Prague - (Game Thread) GAME ON!!!

[Qantaga]

So, is your Mole still around or did he fly home?

I can't imagine that he wouldn't have left last night. However, with that whole "Is he gone or is he just lurking thing," I honestly don't know if he's gone or not.

And why did you snipe the submission last night? We had already submitted and Unagi couldn't submit, so I can't figure out what benefit you gained by waiting until the last minute.

I started thinking through my options. I knew I was hampered by a mole that didn't seem to ever want to leave. I needed to see how close I was. I almost didn't submit, but at the zero hour, I determined that I needed to take the shot, because you guys were getting a clue from Remus and an overnight scan. I knew there was a distinct possibility that Blusterberg would possess every clue this morning.

I think I may have handed in the winning solution here folks.

See what I mean.

[Lassr]

the race is on...well actually the race is over, just waiting on the pictures of the photo finish.

[Qantaga]

Since the game is almost certainly over at this point - how many clues were you missing? We were at 17 of 18 this morning.

Which makes my previous post moot.

[Chaosraven]

Hey Unagi *wink* *wink* I'm so HELPFUL.

[bb2112]

And, Chaos - thanks for the info. Your clues were Critical to building the solution.

This is what I was afraid of. That when Chaos finally jumped, that between what Unagi already had, and what Chaos had, that they would certainly have all 18 clues. Especially since Unagi was dropping all those unstealthy hints at who he had and didn't have.

[stessier]

Since the game is almost certainly over at this point - how many clues were you missing? We were at 17 of 18 this morning.

Which makes my previous post moot.

Care to spill your clue for us so we'll have all 18? How many were you at?

I'm actually a little confused because we had a full solution without the 18th. I'm wondering where we guessed or inferred that we technically shouldn't have.

[stessier]

Since the game is almost certainly over at this point - how many clues were you missing? We were at 17 of 18 this morning.

Which makes my previous post moot.

So how fast did you submit? Today, that is.

[Qantaga]

Since the game is almost certainly over at this point - how many clues were you missing? We were at 17 of 18 this morning.

Which makes my previous post moot.

Care to spill your clue for us so we'll have all 18? How many were you at?

I'm actually a little confused because we had a full solution without the 18th. I'm wondering where we guessed or inferred that we technically shouldn't have.

I honestly don't know. I could have all 18, but maybe only 17.

I only needed 17 to solve it, too.

My problem was that I didn't know which clues I could trust, since Turtleneck stayed for soooo long. It wasn't until last night's scan that Turtleneck's identity became apparent and I'm afraid too much time passed between the new day and my PM this morning.

[Qantaga]

So how fast did you submit? Today, that is.

Not as fast as I should have, apparently.

[Lassr]

Waiting on Grund; as much as I'd like to know when everyone posted the solution, I don't want to spoil Grund's post.

[Chaosraven]

I, for one, applaud the game mechanic. Frustrating, enticing, beguiling.

[Qantaga]

Waiting on Grund; as much as I'd like to know when everyone posted the solution, I don't want to spoil Grund's post.

Agreed. That's why I wasn't more specific.

[Remus West]

I, for one, applaud the game mechanic. Frustrating, enticing, beguiling.

I like and dislike it. For me, as a normal, there really was nothing to do. Vote where I was pointed and move along. I was never going to have enough information to provide the solution while KIM was with us so I wasn't working on it at all. Most of what I posted this game was out of boredom. I did really like the logic puzzle aspect though. I wonder if there is a method to tweak it to allow folks to participate more fully regardless of role.

[Chaosraven]

The aspect of "do we share our clues" and "do we reveal our identities" and such made for a nice twist. The Mastermind aspect of partial solutions, the mole in the ranks, and the public aspect of voting and the drawback of No Scan for deadlock.

[Grundbegriff]

The recent crisis in northeastern Afghanistan has been averted. After exhaustive inquiry into their reasons for travel, 65 detainees have been repatriated: 11 to the United States, 12 to Pakistan, 13 to India, 14 to Russia, and 15 to China.

Amid reports that the United States is covertly operating to incite a civil war in Kashmir, Russia has threatened to put boots on the ground. Pakistan and India take a less aggressive diplomatic posture, since their interests lie at the heart of the dispute. Pakistan is planning to apply economic pressure, while India is building a coalition to enforce the no-fly zone. It is believed that China, whose interests are orthogonal to those of the other embroiled nations, is taking steps to derail the peace process.

In other news, stock in the publicly held global financier Goldman Saxon plummeted today on news of massive layoffs in their corporate intelligence sector.

In a marketplace in Prague, a bomb went off that damaged nothing and killed nobody. However, two Kashmiri nationals were taken to hospital with inexplicable gunshot wounds to the foot.

Elsewhere, members of the Blusterberg Group have announced that participation in their annual junket to Bora Bora will be fully subsidized for all current, active members. And drinks are on the house.

Game over! It came down to timestamps on three correct submissions, here on day 11.

Victory goes to The Blusterberg Group!. Goldman Saxon came in second, with KIM in third.

Postmortem begins now!

[stessier]

Thank you for finding a way to post!!

Woo-hoo!! Go triangulated guessing!!!

[stessier]

I, for one, applaud the game mechanic. Frustrating, enticing, beguiling.

I like and dislike it. For me, as a normal, there really was nothing to do. Vote where I was pointed and move along. I was never going to have enough information to provide the solution while KIM was with us so I wasn't working on it at all. Most of what I posted this game was out of boredom. I did really like the logic puzzle aspect though. I wonder if there is a method to tweak it to allow folks to participate more fully regardless of role.

Wow - Q did it all by himself??? That's some amazing scanning to get 17 of 18!!!

Were you ever blocked?

[El Guapo]

He deduced the conclusion all by himself (though Chaos did it also today, reaching the same answer). Yesterday (game day) we wound up sharing all of our clues that Qantaga did not already have (which actually wasn't all that many), figuring that notwithstanding the presence of the mole we probably only had one more game day anyways.

[Unagi]

no

Scoop wanted to wait another night before he put a block order in


Well.

This game was a mixed bag for me. I should start by saying that I did have fun.

But.

Unfriendly. this game is not a friend maker.

and - ultimately - I feel like I did a ton of work and had ultimately no control over my victory.
I have no clue why Scoop waited so long to join me.

Oh well.

Great game, and a HUGE grats to Qantaga.

[El Guapo]

That was a good game! Interesting mechanic. Probably would take some tweaking to get down right, but a promising start I think.

[Qantaga]

Please post this link at OO for me:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AudJmKJ7oYpEdFNyZWt1SHdla1g2eUZtZ0tCSllabnc

[bb2112]

Wow, I can't believe 3 correct submissions today. I was so nervous that I was going to be away from my computer for a little time and not be able to submit the solution when morning arrived. I was totally panicking as I was driving in to work this morning.

What were the time stamps on the submissions?

[Remus West]

The aspect of "do we share our clues" and "do we reveal our identities" and such made for a nice twist. The Mastermind aspect of partial solutions, the mole in the ranks, and the public aspect of voting and the drawback of No Scan for deadlock.

I agree with all of this. However, I spent many many game days (and thus real life weeks) simply following orders because I so little of my team's information on which to base any deductions. When I posted on our forum the list of clues we had publically gathered that was 1 Clue short of the full list of my knowledge. There really is nothing for the non-scanners to do other than vote where they are told to.

[Lassr]

no

Scoop wanted to wait another night before he put a block order in


Well.

This game was a mixed bag for me. I should start by saying that I did have fun.

But.

Unfriendly. this game is not a friend maker.

and - ultimately - I feel like I did a ton of work and had ultimately no control over my victory.
I have no clue why Scoop waited so long to join me.

Oh well.

Great game, and a HUGE grats to Qantaga.

Ah, scoop was the other KIM as I suspected.

[stessier]

I, for one, applaud the game mechanic. Frustrating, enticing, beguiling.

I like and dislike it. For me, as a normal, there really was nothing to do. Vote where I was pointed and move along. I was never going to have enough information to provide the solution while KIM was with us so I wasn't working on it at all. Most of what I posted this game was out of boredom. I did really like the logic puzzle aspect though. I wonder if there is a method to tweak it to allow folks to participate more fully regardless of role.

What about if your Section Head got a one way PM each night to as many people as he wanted telling them one clue. Kind of like a dead drop. It could be whatever he wanted (real/fake). That way, everyone could work on solving the puzzle.

[stessier]

The aspect of "do we share our clues" and "do we reveal our identities" and such made for a nice twist. The Mastermind aspect of partial solutions, the mole in the ranks, and the public aspect of voting and the drawback of No Scan for deadlock.

I agree with all of this. However, I spent many many game days (and thus real life weeks) simply following orders because I so little of my team's information on which to base any deductions. When I posted on our forum the list of clues we had publically gathered that was 1 Clue short of the full list of my knowledge. There really is nothing for the non-scanners to do other than vote where they are told to.

It might become clear when we get to read the forums, but why didn't your team insist on booting your Mole, or at least trying? We really would have helped and it would have allowed the safe sharing of clues. Seems like an odd choice.

[Lassr]

Kudos to stessier for his hard work on the final solutions and bb for being very timely on it's submission. Our heroes!

[stessier]

All forums are visible!!

[bb2112]

I think the game is fun and I had a great time. My team worked fairly well together, and Stess is a genius. He did the lion's share of the work on getting our solution. Kudos to him.

Grund, great game. I know it was a ton of work, and you did an awesome job!

I also like the mechanic, but have to agree with Remus's comment about if you don't have a scan, you didn't have much to do. I can see how that would be disheartening. Our team was able to expel our mole, which allowed Stess, Lassr, and NC to participate, but if you can't expel your mole, it makes things very difficult.

I haven't really thought these through, but maybe some suggestions for next time:
I would like to see a way where everyone can scan. Maybe rotate the handler scan ability. Then also limit the number of days the mole can stay in a forum. I also have qualms about the torture/death mechanic.

[stessier]

For those reading the other forums, since we didn't share names until later on and Grund's spreadsheet is confusing the heck out of me with both games on the same tab (my fault, not his ):

Rolf - bb2112
Smithson - Lassr
Spaulding - Newcastle
Pappa - stessier
Harrassowitz - Unagi

Union Bag - Chaos
Leverage - Remus
Derivative - Qantaga
Equity - Scoop
Tranche - El Guapo

[stessier]

Fascinating - GS outed themselves very early on (around the first Unagi interrogation).

[Qantaga]

Grund, great game. I know it was a ton of work, and you did an awesome job!

I agree.

Excellent game Grund. I enjoyed it immensely!

I got caught up with work this morning, so I've not had much time to think about the post game yet. I'll have much more to say soon.

Congrats to Blusterberg!

And congrats to KIM, too!

All three teams submitting correct solutions at the start of the final day was an amazing photo finish (as Lassr called it).

[Unagi]

Oops - A Huge Grats to Blusterberg !!

[Unagi]

Grund, great game. I know it was a ton of work, and you did an awesome job!

I agree.

same here.

[stessier]

I have to say, the torture of Unagi as seen through GS's eyes makes my BG heart all warm and fuzzy.

[Qantaga]

I have to say, the torture of Unagi as seen through GS's eyes makes my BG heart all warm and fuzzy.

While I have a minute, I do want to comment on that.

Even though I pretended otherwise in this thread, I would never have agreed to torture Unagi had I thought he was KIM.

Chaos scanned Unagi and came back with confirmation that the clue Unagi revealed on his first interrogation (the duplicate of mine) was a true clue. Meaning, that if he were KIM, he would have chosen not to reveal a false clue during that interrogation. Obviously, I was blinded by my own perceptions of the game. My mistake was that, had I been KIM, I would have submitted a false clue on my first interrogation.

So, I mistakenly thought that Unagi was only KIM if he copied my clue, not if he actually possessed it.

I only participated in torturing Unagi (which is why I only wanted a second interrogation on him previously) because I thought Chaos' scan proved Unagi's pure BG status (thus, trying to give us a numbers edge while still keeping your forum corrupted). I would never had voted (or encouraged any other GS agents) to torture Unagi (thus giving you your pure forum) had I thought for a moment that KIM would pass on the opportunity to plant false data, especially so early in the game.

Of course, I can understand Unagi's reasoning for that, but it would have not been my choice and, thus, I misled myself and ultimately cost GS a great deal.

[Unagi]

I was very proud of my "who's who" deductions. (for what ends up being no gain).

I had Rolf = bb2112 and stessier = Papa from the first couple days on our forum together.
I also had Newcastle pegged for Spaulding (but that was just a gut feel from how he was approaching things)
Lassr posting his CODE helped me figure out that Smithson wasn't El Guapo - but actually Lassr.

When the secret codes were posted, that basically just made things more clear.

[Unagi]

Playing alone on the KIM forum pretty much sucked. I'll say that. Waiting for my partner was a bit of a joke. I have no clue really why Scoop waited as long as he did, as I think he way overplayed his 'Oh I am causing them so much grief, I love it" angle and we never got to actually coordinate any scans.

[Remus West]

The aspect of "do we share our clues" and "do we reveal our identities" and such made for a nice twist. The Mastermind aspect of partial solutions, the mole in the ranks, and the public aspect of voting and the drawback of No Scan for deadlock.

I agree with all of this. However, I spent many many game days (and thus real life weeks) simply following orders because I so little of my team's information on which to base any deductions. When I posted on our forum the list of clues we had publically gathered that was 1 Clue short of the full list of my knowledge. There really is nothing for the non-scanners to do other than vote where they are told to.

It might become clear when we get to read the forums, but why didn't your team insist on booting your Mole, or at least trying? We really would have helped and it would have allowed the safe sharing of clues. Seems like an odd choice.

because there is no incentive to do so. If we simply interrogate there is nothing accomplished. If we torture there is nothing accomplished IF we are correct since KIM simply leaves and misses a scan which is the exact thing that happens if he leaves on his own. If we torture and are wrong though we lose an agent and are no better off regarding the Mole. Losing the agent would have been very costly and getting rid of the mole not such a huge benefit as noted by the amount of time you spent without a mole compared to us and how close we both were to winning - time stamps were the only difference. The risk to benefit ratio of attempting to cull our team was way to low.

[Remus West]

I want to say that I really did like the idea and thought the three teams were very well balanced (as demonstrated by the finish). I even really like the idea of the mechanic. The amount of effort required to run this game and simply get it organized is impressive and I appreciate it. Guess I'm just trying to say I don't want to come off as overly negative on this because I think it is a fantastic idea and start. I simply feel there needs to be some sort of tweak to make being a normal agent fun. The normal usually has the vote power but with this I felt there was a strong need to simply follow where the handler told me to go rather than move my vote around - particularly after the Unagi era ended for you.

Maybe some sort of mechanic where agents must earn their access to the team forum? Not sure how that would work but it should include some sort of deduction based off possible actions. Then, the KIM agents wouold start in contact but be attempting to infiltrate the forums at the same time as the agents?