one item (not an artifact) from the moderator shop. If you kill one of your victory condition targets, you receive a reward of 40 coins. Victory Condition: You must do two of these: Have the Ring of Magery at the end of the game, kill Dionicio, kill Gladwell, kill Darkside Blademaster, kill Machrone, kill Oliver, kill Craftmaster Strine, kill Skribbane Addict. Aimee Nationality: Avernum Skill: Standard Attack: None Immune: None Abilities: Your target may not perform any actions for 24 hours. You may not directly attack anyone or hold and use items. You have a permanent protected status except when attacked by the Anama Priest or a spirit of Vahkos. You learn the role of anyone who tries to attack you. Victory: No Imperials win. Alchemist Nationality: Empire Skill: Standard Attack: Physical Immune: None Abilities: If you attack, your opponent will always receive the first strike. You know the identify of Shanker at the beginning of the game. You may convert coins into up to two potions per day without duplicates for your shop at half cost. You may only create a knowledge brew once. Victory: Have at least 150 coins or item or artifact equivalent in your inventory or shop. Each player that wins gives you a 10 coin bonus. If Shanker wins, you get a 30 coin bonus. Anama Hunter Nationality: Avernum Skill: Standard Attack: Physical Immune: None Ability: May target one person per day. Reveals if that person is in the Anama. While attacking someone in the Anama, your skill level is treated as Power. If you kill an Anama member, you will receive a bonus of 20 coins. Victory Condition: Total elimination of the Anama sect. The Anama Priest and all followers must be dead by any means necessary. You may join the Anama to go undercover. You will gain the magic immunity, but your victory condition will be unmodified. Also, you do not count as an Anama member when evaluating anyone's victory conditions. Anama Priest Nationality: Avernum Skill: Standard Attack: Physical Immune: Magic Ability: If you are attacked, your skill is power for the duration of the battle. May use one of two abilities: (1) Once per game, may resurrect one person, or (2) remove all status effects from a target. You cannot be harmed by Vahkos' spirits. Victory Condition: Gladwell dead AND recruit at least one Anama member by the end of day 2, two by the end of day 4, and three by the end of day 5. Failure to meet a recruiting requirement will cause a random non-Anama member to learn the identity of the Anama Priest. If all potential Anama recruits are dead so that the recruiting goals cannot be done the penalty is not enforced, but you must hold the Holy Symbol at the end of the game instead. Anama Priest can recruit Anama members who are not mages, servants of Gladwell, or Darkside Loyalists. Anyone who joins the Anama gains immunity to magic. See the rules for specifics. An exact list of roles that can join is given at the top of this thread. Bound Servant Nationality: Avernum Skill: Standard Attack: Physical Immune: Physical Ability: If you attack someone while not under Gladwell's influence, your opponent will always receive the first strike. (1) Investigate a role. You will learn the last action that role did. (2) You may do odd jobs and earn coins: 10 the first time, 15 the second, and 20 every time thereafter. Victory Condition: Gladwell wins or his geas is broken. You are a servant of Gladwell. Craftmaster Strine Nationality: Avernum Skill: Standard Attack: Magic Immune: None Abilities: You will begin with an artifact. When holding an artifact, may take some of its energy to craft up to two items from the list below without duplicates. Each artifact only has enough energy to be used for this purpose once and you can only drain one artifact with each ability use. May only make the Wand of Death once per game. Item List: Box of Traps, Disruption Crystal, Infiltrator Cloak, Ironskin Balm, Killer Poison, Razordisk, Vulnerability Scroll, Wand of Death. Victory: Trade away at least one item you crafted each day AND have traded these items for at least 80 coins or item equivalent (excluding artifacts) by the end of the game. Failure to do so on a given day will raise the total required items you must trade away at the end of the game by one and the total value you need to trade by 10 coins. You get a 15 coin bonus toward your victory condition for each other magic user that wins at the end of the game. Darkside Blademaster Nationality: Empire Skill: Power Attack: Physical Immune: Physical Ability: None. Victory Condition: All five of the following must be dead, by any means necessary: Anama Priest, Dionicio, and three other random targets. Darkside Mage Nationality: Empire Skill: Stealth Attack: Magic Immune: None Ability: May target one person per day. The target is cursed for the next 24 hours. If the target decides to attack anyone, his or her attacks will be unable to harm the opponent. Note the curse only affects when the target attacks, not when the target is being attacked. Victory Condition: All five of the following must be dead, by any means necessary: Anama Priest, Dionicio, and three other random targets. Dionicio Nationality: Avernum Skill: Power Attack: Physical Immune: None Ability: Once per game, may place traps around a target. Anyone who tries to attack that target in the next 24 hours will be killed. If you kill a Darkside Loyalist by your own hand, you receive a reward of 40 coins. Victory Condition: All Darkside Loyalists (Blademaster, Mage, Domont) dead by any means AND correctly identify, to the moderator, the name and role of every player, living and dead, by the end of the game. Domont Nationality: Empire Skill: Standard Attack: Physical Immune: None Ability: At the start of the game, you receive a list of five other players. Two of the five will be your fellow Darkside Loyalists. Once per day (even on the first one) may hire bandits to attack another player. You must correctly identify the role of the player to be attacked. The cost is 30 coins the first time and increases by 15 each time thereafter. The bandits have standard skill, physical attack, no immunity and normally receive the first strike. Victory Condition: All five of the following must be dead, by any means necessary: Anama Priest, Dionicio, and three other random targets. Empire Spy Nationality: Empire Skill: Stealth Attack: Physical Immune: None Ability: Once per game, may identify a target's role. If you are attacked and your opponent would have received the first strike, you have a 25% chance of getting the first strike instead. When you kill someone, you will learn their role. If you kill one of your targets, you will receive a reward of 40 coins. Victory Condition: You must do two of these: Have the Flaming Sword at the end of the game, kill Machrone, kill Darkside Blademaster, kill Gladwell, kill Oliver, kill Alchemist, kill Skribbane Addict. Fae Nationality: Avernum Skill: Standard Attack: Physical Immune: None Ability: You begin with 40 coins. You never receive the first strike if attacked. You may only attack people with whom you have traded (merely giving them coins does not count). You may not use any items or artifacts offensively unless they have traded with you. When you attack, your attack is poison and your skill is stealth. When you kill someone you attacked, you get any coins they may have minus the amount you gave that person as a gift. May assume the identity of any other role (e.g. Fae). You will appear as this role to all information gatherers. Your identity is retained even after death. Victory Condition: Hold at least 80 coins worth of loot (coins, items, or artifacts) at the end of the game. Loot is defined as wealth you have gained from kills or from trades with people you subsequently kill. Gladwell Nationality: Avernum Skill: Power Attack: Magic Immune: Magic Ability: You may not attack anyone directly. You may not give away or trade any artifacts that are in your victory condition and these may not be stolen by anyone else. If any of your servants attack you, you will always get the first strike. If one of your servants dies, you will learn about it immediately. You may do one of the following once per day: (1) Compel one of your servants to do any action they could do, or (2) Switch your immunity form magic to physical, or vice versa. You cannot be harmed by Vahkos' spirits. Victory Condition: Five randomly generated victory conditions that contain holding two artifacts at the end of the game and three people dead by any means or under your geas. Gladwell can bind other players who are not Anama members or Darkside Loyalists. An exact list of roles that can join is given at the top of this thread. People who join have power skill if Gladwell is alive. However, they have the following penalties: (1) Gladwell can override any ability request with his ability and (2) person gains an additional victory condition outlined in the rules. Note that if Gladwell compels someone to attack, they will normally get the first strike. Infiltrator Nationality: Empire Skill: Stealth Attack: Physical Immune: None Ability: Once per game, may get a free action that does not count towards the 24 hour period. You must specify this in a PM with your action. Victory: Kill three Avernites by your own hand. Dionicio counts as two. Machrone Nationality: Empire Skill: Standard Attack: Physical Immune: None. Ability: You never get the first strike; however, if you are attacked by a non-enemy, you have a 50% chance of escaping. Every day, may ask one yes or no question to the moderator. Once per day, if you answer a question (see victory condition) on the day it is given, you get a 5 coin bonus. Victory Condition: Every day, two questions about the game are given to you (three on the first). You must answer, by PM to the moderator, at least one question every day. Your response is posted publicly by the moderator. You must answer five questions correctly to win. Each incorrect response or failure to submit a question during a day will raise the number of questions you need to answer correctly by one each time never to exceed the total number of questions available. You may answer a question as many times as you like, but only your last answer will count toward your victory. Micklebur Nationality: Empire Skill: Power Attack: Physical Immune: Magic Ability: (1) Can detect if a target is a magic user or is a servant of Gladwell. (2) Can solicit a donation of 10-30 (random amount) coins. Victory Condition: Anama Priest wins OR Gladwell and all his servants dead. You are an Anama Member. Nephil Activist Nationality: Avernum Skill: Standard Attack: Physical Immune: None Ability: If you attack, your opponent will always receive the first strike. (1) Acquire one item (not artifact) per day from the moderator shop for face value. (2) For 40 coins, hire a Fang Clan assassin to attack a target. The assassin has a skill of stealth, attack of poison, no immunity, and normally gets the first strike. Victory: The Darkside Loyalists and Dionicio do not win. Oliver Nationality: Avernum Skill: Standard Attack: Physical Immune: None. Ability: You never get the first strike; however, if you are attacked by a non-enemy, you have a 50% chance of escaping. You may do an unlimited number of trades (involving items from your shop) per day. Each day, you may submit a list of up to three targets. You will see their inventories. Victory Condition: Each day, you must grow your total wealth by 10% (rounded up) of the starting value of your shop. Failure to achieve the goal on a given day will cause the following days to require an additional 10%. You also get a 5 coin bonus for each unique person you have traded with. Oliver will have a shop that will be discussed in the rules. The shop begins with five items. Items in your shop may not be used by you except when defending from attacks. You may move items from your inventory to your shop, but not vice versa. Pure Spirit Nationality: Avernum Skill: Standard Attack: Physical Immune: Magic Ability: If you attack, your opponent will always receive the first strike if you are not in the Anama. If you are in the Anama, when defending your skill is power for the duration of the battle and you normally get the first strike. At the beginning of the game, you know the identity of Dionicio. If someone targets you with the Wand of Death, the person who used it will die instead. Can target one person per day. You will learn that person's faction, if any. Victory: The Darkside Loyalists do not win. Ronaldo Nationality: Avernum Skill: Stealth Attack: Physical Immune: None Ability: Can target one person. This target is poisoned and will die within 24 hours if they do not use an antidote. Victory: Kill three Empire citizens by your own hand. The Darkside Blademaster counts as two. Sacred Item Cultist Nationality: Avernum Skill: Stealth Attack: Magic Immune: Poison Ability: If someone targets you with the Wand of Death, the person who used it will die instead. May target an item or artifact. It reveals which role (e.g. Sacred Item Cultist) has the item or artifact. If multiple people have items, will reveal all of them. Victory Condition: At the end of the game, have three randomly chosen artifacts in your possession. Shanker Nationality: Empire Skill: Standard Attack: Magic Immune: Physical Ability: If you are attacked, your skill will be power for the duration of the battle. (1) May target you or another person with one of the following statuses: Antimagic, Blessed, Protected, or Resistant, or Shielded. (2) Once per game may permanently change a target's default immunity from none to either Magical or Physical. Note: Can only be used on someone whose default immunity is none. Victory Condition: You will receive a list of five randomly generated characters. All of them must be alive at the end of the game. For each one that is dead, you must hold an artifact at the end of the game. Skribbane Addict Nationality: Empire Skill: Standard Attack: Physical Immune: None Ability: While not under the influence of skribbane, you never receive the first strike. May target up to two people and if either or both have skribbane, you will steal it. You are immune to skribbane withdrawl, but you must consume Skribbane at least once by day 3 or you will die. Victory: Kill at least two people. Trickster Nationality: Avernum Skill: Standard Attack: Magic Immune: None Ability: May redirect the action of one player onto another. You must specify the player whose action you want to redirect as well as the new target. The Anama Priest and Gladwell are immune to this. Victory: No more than four other players win Vahkos Nationality: Empire Skill: Power Attack: Magic Immune: Poison Ability: When anyone dies, you capture their spirit at the start of the following day. You may attack one person per day (you normally receive the first strike) in addition to sending out one of your spirits to attack. On the final day, you may send out as many spirits as you desire. If you have any spirits captured, when targeted with any ability that counts as an action (attack, ability use, offensive item use) the action fails and a random spirit attacks the offender. Spirits normally get the first strike and inherit all properties they had in life. After a spirit attacks (or attempts to), it is gone. You are immune to the antimagic status. You are allowed to create a priority list of which spirits you want to attack and which ones you want to defend. You may not tailor your defense to specific character attacks. Victory: You are the only survivor at the end of the game.

I fried Gladwell with the Wand of Death.

We pretty much figured it all out. I would have contacted you, verifying what items you need. Offered them to you, you would have accepted. There may have been a little wait because of the two trade limit, but the end of the game was pretty much assured.

You can have them. I'll even gift wrap them for you.

Thanks for moderating the game. You did an excellent job Marlenny!

Good point. I'll review it and come up with something.

Quote: One of Kel's suggestions...What would be helpful, as a player, would be to have the master list of reviewed scenarios be divided into smaller lists depending on scenario type. That's fine. Categorizing is fine. The issue is all categorizing must be hard in the sense that people should not be able to disagree. Otherwise, it just becomes a rubric. Quote: As far as calling it quality control, that strikes of the elitism which some of our younger members are fighting against. I'm calling it what it is, quality control. Standards will not be that high. It's just to keep things organized. One person, one review with one potential author response. One disadvantage to the Lyceum CSR was that long and heated discussions had to be cleaned up. I want to avoid that. Quote: What exactly is broken about my proposal, aside from it not being possible to host it on this message board? That is exactly what is wrong. Let's keep everything centralized.

Kel, the problem here is everyone is different and aggregate scores only capture average opinion. No rating system we could devise is going to be able to please everyone. Come up with every dimension or criterion you like. I'm sure somebody else would rather they be different. Point being, I do feel the current system is not broken any more than any other system we could employ. In fact, I would argue this is about the best we can do since simplicity is better in my mind. The Blades Forge is an attractive idea and I want it to succeed. However, it will never have the sheer following of these forums. It's a great resource, don't get me wrong, but a vast majority of people will not even go there. This is not to be mean, this is just to be realistic. I don't think there is any better place for this stuff than here. 100 words is really not a lot. This is just meant to make people write something useful. They can write more if they like. Salmon, I don't see what your beef is by having some quality control. It is no further effort on your part. You submit the review as a reply, moderator checks to ensure you aren't spamming and meet the very modest requirements, and approves it. I think the criteria for rejection should be pretty severe and happen only rarely. The only difference is your post does not appear immediately. Believe me, my proposals are not random. In fact, there is no boondoggle. The current system worked when we had lots of people contributing and it will work again under those conditions. Will it work for absolutely everyone? Of course not and no system will. I honestly think 90% of the battle is visibility. SV, Blades Forge, etc. are completely off most people's radar. That's the problem I'm trying to tackle. The reason I put the system in place is to keep the reviews clean. This does help players out. They can go to a thread, read everyones comments (the 100 word rule helps keep some quality), look at the scores, and make decisions on whether to play it. That said, I don't think some elaborate CSR is going to expand the player base any more than a simple one. The key is getting a critical mass going. If people see activity, they want to be a part of it. The best way to show activity is to have something here. Anything else is just added complexity.

Thank you Slarty. This is pretty good evidence the current system is working to a large degree. Could it be improved? Yes. Is it broken? I don't see any firm evidence for that. No offense to anyone, but we've been through this before. Just about all of you were not around for it, but these same arguments came up. We were not able to reach a consensus then, but we pretty much agreed on a solution that, by and large, worked. As someone else said, the key is getting people to write cogent reviews that are helpful. The individual score is worthless, but the composites do provide some insight. So here's my proposal and I can make it happen: 1) Blades of Avernum and Blades of Exile will have subforums for reviews. 2) Posts must be a review with a requirement of 100 words that make a good faith effort to provide how the reviewer feels about the scenario. A score from 1-10 must be provided with 1 being lowest and 10 being highest. Reviews must be legible and respectful and should not refer to any other reviews currently on the page. They should stand alone. 3) A scenario author may respond in a single post to a review to rebut any assertions made. Responses must be legible and respectful. 4) Posting is restricted and must be approved by a local moderator. Whether or not something gets posted is at the discretion of the moderator. 5) If a post is denied, the moderator must inform the person who posted with a statement of reasons. The poster may revise the comments and resubmit or appeal the decision to the board administrator. The administrator's decision is final. More restrictive, but this is a good thing because it keeps things more structured. What do people think?

FYI: Marlenny is now a moderator of this forum for the duration of the game. This is so she can edit posts.

Good point. Ring of Magery.

Changed the Assassin Leather to the Ring of Magery. Also added the Focusing Orb and the Smoky Crystal. EDIT: Also added the Mystic Symbol item.

Thuryl makes a valid point. I changed the Assassin Leather to the Ring of Magery. I also added the Focusing Orb and the Smoky Crystal which should make mages stronger. I may revise it so that Vahkos' physical attack supplants antimagic. Also added the mystic symbol which is a cheaper warding crystal for mages only.

Yes. Think of going out to find someone, spending all day, but failing.

I would support creating subforums for BoX reviews. I also have no problem with proxy postings in these forums for certain members like TM. Here is probably the best place for this stuff because it is the centralized hub for the community and will be for the future. No offense to any satellite communities. As for review criteria and stuff, this was an issue back in the early community when all this came into being. There is no right answer here. Any scoring system inherently creates inconsistencies. Any rubric inherently favors certain types of scenarios over others. The best we could do was to simply create a basic score with comments that are public. The biggest complaint about the SW tables was that they were a black box with no accountability. My suggestion is to leave the score with the review just like the CSR does. Everyone is going to have divergent opinions, but the averages are broadly meaningful. Just create a post requirement of 100 words per review or something like that so people cannot just treat it as a black box.

I also threw in a new status: antimagic. This causes some actions to fail. Shanker can also cast it as one of her effects. The new item, Null Bug, also inflicts this status.

So here is what I am thinking. Let me know what people think. You may use any ability on someone that is living according to the game roster in the public thread. If the person is really dead, you will get something to the effect of "Your action failed". If any action fails for any reason, you just receive that message with no explanation. This includes attacking people who are warded.

An interesting solution to this dilemma is to simply process the actions normally from the person creating the action's side and doing nothing on the dead person's side. Certain actions like attacking will simply have to fail, but that is okay. This really ups the power of the stealth skill. I also may make it so Gladwell will learn of any servant dying immediately. He has an obvious mental connection.

Also, I would request that dead players under a stealth kill (they will be informed) to try to not give away their death. This is not a hard rule, but a good faith one.