Herein lies the crux of the matter and where I lost the game.
This post is meant to explain my own personal character flaws and my failure to adapt to a PM game, to the detriment of every villager. This is not a criticism of Remus or bb, but should give everyone insight into how I lost the game for the village (especially Unagi and Austin) who put so much effort into making it an entertaining and grandly strategic game.
bb2112 wrote: Remus and I were working you hard.
This is where I fell. It was the fact that both bb and Remus were on a sustained campaign. They put a lot of time and effort into their PMs with me. It wasn't a casual thing.
I related their strategy to my own shortcomings and projected what I would do onto their actions.
Remus West wrote: At one point Qantaga sent me a pm about how this game was more personal due to the nature of pm-ing and I think that was the case for me.
Since Remus referred to this, here's the relevant portion of that PM, so that you can all see just how I lost the game:
Qantaga wrote:However, I've learned a valuable lesson. I tend to project my own character traits/flaws into these games. I need to sever myself from that. I could not actively deceive someone on a sustained basis in PMs like bb did to me (masterfully so). I have no problem deceiving/misleading/etc. in an open game thread, but the PMs seem more personal to me. And, of course, bb played it the way it should be played by PM, I just couldn't project myself into that playstyle, if I were a wolf.
Which leads me to my greatest fear. Is it possible that you and bb have both been PMing me this entire game, pointing at each other, leading me to eliminate you two as possible teammates? If so, I will have learned yet another valuable lesson.
One thing that I have to ask myself is, would I feel worse voting for you and being wrong, or voting for RMC and being wrong?
The answer is that I would feel about a thousand times worse being wrong about you than I would about being wrong about RMC. I could much easier bear the burden of being played by you and bb, than the burden of "betraying" you at the end.
This being my first PM game, it came down to the fact that I convinced myself that, because I couldn't personally sustain such a thorough and extended PM campaign of deception, that it must not be possible for them to do it, either.
They both played the game the way it should be played, but I forgot to leave my idiosyncrasies at the door.