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Thuryl brings up valid points. My resolution is that trying to contact the dead player or using actions will give clues as to what happened to the player. If anyone figures it out before public revealing, that is fine. The key is to delay people from knowing about a player's death, not prevent it altogether.

To clarify, this means announced publicly on the main thread.

I updated stealth skill. Comments please?

Hey buddy. Good to see you. Man, it's been a long time. Stop by as often as you like.

The artifact being destroyed is not an option since it would make the game unwinnable. Strine does not actually have to keep the artifacts he collects; he only needs to touch them. This is different from everyone else. I don't see the numerous people who are seeking artifacts. If anything, the last couple games have been kind of uninteresting when it came to that. At the moment, the only other role that absolutely requires artifacts is Gladwell. Shanker will likely need a few and may end up in competition. The Adventurer and Empire Spy can have an artifact, but have other ways of achieving victory. There is the SIC, but he is not required. I did take away the random requirement. The key with the victory condition is that the items in question are only ones that he actually crafted. Why I'm doing this is to encourage him to use his ability and proliferate items to his allies. Also, he has a predisposition to help mages, who need some love now.

Hopefully it is more clear now. I'm not sure what the best way to balance the after use of the artifact is. Ideas with discussion of relative merits?

I modified Craftmaster Strine. Please offer comments.

Yes.

Yeah. I was going to make Dionicio's victory condition a little more stringent, but I will scale him back a little bit. Now he can identify if a person is a DL.

I gave the Empire Spy one other nice thing. I also changed Dionicio as well. Feel free to have a look. As far as the randomness, there is an interesting psychology here. While the risk is relatively low, it is not insignificant. This does introduce another risk that some players may not be willing to risk.

Made a couple changes to the Empire Spy and Adventurer.

I think the current system works with items and shops. The items were not dominant in this game, but did have an impact. This is what I wanted. I'll rework the adventurer a little bit.

I made the adventurer steal coins now since those are harder to get. Thoughts?

There is some ambiguity there. It could mean Domont got the role wrong or the role simply had some status effect that protected him/her. Domont will only receive word of payment, and no further information about what actually happened with respect to the bandits.

With respect to new roles in general, I've been holding off on doing that because we have plenty of existing roles that probably need to be balanced and tested. With US operative, the victory condition alternate is simply too easy and players will just default to the identifying. While it's interesting to need to be hired, I think 30 coins is a bargain for outright learning someone's role. You may have noticed that there are very few things that actually outright tell a role these days. I think a lot of this could be actually merged with the Empire Spy. With Hrickis, I'm not sure what he adds to the game dynamic. So you raise people. Then what? The role is ill defined at this point. Further, the victory condition seems rather easy.

I gave the Addict the requirement he must use Skribbane at least once by the end of day 3 or he dies. This gives him a little more urgency and makes him more addict like. The Addict can kill anyone as part of the victory condition. He 'always' gets the first strike after using Skribbane and his skill is power, so the enemy list thing is irrelevant on his side. He's also easy to kill when not on Skribbane because he never gets the first strike then.

New role list is up. Specifically look at Alchemist, Domont, and Skribbane Addict. More changes likely to come.

This is the list of possible roles for Game 8. 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, Necromancer, Sacred Item Cultist, Shanker, Vahkos. People who may join the Anama are: Adventurer, Alchemist, Anama Hunter, Dionicio, Fae, Infiltrator, Oliver, Pure Spirit, Ronaldo, Skribbane Addict. People who may join Gladwell are: Adventurer, Anama Hunter, Craftmaster Strine, Dionicio, Fae, Infiltrator, 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: Most Attacks Abilities: Your target may not perform any actions for 24 hours. You may not directly attack anyone or hold and use items. You can only be killed by the Wand of Death. Anyone else who attacks you will learn your role. Victory: Number of Avernites (including Aimee) that win is at least twice the number of Imperials that 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. 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. 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. 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 will never receive the first strike and you may not use any items or artifacts offensively. 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: Your goal is to trick people into "joining" or trading with you. Anyone who "joins" you, trades with you, or gives you an item ends up dead regardless of skill, immunities, or other effects. Trick at least three people this way. 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. 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 the victory condition that Gladwell must win or the geas be broken. 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. Necromancer Nationality: Avernum Skill: Standard Attack: Magic Immune: None Ability: Target a dead person, you will learn their role and may gain their ability as a possible action. Victory Condition: Use your ability on two randomly selected roles. Nephil Activist Nationality: Avernum Skill: Standard Attack: Physical Immune: None Ability: If you attack, your opponent will always receive the first strike. Visit the Fang Clan once per 24 hours with a list of actions. While there, you can do any of the following: * Trade with a Fang Clan trader. He has a randomly generated inventory of three items every day that only you see. The cost is the value of the base value of the item +5 coins. * Hire the Nephil pathfinder for 40 coins to learn the role of a target. * Hire the Nephil shaman for 25 coins to offer a blessing towards any player. The blessing gives skill of power for 24 hours. * Hire the Nephil thief for 25 coins. He steals a random item from a target's inventory (if any) and gives it to you. * Hire a Nephil assassin for 60 coins. He attacks a target of your choice. Has skill of stealth, physical attack, no immunity, and gets the first strike. The pathfinder, shaman, thief, and assassin can only be hired once per game. Victory: The Darkside Loyalists do not win AND spend at least 100 coins on the Fang Clan. 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. 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. Vahkos Nationality: Empire Skill: Power Attack: Magic Immune: Poison Ability: You always get the first strike and may attack up to two people per day. You may switch your attack from Magic to Physical or vice versa once per day. Your physical attack bypasses antimagic and you are immune to the antimagic status. You may not use or equip items or artifacts, nor may derive any benefits from having them in your inventory. You magic attack will kill Aimee. Victory: You are the only survivor at the end of the game.

Here's how I try to process actions and trades. First I go through all of the new topics and write down every trade and put actions in the queue. Placement in the queue is based on when your last action became valid. I'll talk more about this later. I then do every trade/faction joining that both parties have accepted. This is followed by me going through the queue, in order, and processing every action that is currently valid. The algorithm for ordering things is as follows: I receive your action and look at the time stamp. If you have no previous action or your last action was valid more than 24 hours ago, I insert it in the queue at the current time. If your last action was less than 24 hours ago, the time I place it in the queue is 24 hours after the last action became valid. The exception is for actions on the first day that kill people which gets put at the start of day 2. The order in the case of a "tie" is the order of submission.

Quote: I submitted an illegal action to kill Thuryl because one of us had already participated in two trades, which was a newly-imposed limit this game. This limit was in the last game as well.

Quote: that's not a problem with the roles. You were a great gladwell, and a very apt player, and I'm not suggesting otherwise, I just felt that game was pretty unfair. Okay. I get the point. There really is no need to rub it in any further. A lot of interesting ideas. I'll have to look through them later because I need to get to work.

Quote: It is not really apparent to me why conditions are prohibited, because it allows for multiple submits to make sense. I don't want to go down this path. Trust me. You won't like it either. The problem is not when one person does it, but when multiple people do. It can become very confusing to sort out a chain of logic when it is contingent on other people's actions who have actions dependent on yet others. The simple solution is just to say no. Quote: Unilaterally giving an item or coins no longer counts as a trade, you can do it as often as you like, and it no longer requires the recipient to actively accept, but you can't place any conditions on it and there's no guarantee of getting anything in return. Even gifts still need to count against something. Infinite is too much. People WILL abuse it and make my life miserable. It's happened before and will happen again. I'm open to some suggestions, but long gift chains with conditionals got old fast. To answer your questions, both donations AND bilateral trades cause problems. I put in the both sides to agree to avoid "hot potato" games and to add a little viscosity to the trading. While it is fun to be able to do everything instantaneously, I don't want alliances to be too powerful. I do like the idea of treating pure coin gifts as not needing both sides to agree. Quote: The exception is the Skribbane Addict, who's effectively enemies with anyone who's holding Skribbane, but I'd rather remove the Skribbane Addict from the game entirely No roles will be removed. Suggest changes to the role. Quote: You have either two, or three (if you can recruit them) moderators. They then work 12- (or 8-) hour 'shifts': note that they aren't necessarily expected to be online for all of their shift, simply that they're the only one allowed to process actions during their shift (thus avoiding redundancy). Read my post on the three options. I covered this. The problem is recruiting people who can actually work their shift reliably. Sometimes my schedule gets messed up and I get to it when I can. This game was notoriously bad for me. Really, if someone just processed the item management and we allowed simple conditionals on using items/attacking, it would help a lot.

Oh yeah, I'll definitely look into rebalancing the alchemist. The old version was broken and I think this one is broken in the other direction. I'll see what I can come up with for him. Ideas welcome of course.

I agree it would be nice to relax the trading rule a bit, but I'd still like there to be a limit of some sort. To clarify, anytime an item or coins switch hands (except by death) it counts as a trade. This includes donations and shop purchases. Without the limit, trying to keep track of long chains of trades is a nightmare. Unfortunately, I'm not a computer but a human and can only do so much.

SD: From her posts to me, it was pretty clear Andraste (Adventurer) honestly believed you were Gladwell.