TWG 207: The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (side-episode) [POST-GAME]

[Hateandhatred]

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (side-episode)



Hosted by: Hateandhatred
Scum Team and Protagonist Win
Co-MVPs: XelNya and Arp!


1: Hakulyte: The Monarch, Jusis Albarea (Killed N1)
2: MixMasterLar: The Forewoman, Alisa Reinford (Lost at Endgame)
3: _Zenith_/Charu: The Radiant Blademaster's Daughter, Laura S. Arseid (Lost at Endgame)
4: T-Force: The Musician, Elliot Craig (Lost at Endgame)
5: Dafty.Pixel: The Wind Warrior, Gaius Worzel (Lost at Endgame)
6: Lightknight924: The Inspector, Machias Reignitz (Lynched D2)
7: Arp!: The Protagonist, Rean Schwarzer (Won at Endgame)
8: ToonE156: The All-Knowing Child, Millium Orion (Killed N2)
9: XelNya: The Jaeger Sentinel, Fie Claussell (Won at Endgame)
10: mellon_collie: The Playboy, Crow Armbrust (Won at Endgame)
11: Sourissette: The Witch, Emma Millstein (Won at Endgame)

Host Comments:

This was a fun experiment, and I enjoyed my time as host a lot. I can't say it ran perfectly smoothly, but especially for my first time, I am very satisfied with how things went down. HUGE shoutouts to my The Sun Fan, who got roped in probably way more than he bargained for and was still a fantastic assistant. Without him, this setup would have failed miserably.

I learned a lot from running this, and I would love to run another mechanics-heavy game like this someday. Definitely not this setup exactly, I really don't love having a Merlin, but it still worked out decently. It's probably not gonna be the next game I propose (I'm pretty sure the next time I want to host, I will want something "normal"), but I'm definitely going to submit another "No VT" game one of these days.

Also, I love Kiseki, and pretty much everything Falcom, ever, so if I got a few people at least interested in this franchise, it's a big bonus! As for the fic, I have most of Day 2 to adapt and what transpired tonight, so I'll release it in a little while. It didn't look like the game was going to end tonight, but I'll go hard at it in the coming days. But as far as TWG goes, I hope it was all fun and "immersive" enough.

I'll discuss player performances in post #2. I will however say that both XelNya and Arp! equally deserve MVP. Neither of them did anything wrong in regards to their win condition and it would be unfair to penalize Arp! simply for rolling a 3rd party character. In the meantime, I will now accept game proposals from other people.

I hope you all enjoyed this game and I'd be happy to receive feedback on your experience with this setup!

Night 0:
Rean: Picked mellon_collie

Night 1:
Machias: Checks mellon_collie
Gaius: Stays at home
Laura: Puts sword away
Jusis: Jails and spares Charu
Elliot: Protects MixMasterLar
Crow: Does not Kill, Roleblocks MixMasterLar
Fie: Kills Hakulyte, Delays Hakulyte
Emma: Does not kill

Night 2:
Gaius: Stays at home
Laura: Puts sword away
Elliot: Protects mellon_collie
Crow: Kills ToonE156, Roleblocks ToonE156
Fie: Does not kill, Delays XelNya
Emma: Does not kill, Mesmerizes Dafty.Pixel

Jail conversation

Every single action interaction

Scum Chat

Dead Chat

[Hateandhatred]

Player evaluations:

Ok, keep in mind I'm barely past the level of a junior player, so I'm not the best person to properly gauge all of this. I'll do my best nonetheless.

Hakulyte: I was very happy with the way you approached the game and with what was your idea of Town's strategy. Unfortunately, your time in the game ended up cut pretty short, but everything you did was in Town's best interest. I think you handled the jail chat very well too and had you lived, you could have potentially helped Charu bait a scum player into nightkilling them, or even waste their strongman. Sure, that strategy probably gets T-Force killed too, but I think it was worth doing. You did a very good job understanding the dynamics in place, so that's that. Also, thank you for contributing to the flavor, it was very appreciated and it was a role only you could fill since you were the only player (that I'm aware of) familiar with the source material.

MixMasterLar: You came into this game guns blazing, but I think you put a little too much pressure in a lot of places all at once and I think it would have benefited Town more if you used that energy to tunnel harder on some of your main targets. This game had a lot of inexperienced players and inviting them to join you in some tunnelling could have brought the right mindset in them a lot faster, leading to more interaction. As for your game itself, really, the only "bad" thing you did was being wrong a lot, and being wrong doesn't mean you are playing poorly. You are one of few people who didn't use their power and from my own evaluation of the setup, your power was much, much more useful in the late game. You were playing like the best Town veteran around for most of the game too. There's something else I observed, but I'll talk more about it when it comes to Charu.

_Zenith_/Charu: I'm not gonna talk too much about Zenith's play because he replaced way too early, so I'll focus on Charu. Charu played very very well, and I was very excited to see how he would bring up the plan he brought up in Jail chat (the whole scumbaiting thing). I feel like an attempt was made and at some point I though MML read into this and decided to assist you. I have no idea if he actually saw your plan, but had it worked, it would have been beautiful. However, knowing that, I really, really wonder why you elected not to sleep with your sword on N2. I think it would have made more sense for you to sleep with your sword every single night going forward, so I'd like to hear about this.

T-Force: Greg thinks your night actions made sense, but frankly I did not quite understand them. They were not really bad options if I put myself in your perspective, but I don't think I would ever prioritize them, but to be fair, MML was considered for a N1 kill, so it's probably just me. I also think that while your general agreements with the other players made sense for you to stay alive, it made it really, really hard for the newer players to build any sort of reads. It kind of prevented the game from really taking off. Other than that, I think you played well and I felt like you generally had some of the better reads yourself, which you confirmed at the end of the game.

Dafty.Pixel: I know English isn't your forte, but you gave this game a decent shot. Take some risks and involve yourself more next time you play, it's not that big of a deal if you draw moderate suspicion from the playerbase, especially since I know you can defend yourself and steer the opinions people have of you better than you can project an image of any sort of alignment of your own. Remember that even the littlest thing are worth mentionning even if you find them to be inconclusive, because you won't really ever get some concrete evidence outside of role perks in this kind of game. This doesn't apply to your specific one-shot ability however, and I'm glad you decided to save it for later.

Lightknight924:

Ok look, I don't want to just go all negative on anyone, but you did a lot of things wrong in this game. First of all, post deletion, talking after the deadline (even for some silly donut meme), that's not good and you should know better. And then there's the whole check on mellon_collie thing... This was a disaster and I don't know what you were thinking. Optimally, yes, you should have claimed, but there are layers to this. Trying to get 2 scums before being outted, in a vacuum, that's not the worst play in the world, but if you go down that route, you want to make SURE you put pressure on the player you know to be playing against you. You also don't attempt this play if you can't be around to make sure this plan goes well, and among the player who are more familiar with TWG and Mafia, you should have known that, but you put absolutely zero pressure on mellon_collie after getting your information. And frankly, this was not the right game to attempt something like this. The seer/cop is generally a very valuable asset to Town, but in this game, you can debate that it was actually the least valuable power to have. You alert Scum whenever you check them, you can die to Laura, you can alert Gaius, so withholding information is simply not worth it. I would even argue that you played this game against your own win condition, and from what I've heard, it is not the first time you've been doing this. I can only imagine you feel so stressed out from the game you make stupid plays like this, and at the end of the day, you're not committing a federal offense and it's just a forum game, but everyone else who takes this seriously suffers when you don't. Please seek to fix this however you can, because people are going to hate playing games with you if you don't. You've been playing for a while now, so you should know better.

Arp!: I frankly would have no issue calling you the MVP of the game if you didn't roll 3P. You played for your win condition pretty much flawlessly in my eyes, which is particularly impressive considering I think this is your second game on FFR? And in both of those games, you've had a strong and proactive showing, something a lot of the newer players struggle very badly with. No, you weren't the most aggressive players in the world and at the same time, you sometimes felt like you were just content with surviving, but that's really all you needed to do. You stayed out of both parties' radar and deflected all trouble fairly organically. Ultimately it still feel a little wrong to call you the best player in the game because you weren't driving it, but that is again mainly due to your role. I hope you keep playing TWG with us, you are really, really good at it.

ToonE156: First of all, congrats on getting 3rd place in D7! About the game, for those who don't know, ToonE actually inquired about being replaced early into D2, but after discussing it, ultimately decided to "make it work", and I think you did. Your role was very difficult and stressful, but you didn't make any particular bad move. The only issue is that you had all this information yet struggled to get any of it across while also making yourself look like a different Town player, but it's something much easier said than done. You were also out of most people's radar, and I think Lightknight's blunder really hurt you.

XelNya:You played a fantastic game from start to finish and I can't really point out anything really wrong for your team. The only tiny thing is that you weren't super proactive with the Machias notice, but that's something Scum didn't handle perfectly as a whole. You took a lot of initiative within Scum chat and in my eyes, that's why you won. You were also the first one to consider a ToonE lynch, which was the game winning move. Also, thank you for being nice to my friend coming to FFR just to play this game, but I'll talk more about that with Raeko's "analysis".

mellon_collie: Similar to XelNya, you played a near perfect game, however I can't for the life of me understand why you kept the Rean information to yourself. It did end up working out just fine, but even when XelNya was pressuring Arp!, you didn't bring up that they shouldn't be pressured too much, as them dying meant your own death. I find it to be a questionable decision, but hey, you won, you were a strong Town to everyone but people with mechanical information against this idea, so I tip my hat to you. Also, like with XelNya, thank you for treating my friend this well and helping them through the game like you did. If she's coming back to play with us, I'm sure your attitude towards her will have played a huge role in it.

Sourissette: It sucks that the game ended on N2 because you were just starting to pick up your stride. I know you were shy and uncomfortable with getting into this and had no idea about any sort of terminology, but you did very well nonetheless. Your dumbtell about not knowing that Raeko was mellon_collie was a brilliant play, and not a single Town player had you in their sights. Had the game lasted, I'm sure you would have made a lot more of an impact. I'm glad you seem to have enjoyed the experience and I would love if you came back to play with us, especially in a more "vanilla" setup. Bringing you here was a good decision and congrats on your victory!

Also, about the whole inactivity thing, I get the criticism, but the forum part of the game died on D1 (counting D1 as D0 here). Town had extremely limited tangible information by that point, only knowing that Hakulyte died (whose flip was never even 100% known until the end of the game). D0 is hardly ever a busy phase and I feel like calling out the newbies for barely making minimum posts is unfair considering that a lot of veterans are downright dismissive of the phase altogether. I give all of them the benefit of the doubt that they would have picked up activity wise should the game have lasted longer, even though it was obviously a very, very difficult setup for a lot of players.

I am still satisfied with how things played out overall and I want to thank all of you for taking part in it! It's been an honor to be your host, and frankly, I want to host more games in the future. I definitely want to play some more ultra mechanical game as I'm a huge believer in the format, but I'd also like to host some simple vanilla games as well, which is what I think I'll focus on the next time I want to submit a game proposal.

[T-Force]

The main reason I townread Xel at the end of it was because I softed my character in this image I posted. (the URL even says "oh look I'm soft claiming")


This is Elliot from Questionable Content. The only person in the game who I know reads the comic the character is from is Xel.

I figured me not dying when I was one of the two ways to keep Millium alive easily might accelerate my death, but me being left alone lulled me into a false sense of security.



Even though I was gonna go in guns blazing the next day.

[mellon_collie]

GG everybody

[Hakulyte]

[MixMasterLar]

Yeah I would have gone after Xel only because of LK's flip. I was hysterically wrong this game.

Originally Posted by T-Force

The main reason I townread Xel at the end of it was because I softed my character in this image I posted. (the URL even says "oh look I'm soft claiming")


This is Elliot from Questionable Content. The only person in the game who I know reads the comic the character is from is Xel.

I figured me not dying when I was one of the two ways to keep Millium alive easily might accelerate my death, but me being left alone lulled me into a false sense of security.



Even though I was gonna go in guns blazing the next day.

I marathoned all of QC doing lockdown and Elliot was -just- introduced I think

When they wrote out Hanners they wrote out a piece of my soul. May kept me around a bit longer, tho

[T-Force]

Originally Posted by MixMasterLar

Yeah I would have gone after Xel only because of LK's flip. I was hysterically wrong this game.




I marathoned all of QC doing lockdown and Elliot was -just- introduced I think

When they wrote out Hanners they wrote out a piece of my soul. May kept me around a bit longer, tho

Oh Hanners is back and has been for a while. That write-out was never meant to be permanent. (also, Elliot was introduced in like... 2012?)

Anyway, it was nice to see that you and I organically mindmelded on almost everything this game; no pockets involved.

[XelNya]

Originally Posted by MixMasterLar

Yeah I would have gone after Xel only because of LK's flip. I was hysterically wrong this game.

I think any attempt to get me on LK's flip would be super meh, because like, THE FUCK do you do with that post. Like, I dunno what you do mechanically there. Then Toon just randomly being like "gut feeling xel is bad" and like, I wanted to read into it, but I actually just assumed Toon did that to make a post, and we have chatted before so I was paranoid but just wrote it off.

I wanted to mesmer Toon, Kill / block Force, then spend the day fighting with Lar over Charu

this was what I wanted rofl and sure was a gamble but LAR WAS SO FUCKING AGREEABLE THIS GAME I THOUGHT I HAD A CHANCE

I am super glad Raeko pushed for Toon. I think she deserves MVP more than me for that lol

Also wanna bring up a fun meme from scum chat

Originally Posted by XelNya

I feel like i'm about to see Lar make a long, unhinged post about gap moe, and the impact it has had on the current state of TWG.

I dunno why that was the joke, but here we are. I hope I earned my points

I'm glad this game was a good one.

PS: Also, it's brought up in scum chat post game, but her not telling us about Arp worked in our favor imho, glad she didn't, let me farm reactions with a lot more authenticity lol

[Arp!]

oh wait, it's over?

wowzers

[Charu]

I... pretty much nailed my gut read on ToonE

[Charu]

Honda say it here

This setup is cool. However, I think FFRTWG is severely underwhelming to play it properly.

Too many inactives and new players.

No offense

[MixMasterLar]

Ok so after some sleep here's couple of complaints:


I don't think we need to keep replacing people doing the day phase, but especially at EOD. What's the reason we replaced Zenith? Did he request it? Because if he didn't then at least 3 others also hadn't meet post requirements at that juncture at the game. Why were they not replaced as well, from a mechanical standpoint?

Also I can sorta see the argument against speaking in codes but banning Al Bhed in the middle of a game where only like 1 person didn't get the joke and they fucking willed themselves to know anyway doesn't really seem like there was any sort of problem at any point over it.Also on what grounds would we even make it a rule? Would it have been different if I had spoken German? Japanese? If we can only use English wut happens wen wii dont use eet correcti?

IDK seems like a weird rule, and again if we decide it really is healthier for the game moving forward I don't really see why it had to stop here in real time and not be addressed post game

Originally Posted by T-Force

Oh Hanners is back and has been for a while. That write-out was never meant to be permanent. (also, Elliot was introduced in like... 2012?)

Anyway, it was nice to see that you and I organically minded on almost everything this game; no pockets involved.

Was he introduced that early?
I guess I don't remember. Oh wait is Elliot the bouncer? I think I keep thinking of him as a baker but keep forgetting he started out as a bouncer. Or am I merging two characters in my mind? I did basically speedrun it.

It was a wild ride of a read with all the tone shifts it went through. I think about going back and seeing what other ridiculous plot points happened, but in a way once it became very centric on the AI characters I started having my fill, as interesting as some of those characters were


And yeah, definitely GGs

[ToonE156]

i fucking knew Xel would kill me lmfao

[MixMasterLar]

Originally Posted by XelNya

I think any attempt to get me on LK's flip would be super meh, because like, THE FUCK do you do with that post.

Posts. IDK mate you're selling me short. And I was going to go after Arp too because it definitely seemed like a lot of interactions with you didn't look right, and it would confirm why Arp felt so of

But Arp being third party makes total sense why he pinged red but also had to translate Al Bhed by hand, lmao

[MixMasterLar]

Anyway, I won't take away from the wolves victory because they did very well but a lot of this game came down to town playing poorly and getting poor results for it

[ToonE156]

nvm it was Raeko

[Sourissette]

Originally Posted by Charu

Honda say it here

This setup is cool. However, I think FFRTWG is severely underwhelming to play it properly.

Too many inactives and new players.

No offense

I remember some people saying that they won't sign up because they want more new players, so I ended up signing up. But I hope I wasn't too inactive!

[Sourissette]

Originally Posted by MixMasterLar

Also on what grounds would we even make it a rule? Would it have been different if I had spoken German? Japanese? If we can only use English wut happens wen wii dont use eet correcti?

I don't know how to feel about the fact I actually could have played in all the languages you used as examples.

[Hateandhatred]

Edited in player evaluations in post #2!

[Hateandhatred]

Originally Posted by XelNya

I think any attempt to get me on LK's flip would be super meh, because like, THE FUCK do you do with that post. Like, I dunno what you do mechanically there. Then Toon just randomly being like "gut feeling xel is bad" and like, I wanted to read into it, but I actually just assumed Toon did that to make a post, and we have chatted before so I was paranoid but just wrote it off.

I wanted to mesmer Toon, Kill / block Force, then spend the day fighting with Lar over Charu

this was what I wanted rofl and sure was a gamble but LAR WAS SO FUCKING AGREEABLE THIS GAME I THOUGHT I HAD A CHANCE

I am super glad Raeko pushed for Toon. I think she deserves MVP more than me for that lol

Also wanna bring up a fun meme from scum chat




I dunno why that was the joke, but here we are. I hope I earned my points

I'm glad this game was a good one.

PS: Also, it's brought up in scum chat post game, but her not telling us about Arp worked in our favor imho, glad she didn't, let me farm reactions with a lot more authenticity lol

All of it