So it looks like we got lucky on day 1. Trying to understand what Anxiety posts, it looks like he was on Saruman's side or perhaps was Saruman himself.

Saruman for those who did not know came over as the greatest of the maia, he was the head of the white council (the leader of the wizards and in some ways Gandalf's greater). Saruman however was twisted to the dark side, his hunger for power and longing for it basically caused him to twist his desires for evil.

As an aside, I would never have allowed you to vote and spend a da voting for someone who may not have even signed up for the game. Scoobz responded to yesterday's pm and even asked me a question about his role. He was in this game.

-Anxiety

From the description, the voice, his presence.. I think he was Saruman himself.

Saruman was most known for his commanding voice, and the power it held.

"nothing to connect him to any dark lord" seems to me to indicate he was a good guy, although "fallen into shadow" ...maybe means just not a ranger or a "devout" but more of a "middleground" good-guy?

Well, we walked away with a feeling of victory so he must have been a bad guy.

I was thinking he was an independent bad guy with his own victory conditions.

but then you think we'd find SOMETHING indicating he was saruman.

although you're right...the voice...the smile as he dies, does remind me of Curumo.

On Page 1, he was listed as Silvos the dark adept. Needless to say, that is a fake name too. So I am pretty convinced most people if not all have fake names in this game. THe description still leads me to think it was the Saruman type role, but guess only time will tell. Either way I think this was a huge kill for us today. Nice for luck to turn out on our side for once.

As much fun as it is to read your speculation, may I remind you that name, side, role title and faction are revealed upon death in the roster post.

Curunir :)

I was madly hitting F5! :)

I'm out to get some late dinner. Be back later.

Curumo...the name in High Quenya of the Maia who came to Middle Earth as Saruman....Curunir was in Sindarin :D

for those that don't want to go to page #1

I have seen a new level of geekdom

at least i'm not my friend who can speak Quenya (although I am jealous of her...but she's also a linguist)

But is she cunning? (Sorry, I couldn't resist)

Guess I am not familiar with the name Curumo then! I know Olorin was Gandalf's name in the far west, but I don't remember Curumo off the top of my head. I guess I need a refresher too :)

that's okay. not like High Quenya is really....used by any except the Ainur. I'm telling you though man...as far as reference...the Encyclopedia of Arda is AMAZING. So helpful, and quite cannonical.

actually alan, this is the other issue i had with what you were saying all day....the draw of the ring and the lure of power that affected isuldur, boromir and bilbo were hardly the same as the affect that it had on Gollum. The affect the one ring had on Smeagol when he killed Deagol is the same as everyone else, but no one else had a completely second personality develop as a result of possessing the ring. it was always my understanding that the second personality was a result of his isolation for 500 years, and had nothing to actually do with the ring.....again, this is kind of a dork semantic argument, but what set my radar off was that you were giving out information as fact that there is no proof of.

Kind of an evil middle-manager?

Ok, I thought we didn't have to know any LOTR to play this game. I haven't seen any of the movies, or read any of the books and I am feeling so very lost.

And this is the second time in as many games that we have killed a bad guy the first night. How lucky can you get? And if he messaged anxiety with a question about the game, i wonder why he never checked in?

you don't need to LSG. we're just delving into geekdom. but at heart you can still play it like a WW game, evaluate people based on voting history and statements and who they finger.

Yeah umm...I'm going to have to go ahead and ask you to come in on Saturday...

This is an important point and I wanted to address it officially. You don't. Some people are free to get their geek on as much as they want, but if I say you don't need to know ME through the books or movies, then I won't be bringing up obscure History of Middle Earth, Unfinished Tales and Silmarillion references in a game that takes place in Bree.

-Anxiety

Most of it is due to Gollum actually posessing the ring for far longer than any of the rest of them, or at least being near it and craving it longer. His mind just couldn't handle it and it eventually corrupted him.

You only saw mild cases of Boromir and Ilsidur allowing the ring to influence their decisions, however Bilbo very clearly started to exhibit symptoms of it in his later years. If Bilbo had not had a retreat to escape to, it possibly would have driven him mad as well.

Gandalf and Galadriel both talk at times about the power of the ring as well. Both perhaps are two of the strongest willed people in the entire stories felt that they would try to do things for good, try to do things for the right reason, but the ring would change who they were and would affect them in the same way.

It could have been play style. It is surprising how many people get away from votes by not showing up early in the game.

Sorry 'bout that. I thought about undoing it, but then it wouldn't be funny . I should have thought again, and I'm sorry I didn't check back until now. I knew better..enough to apologize.

No prob Glengoyne

That's the way I feel.

But feelings are fleeting.

Nice result on scoobz. I think voting for quiet people makes sense as it forces people to get involved in the game.

Here is a little treat from way back. Spock meets Bilbo Baggins, a little hobbit with a heart of gold.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC73P...elated&search=

If I remember correctly, Gandulf pointed out that the ring would corrupt even him, which is why he didn't take it himself.

Observations from today, as I was gone most of the day:

- (OOC) We really need to make sure that people that have "signed up" for games have ACTUALLY signed up for games. Maybe making everyone respond to their role PM to verify? This is getting a little silly; it takes any drama out of day 1 when we have to kill people that aren't here.

-This is the reason why I'm not an advocate of a day one lynch here...even though he was bad, what do you want to think that around vote six or so the bad guys started filtering in, seeing the writing on the wall? Someday someone is going to make something out of these votes and that is very dangerous -- they don't really mean anything since Day 1 has no context.

-I don't like the way Alan is going. I know he really, really loves LotR, but having him always directing traffic is out and out dangerous for us. Alan, I know you pulled the psycho scheme last game, and the fact that it worked means you might try to keep pulling it off so eventually you could hide a bad guy role in it. You're on notice.

With all the talking about LotR, let me just say this. It's fun. I love LotR a lot too, it's really cool to talk about. However, Anxiety says we don't need to know the stuff for the game, and I trust that we're not going to divine some great secret by talking about the canon. So while I appreciate the enthusiasm we might have, any future attempts to take the outside LotR canon into play, besides insanely obvious stuff, is going to be met by me with extreme suspicion.

Umm...wow. I am speechless. And strangely enough, if I saw it correctly, he was the only one in that who didn't have pointy ears.

Freakish

So what is there to take from this?

You might suggest that anyone who didn't vote for scoobz must have been on his side, but I voted for spleen, and I am just a simple hobbit. So clearly we have plenty of baddies hiding in this runaway vote (which is why we try to get two candidates, of course, much the shame we didn't).

On today's little interplay between Alan and Blade and saldana. I think Blade was just being defensive. He is quick to leap to the persecuted act in these games when he feels he might be spotlighted, regardless of his allegiance. So I don't make much of him making a big deal of Alan's posts.

But the fact of the matter is that Alan's posts were essentially informational and provided a number of different perspectives and analyses to take from Blade's roleplay. I didn't get any sense of any bias or suggestion in them whatsoever.

So the over-the-top reactions of Blade and saldana are extremely suspicious to me. I can excuse Blade there (for now), but I can't excuse saldana. I think he went well beyond any reasonable level of post analysis to a level of paranoia I think was very likely fabricated. I think he may have reason to have pushed for this little controversy. To what end, I don't yet know, but it is very suspicious. Overreactions always make me suspicious in this game.

The one thing in saldana's favor is that I recall a similar argument between him and GoldenEagle early in the Tombstone game and they were both good there. So maybe it's just a little zealous over-analysis by saldana. But for lack of better candidates, he's on my short list right now.

I'm not sure you are quite caught up yet. As Anxiety posted, Scoobz did respond to his role PM and asked a question about his role. He was playing.

The pile on at vote 6 or whatever comment does not make sense. It took 13 votes to lynch yesterday. Scoobz did not have number 13 until 58 minutes to deadline. By not showing up he almost did escape a lynch. And we nailed a bad guy by lynching on day one. That would not have happened if we chose not to lynch. Yes it is a small chance to hit, but it is the only way we nail bad guys and the reason we have the numbers as the uninformed majority.

Don't forget there are 2 bad factions. So Sauron's minions could have just as easily been moving to lynch Scoobz without truely "hiding" as they knew he was not one of them.

On the over reaction. Not sure, but it could be a fabricated altercation in order to defuse night action suspicion. Basically Saldana could have pushed back to make a scene so the dark side would have a motive to avoid him as a night kill target.

And statistically we could have just as easily, if not more easily, got a good guy, beacuse they can shift votes in manners we can't detect -- by strategically not showing up, for instance. And yes, Ididn't read everything, I apologize, but the thought was brought up throughout the day. I can see the argument for lynchings on day one, and a lot of the time it's a good idea, but to think that we absolutely must be killing people every day even if we have no freaking clue what we're doing seems insane to me.

But statistically the good guys have a better chance of winning the overall game by lynching on day one, etc. You are not trying to win the day, you are trying to win the game.

I know it is hard to make the call and things can go wrong. But one thing is for sure, the bad guys will not target one of their own for the night kill.

Dawn breaks, and with it comes the gloom of another fog filled day, as the mist from the Barrow Downs lingers over Bree. Your rise from the morning with a continued extra spring in your walk, as the events of yesterday still fill you with a sense of justice.

Morning continues like any morning. You have your breakfast, and head out to the center of the town where you are supposed to meet. Shops are open, innkeepers sweep away last night’s revelry, and you think you can sense the air lightening. Surely it can’t be long until the darkness is completely eradicated from your fair town.

Someone notices that the local herbalists, the Mortar and Pestle, is not open. Where is Imelda Francis, the herbalist? She always opens her store on time. She is not at the gathering either. Curious, you knock on her door, to no avail. Several of you have gathered, all wondering what has happened.

The door is not locked, and one of you dares entry. The door opens well enough, and you detect the shoeprints of wet shoes coming out of the store. Imelda must have walked out for the day, leaving early! You sigh a sigh of relief but wonder why she didn’t lock the door.

The group of you almost turns and walks away from the Mortar and Pestle, but one of you wonders out loud. “Why is the door not locked?” Another points out that these footprints are too big for Imelda’s.

With dread in your heart, you burst back into the shop and head for her personal room at the back, where her cot and room are. Upon opening the door, you smell the odor of death. Looking down, her body has been mercilessly stabbed over and over. One of you puts a blanket over her body.

You note that someone washed off the blood in the washbasin, and then walk out. Curiously, you look around but no one has wet hands. Imelda looks dead for several hours, so whoever was here would have had time to dry off.

The new day begins, and with it, shattered hearts as one of your own has died an ugly death.



Fouts has been found dead. Day Two begins and will end at 10:00 pm EST Tuesday.



-Anxiety

Tyrith, I'm not sure how you can say that I am on notice. The other game I tried a style where I came out non stop attacking and pushing people for a vote. I haven't even done that here. I was the one attacked, and simply defended myself. Good grief.

I will be out all day (working both jobs), so I have to get my vote in here.

Nothing has really come forth from the night actions yet, other than poor Fouts' death, of course, so I don't have much to go on.

I will stick with my reasoning from last night and follow up on suspicions, for lack of a better candidate. I am sure someone will emerge today, but I unfortunately won't be around to change my vote. So hopefully my suspicions are correct.

VOTE SALDANA

I tend to agree with you Chief. Saldana's and Blade's reaction to Alan's posts was over the top and suspicious. If lynch were right now, I'd vote for one of them. Hopefully, we'll learn more today.

I'm not ready to vote anyone yet until we gain info from last night if any.

dola-
FWIW Saldana's reaction is pretty much spot on with his personality in real life so I'm not ready to string him up yet.

This is by no means an endorsmant for him I just wasn't as surprised about his reaction as the rest of you, having been on the receiving end of it many times :)

For whatever its worth, Blade never trusts me in games and I wouldn't be suprised if he thought I was up to some ploy with him. I don't find Blade's response to uncharacteristic for me at all in most games that I am in with him.

He was completely and utterly wrong about my intent, and when he attacked me, I had to defend myself, but reading back its not too uncharacteristic of him.

Saldana was a bit suprising for me, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. There are definite disagreements in the "Tolkien geek community" about what is and isn't canon, and many people don't feel the things that I do are canon. My problem isn't as much with that as he seemed to jump and try to take pot shots at every little point and distort most every point possible with me yesterday, even when there was no basis to it. He either didn't read my points or ignored my points in many cases accusing me of things that were the exact opposite of what I said.

I guess the biggest reason I don't jump out on the Saldana bandwagon yet is I haven't figured out the motive. I'm trying to figure out what he was trying to accomplish with the attacks. Part of me thinks he is just really into Tolkien too and doesn't believe in Christopher TOlkien's publications the same way that I do (which is something very heatedly argued online even among Tolkien geeks).

The only frustrating thing is how people keep coming out accusing me of things that are actually the exact opposite of what I said. Like Tyrith this morning coming out and saying I'm playing my psycho game like I did in Resident Evil... where in fact its been the opposite and I've been on the defensive the entire time.

I completely agree with 99% of saldana's take yesterday. I just wasn't around to post it. So, put me on your list as well, CR.

I'm confused. CR voted for Saldana?

Are you saying that you agree with Saldana that AlanT was attacking Blade and CR should condider you suspicious too or are you saying you agree with CR that Saldana was over reacting and on the offensive?

Also, what is the herbalist, that is what Fouts was listed as on his role?

I was wondering about the Herbalist role myself. In normal WW games, the herbalist is the bodyguard role I believe.. I'm wondering if it is here as well, or if it is more of a specialized role for the theme. Perhaps here the herbalist could do something with kingsfoil (Athelas) to help people out.

Not sure how Athelas would help a good person though in a game where the night kill is instant, unless there are people with some kind of poison or time-delayed death attacks, and the herbalist being dead means there is no remedy any longer.

I think the herbalist is a vanilla role. I assume since we live in a town I assume we all have some sort of occupation and role.

I think those of you with knowldege of LOTR may be reading into things to much...

I probably have been reading too much into things, if i had stayed quiet I wouldn't be under the barrage of attacks now. Maybe I am hurting things more than helping by showing off my love for Tolkien's writings.

Its just hard to describe a passion without appearing fanatical I guess. Some people get carried away over Star Wars or who knows what. Middle-earth was my "fantasy" as a child growing up. I still have my original paperbacks (now falling apart and partially missing covers) from 1968 even. Growing up, my father didn't really spend much time with me.. was always too busy with work to come to my baseball or football games. The only thing he ever did with me was read and talk about Tolkien's world.

I'll take a step back I suppose though since its causing more problems than its worth.

AlanT- I'm not so sure you are "muddying" things up but since it was clearly stated you could play this game without knowledge of LOTR so I would be shocked if there were mechanisms in the game that were specific to knowledge of the story.

Any thoughts on why Fouts was killed last night? Just someone knocking out a good player, or were there other reasons?

Two things...you keep saying i never trust you, but last game you and i were best friends. So i take that to mean your still trying to discredit my opinion.

Secondly, i never attacked you. I said you were trying to make me look bad, which you are doing even now with this quoted part. If you think that was me attacking, or that you think your always my top suspect, you have never seen me go to extremes. I was not mad at all yesterday, and you are not even close to always being on my suspect list. Hoops and barkeep are...your not...sorry, but i really dont like how you keep saying things that flat out arent true

Alan, it isn't as much that I think you're going psycho again, but that you've proven you're capable of surviving doing very wolfish things sometimes. I just don't want this to turn into something like RE where you're in the driver's seat for several days and we can't figure out where we stand. And yes, I didn't read yesterday as close as I should have, sorry.

First instinct is that it's just another kill a solid player who probably won't be guarded, small chance he could be scanned plays. They couldn't kill anyone out of the alan/saldana/blade trio unless they're all good because we're just looking for excuses to come down on them...the only way they could ever have done that is if all three of them are good and they wanted us to kill our own active players. Beyond that, who knows?

I find it funny that we're playing a game where it is the good guys' job to figure out who the bad guys are and it is the bad guys' job to not let that happen and folks are getting irritated with each other over those things.

I HATE YOU! GO AWAY!

...yeah, that is pretty funny :)

Anxiety,

Any word on what we are going to do about Neuqua? Basically is he going to be replaced or not. If not, then we know it is up to us to determine in game. If he is, then can it be done today so as not to hold a position over multiple days?

Might be that you are in the process of figuring that out now, but just thought I would ask.

Apologies all, I've been dealing with a balky AOL connection all morning, and just was able to get on a few minutes ago. I will likely post sporadically this afternoon as I get caught up on stuff here and elsewhere.

I did want to say that this whole Alan vs Blade thing sounds like two fellow villagers just arguing with each other to me.

Well, I'd say it sounds like Alan and Blade arguing with each other since they seem to do this as any combination of roles. :)

I still think it's interesting that AlanT seems to be having a bit of innocent fun with the LotR history/flavor in this game, and that certain people are absolutely lambasting him over it.

Sometimes I wonder if the people arguing with each other the most, while at the same time not pushing a lynch on the other person, are actually riffing off of each other from the same side.

That sentence made absolutely no sense. But I know what I meant, damnit.

I, for one, am sorry to see what has happened to Imelda. I hope everyone now realizes what we're up against. The good folk of Bree are under attack. This isn't a game. Which makes me even more upset with Blade. If he's crazy, we should get rid of him before he sells us out. Or if he's acting crazy, what are his motives? Just having fun? Think Imelda is having fun now?

I'm sorry. I'm just really upset by this news. Imelda and I were friends. We used to meet at the Prancing Pony for drinks and to smoke. She had the best pipe-weed around. I'm really going to miss her.

I know, and I feel bad about having to bust him for it, but the "innocent fun" could be used to screw around with us in certain situations. Or it could have, until Anxiety nerfed it.

Or one (or more) of the Alan/Saldana/Blade trio is evil. I know the two factions of darkness are playing against each other as well, but why would they take out one of their own and not someone from the light?

Is it possible they didn't know he was Dark?

Who? I don't know if the agents of darkness know who all is dark, but if they're in the same faction they'll know each other.

I agree that none of them would take out a member of their own faction, but if one or more were dark and on the same team, they may not have knows that Scoobz was on the other dark team (or was a dark independent).

Are you talking about scoobz?

No, I'm talking about the person that took out Fouts.

Oops, I thought that comment was about the Scoobz lynch.

The two dark armies dont know the members of their rival darkness id imagine. I was somewhat expecting two kills with two dark armies. If fouts was the bodyguard, i wonder why he didnt protect himself on night one

ok, so I'm confused. Fouts wasn't evil so where is this conversation going?

1. please reference post numbers where i "overreacted", as i hardly think i did anything of the sort.


after that, please evaluate the following statements (alan please take no offense from this, as i am just as 'bad' as you are)

1. the particular theme of this game allows for various levels of background knowledge

2. alan defined himself very early as having a extensive knowledge of LOTR geekdom

3. other players in the game expressed having know knowledge of said geekdom

4. alan made statements that drew upon his geekdom knowledge and presented those statements as fact

5. those statements were made in an accusatory manner towards blade

6. anyone with no or little geekdom knowledge may see alan as an authority and take his statements to be true

7. i, also having significant knowledge of LOTR geekdom pointed out that Alans statements are not necessarily fact, and should not be taken as such

8. an extremely geeky discussion ensued over how he was deriving his statements, versus where i was deriving my arguements with them.

9. he gave his point of view, i disagreed with it, and moved on....note, i did not vote for alan yesterday, and will not likely vote for him today

where exactly did i do anything wolfish in the least...my actions yesterday were performed in an effort to make sure that people that dont share alan and I's fascination with LOTR were not led astray by the statements alan was presenting. he made presented statements as facts...i parried by saying they were not fact..

please explain how your logic progressed from me exposing my knowledge of Middle Earth in an effort to make sure all the townspeople had two different sources of information as opposed to only alan's perspective to my being on the side of Darkness

Easy! Chief Rum is a dark dude.

Pwned :eek:

i have watched CR make wild accusations for a number of games now, and not once have i been able to follow his logic...today is no different.

( and IIRC, not once has he been anywhere close to correct ;))

vote Chief Rum

I was thinking the same thing. I will likely vote for Chief today, but I want to see how things develop.

Is it just me or has Blade been awful quiet today after the brouhaha yesterday?

To me, that suggests he's quite possibly Dark, since he knows that spotlighted trouble on him, and now he's laying low and hoping to be avoided... so that'll be my vote for now.

VOTE BLADE

dola,

Okay, so Blade's been active after I read through more... but it just seems like a form of verbally laying low, if that makes sense. :D

Its 11 AM here, im in college, i have classes...im on my lunch break right now. And already i have gotten in 3 posts...little trigger happy here izulde? :confused: :confused:

By the way, those 3 are 3 times as many as you have today :rolleyes:

It's just the general vibe I'm getting, that you're running scared.

Well i have classes for the next 4 hours, so i guess ill be running scared until im out

Why were you expecting two kills of the dark faction? The Scoobz kill was completely by luck. If they already lost one member, why take out another? Why wouldn't they go after someone who was good? That would be like the rangers taking out the townsfolk for no reason. In the long run, something like that could happen, but why so early? I would think that the forces of darkness are working together right now and will turn on each other later.

I think he means two night kills, which likely would have been 2 good guys getting killed. Usually when there are 2 evil factions, they don’t know who each other are, so they could end up killing each other while targeting someone they think is good.

Basically I think Blade was saying he expected a kill from the Sauron Agents and a kill from the Saruman Agents. But there was only one kill.

I have to agree with this. Right now they need to be getting in good guy kills, because making sure darkness wins seems like it's going to be more important than making sure their part of darkness wins.

Speculation in this regard:

1) If the bad guys have some sort of seer role, perhaps they will be able to eventually figure out who some/most/all of our rangers are. If so, they can keep them alive longer. Eventually the side of darkness will have numbers on the rangers and can control the vote while not actually winning the game. At that point the darkness sides will probably start tearing into each other and the game might turn three ways. I don't know what, if any, value this has for us at this time.

2) All of this is highly speculative because we don't know how many bad guys there are. We can't begin to accurately predict that number until we know what kind of roles we have on our side. Thus, we're probably going to be fairly clueless for another couple of days, in this regard.

Other observations:

- saldana's self-defense today points out the reasons why I put Alan "on notice" last night. Someone controlling the conversation putting out information like that is dangerous in general, good or bad.

- I can't really disagree with saldana's assessment of Chief Rum.

- I have zero clue as to what to do today besides killing alan to figure out how serious/dumb he was being yesterday, and that feels stupid...I'd still rather let him draw attention another day or two, then kill him and use him for vote records, or let him be night killed if he's good. Loud people shouldn't be killed early without good reason because they provoke so much controversy and tend to spin webs around themselves and once we figure out their allegiance we can unspin the webs. Net of it is that I have no clue for today.

I should be around.

it's possible there was a conversion and no kill too if we are looking at two evil sides battling it out.

this is what led to my conclusion of conversion

I bet it's a numbers game for the darkness too.

they need to have the numbers to win the game, but also the numbers to beat the other dark faction too is my guess

It seems like the last few games we killed off all of the talkative guys before deciding that we should look at some of the quiet ones. Should we look at mixing that up in this game and start with the quiet ones?

The rules say if the Darkness wins and both dark factions are still around, the GM would pick a winner. They will either need to kill each other off, or close enough to guarantee their own win.

If they don't know who each other is, what does everyone think about them maybe having a seer? I don't expect any of us has a remotely intelligent answer right now, but this is going to be important when we look at voting records.

I'm for it. Got anyone in particular that's sticking out to you?

Makes sense I guess. They probably need to be able to identify the other faction and the Rangers.

Ok. If that's the case, then yeah it is interesting that there was only one kill. It seems like Fouts could be the result of the Sauron faction since they are more eager to act now that the Black Riders were in town. Saruman lost a player, so it could be that they were lying low last night.

Not particularly. Looking at the player list, I don't seem to remember hearing much from KWhit, Swaggs, SnDvls, or Sublime2 (or obviously Neuqua), but I am going strictly by memory. I'll have to look back.