The RPG Duelling League
RPGDL Games => Forum Games => Topic started by: Ranmilia on December 21, 2010, 11:27:14 AM
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Why: We haven't had a big fun mafia game in a long time.
When: Starting sometime in January.
Will it trainwreck in a morass of planning and never get off the ground like that Arkham game I still hope to run sometime: no, this time I actually did plan ahead!
What: A big ol fun game of Mafia, using the Soldiers/World at War model, for hopefully 26-32 players!
Except not quite, because this will be run as TWO SEPARATE SIMULTANEOUS GAMES of hopefully 13-16 players each!
To explain how this variant works...
On one side, the forces of Richard Hawk, Vice President of the Great United States, Balk's right hand man (does that make Balk the President?) and Morbol trainer extraordinaire!
On the other side, Ko, the undying Time Mage legion!
- The Richardites and the Kos will each have their own separate game thread, in which their respective faction is town, and the scum are a handful of infiltrators loyal to the opposing faction. Both games will run almost completely separately from each other, interacting only through Battle (Night) actions. As an additional experimental touch, I'm considering having one thread be designated "serious business players" and the other "casual laid back players", if people would like that. Of course such designations would mean only what the players make of them.
- Each faction, in its own thread, will have a "King" player. The ultimate goal and win condition of both factions is to kill the other faction's King! The Kings are mod-confirmed town players in their own thread, and their primary responsibility is selecting their thread's battle party at the end of each day. Kings can only die if they are lynched (which is obviously only possible if the scum in their thread reach a majority) or killed in battle (which is also difficult, and explained below).
- Days will run on "lights out" mechanics, meaning that the towns are not limited to only one lynch per day. When a player is hammered for lynch, they are considered dead immediately and all votes are reset, but they do not "flip" their information immediately, nor does the day phase end. Days in both games will end at the same time, on a real time deadline. After the deadline is reached and both Kings have submitted their battle parties (again, more on this below), but before battle actions are chosen, the flips of everyone lynched that day will all be revealed.
- There will be no normal Night phases, no normal night roles, and indeed the scum factions may not even have normal night kills. Instead, after each day there will be a Battle Phase, and every player will have a unique assortment of at least 3 battle actions they can choose to perform.
- At the end of each day, but BEFORE lynch flips are revealed, both Kings must select a certain number of players (probably 4 or 5 depending on how many people are playing) from their thread to form a battle party. The Kings themselves cannot join the battle unless/until their thread's population becomes so low that they have no other choice to fill a party.
- The parties then go out and, well, fight each other! Every player participating in the battle will pick one of their possible actions to perform. Town players will want to help their side and hurt the enemy combatants, but if a King has chosen unwisely and sent infiltrators in their party, well, there might be a wee bit of sabotage going on!
If your eyes are glazed by now, rest assured, it all sounds more complicated than it will be in practice. I'm putting this up now to try and spark discussion/get players/what do people think. So what do you think!
Vague signups:
Richard's Morbols
1. Rat?
2. Soppy
3. Excal
4. Cid
5. Kilga
6. Fnorder
7. Xanth
8. Strago
9. Ciato
10. lmm
11. Glen Veil
12. Kiro
13.
Legion of Ko
1. Tai
2. Gate
3. QR
4. Mage
5. Hal
6. Bard
7. Rou
8. Snowfire
9. Shale
10. Hungry Youkai
11. Alice
12.
13.
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I'll take a slot on the casual side. <_< If only so that I don't have to be anal about making sure I remember everything forever.
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I'd be in for it!
I presume battle actions are not made public, only the results?
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Yeah, exactly. A sample townie role would look like this:
================================
ARCHER DUDE
flavor flavor
You have 250 max HP. When you are sent into battle you may choose one of the following abilities to use. Each ability has a "one battle cooldown", in other words you may not use the same ability twice without using one of your other abilities in between.
Ability A:
Concentrate Shot
Choose one other combatant to target. That player takes 150 physical bow damage. This attack will ignore any sort of evasion on the targeted player.
Ability B:
Speed Save
Choose one other combatant to target. You will be informed of who they target with abilities in this combat.
Ability C:
Charge +20
Choose one other combatant to target. If that player takes an offensive action in this combat, nothing happens, if they do not, they take 999 physical bow damage. Regardless, any physical damage dealt to you this combat is multiplied 1.5x.
Passive Ability:
Arrow Guard
You are always immune to bow damage.
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(this may or may not resemble actual roles in terms of power etc but you get the idea)
The only things that will be made public after battles are casualties. There will be numbers involved in combat to make things easier for me to track, and because what would an FFT game be without stats, but I'm thinking players will be forbidden from claiming any exact numbers in the threads. This is mainly to stop people from trying to derail the threads with attempting to logic puzzle battle results and claims.
"Hey King, send me, I have an ability that hits for A LOT of damage" - fine
"I got hit hard, I will die if I am sent to battle again and not healed" - fine
"Wait, I took 150 damage last night, and in the other thread Jimmy Joe said he targeted me with 200 damage and Billy Bob here says he healed me for 100! Where's the extra 50? Everyone claim everything so we can dethy this out!" - not fine
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I'll take a spot on the Hardcore GTFO side
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...Alex run insanomafia? Yeah, I'll bite. I'll see if I can talk Jenna into it as well. Casual side if you do that split, of course.
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This sounds... interesting.
Gimme a slot, on whichever side needs padding.
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In against better judgement (arrrrgh Mafia) because Alexmafia is generally awesome.
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Count me in, I suppose. Not that I think we can actually get the ambitious numbers quoted, but hey.
Casual side, of course.
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...Alex run insanomafia? Yeah, I'll bite. I'll see if I can talk Jenna into it as well. Casual side if you do that split, of course.
I think things have cooled down here enough at work that I'd be able to tackle it. I'm definately happier in a casual group, but I can swim with the sharks if the other side needs another soul. The mechanics sound interesting.
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I'll go in with whichever side you choose, though a slight preference to the casual.
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I'll bite. Casual side, for sure.
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I will go for whichever side is for scrubs.
Also I may end up playing up flavour/character/something non serious, since apparently people enjoy when I do that and it stops me from descending into furious genocidal rages, so really everyone wins.
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Woah, woah, hold the damn phone. What's all this about Final Fantasy Tactics? Who plays that crap? I think we all know what everyone really wants, a mafia based on a real SRPG...
DISGAEA MAFIA BABY! Can I get a "hell yeah"!?
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I said, "Can I get a 'hell yeah'?"
...anyone?
Man, you guys suck.
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Morbols for me.
CAN'T GET AWAY THAT EASY, RAT
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In on whatever side Kilga's not in
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OH SNAP FNORDER OUT OF NOWHERE
Interested. Depending on when in January it starts, I'm down.
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Actually, I have one condition for joining. At least one Morbol must fly. Aside from that, everything looks like a set-up for success! ... Or insanity. One of the two.
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Still time worries here, but sounds neat. Leaning "casual" side if casual = less time commitment expected, though I'm not sure if that's actually true since both games will be on the same deadline. Am not opposed to slotting me in whichever game needs more players if "serious" is short (which I suspect it will be).
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...Alex run insanomafia? Yeah, I'll bite. I'll see if I can talk Jenna into it as well. Casual side if you do that split, of course.
I can go hardcore murdergroup if you need bodies, prefer casual though. Fuck yeah insanomafia though.
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Don't know the theme, but sure, count me in, I'd love to help see this actually reach its player limit.
I'd say put me on either side and I'll play appropriately to the side, but looks like you need as many Serious Fucking Business players as you can get. I'll note well ahead of time of knowing roles or mechanics that I almost certainly won't be able to afford remotely the same level of dedication (obsession) as some earlier games.
My only other observation at this point is that you're going to need some amiable way of making sure the sides end up even, as go figure it's going to snowball towards casual as is.
Edit: oh, and it occurs to me as I start to actually think about the mechanics of the game that it at least has the potential to go massively unbalanced. I haven't thought any scenario through in any real detail, but one that comes to mind is if one side manages to lynch its mafia nice and early and ends up with a massive body advantage in the night phases, and the other that's come to mind is a potentially dominant no lynch strategy (why waste bodies during the day when eventual victory is largely dependent on nights?), or at least until things start going wrong at night. I can see the general outline of arguments as to why you still need to root out the mafia to get ahead and for making better informed decisions for picking battle parties and whatnot, but I don't see the point in, say, lynching anyone day one when the number of dead innocents is far more relevant to winning the game than normal (pretty much simply as a result of it being an inter-team game).
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I don't think it's really possible to second-guess things like that without knowing the scum-town ratios, or even what roles might exist that would spur people onto odd decisions.
besides, g'luck getting anyone in the game to actually agree on any sort of 'dominant strategy'.
Anyway if someone actually does lynch their mafia super fast, well, good for them! Don't think it's a balance flaw to win if you do that <_<
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Rat is correct. The only way to actually win the game is to kill the other town's King. If scum get a majority in either thread, that's an instant victory. If one town manages to lynch all its scum well before the other side, well yeah, that's a nearly guaranteed win for that town. That's how the game works!
You can't just no lynch and get a group that you think is all town and send them to fight over and over. They'll get killed, since (townies on) both battle groups are likely to focus their attacks on the most town-seeming players of the opposing side. If the towns don't lynch, they're GUARANTEED to have to send out scum in their battle parties eventually, so things WILL go south and then you'd be left trying to WIFOM battle claims.
That almost certainly won't end well for town - you can expect the axiom of "scum are always stronger than town at night" to be true, which in this game means infiltrators will be considerably more juiced up than normal townies, hard to kill in combat (would be a shame if the other side could easily mistake and kill its scum, after all), and with sufficient options to significantly mess up town and cover their tracks if/when they're sent out.
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Will the either side know their scumteam on the other?
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The Kings will know who their infiltrators on the other side are, but can't privately communicate with them. Normal townies, no.
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Sounds fun. I'm in.
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In
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Alex asked me to post this publicly in the thread, so for what it's worth, I'd prefer to not get the job of King if possible. This is public knowledge at start so can't be metagamed (unlike requesting scum / non-scum). Time constraints I didn't have a year ago remain the reason.
Also, two theorycrafting notes, though I hope not to bog things down too much:
1. I'm just saying now, before I know if I'm town or scum, that this sounds like the rare Mafia game where townies have extremely legitimate reasons to lie, or at least shut up on all sorts of knowledge. The fact that the other team can read the thread means that being too helpful about battle actions can enable the other team to puzzle out their traitors, and outright lies can send the other team into a tizzy where they lynch the wrong person.
2. Xanth's worry seems legitimate, though I'm glad Alex has taken that into account. No lynch does sound pretty strong even if traitors are unlikely to be killed accidentally by their team; suppose Team A lynches 3 innocents + all 3 traitors Day 1 (an amazingly awesome trade in normal Mafia), and Team B no-lynches constantly. Can 7 guaranteed innocents defeat 10 innocents + 3 traitors? If that's a close battle, then no-lynch does sound very strong. If that's a slaughter in favor of Team A, then lynches should be useful.
3. The best ending will be a Death Corps victory where both Kings are lynched in both threads the same day and the surviving traitors band together for a free society with no nobles and no oppression. (And perhaps friendly Glabados Church support).
4. Things will be confusing in the Kolliery since everyone will presumably be called Ko.
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Yes, that's one of the reasons I'm definitely implementing the "no claiming exact numbers" clause. Like any normal mafia game, lying as town is probably ill advised (as other people on your team, and your King, can't make good decisions then) but concealing your role powers unless necessary is a good idea.
Team A lynches 3 innocents + all 3 traitors Day 1 (an amazingly awesome trade in normal Mafia), and Team B no-lynches constantly. Can 7 guaranteed innocents defeat 10 innocents + 3 traitors? If that's a close battle, then no-lynch does sound very strong. If that's a slaughter in favor of Team A, then lynches should be useful.
That would probably be a slaughter in favor of team A, unless team B lynched its traitors very quickly. Sending traitors into battle WILL rough your team up something fierce. Like any normal mafia game, if you attempt a strategy of constant no lynch and try to win purely on power roles, that's almost a free ticket for a scum win. Scum will have a definite advantage over town in night actions - and they lack a normal nightkill here, so that's saying something.
Public discussion on kingship is encouraged, especially once we get who's in what game mostly sorted out. I'm not going to put it to a vote, just because of how important the position is, but yeah people should say if they want to be king or not, who they'd want to be kings, etc.
There will be a lot of flavor! There may or may not be third parties!
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I find it amusing that the two people in the Cameo Battle are fighting against the Kolliery. Better traitors than Ko?
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Count me in, this should be made to happen. Dislike the notion of splitting it as casual/serious because it gives a seemingly legitimate reason to disagree with someone else's playstyle, but if you're doing it I guess call me serious.
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people should say if they want to be king or not, who they'd want to be kings, etc.
I will accept and play with any role passed in my direction, from king to vanilla to third party voteless doctorproof beloved princess ghost bomb miller with posting restrictions, 1 hit point, terminal cancer with a (nx10)% chance of killing me during night n, and a win condition of being the sole survivor out of both teams. I remain unconvinced of the balance shift brought on by inter-game concerns, but trust Alex implicitly for all other balance concerns.
For the latter, I shall at this point simply say that I would have no problem with anyone currently listed being king in either game (except maybe a few of the newer players) and would be happy with it being randomly generated along with everything else. The one criterion I would like emphasised is that whichever players do end up being the kings should be as sure as sensibly possible that they won't end up accidentally superlurking and get subbed out.
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Yeah, I'd prefer to pass on being a king. And so would QR for that matter.
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Casual and serious only mean what you make of them!
For my part, I am done playing hardcore anal scumhunter 2000, but I wouldn't throw myself entirely in the casual camp, sooooo I'm fine with whichever side would have me.
As for discussing who should be king, eh. I'm a bit wary of hyping or anti-hyping anyone in particular, it doesn't seem like a fun discussion. In general, someone who doesn't lurk and has a decent track record of play is all I'm worried about. And I'd be happy to be King, and just as happy not to be.
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I'm fine with being a king or not.
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Honestly, Xanth's idea probably works the best. Just make a list of the not-totally-new players, and randomly select one to be King.
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I'd like to pre-emptively vote Ciato for King (Queen?) because her scumdar is absolutely insane. >_>
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Willing to play the odds that you don't then end up scum, Kilga?
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No real preference on king or not.
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Willing to play the odds that you don't then end up scum, Kilga?
I've been scum at the DL twice in >3 years. I like-a dem odds.
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Count me in. Leaning towards hardcoar mafier, although I'm fine with either (seeing as I'm not exactly the best player here :P)
Edit: Also, can try and find more people to build up numbers if they're needed - I'll pick people specifically to make sure I get the active ones. >.>
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Like the others, I have no particular preference to be King or not.
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More than happy to take a king (or any other) role; at the same time it would be perfectly reasonable of the rest of you to disqualify me for inexperience. Other than that, obviously enough I'd prefer my king to be a good player; if we decide against random assignment, will do some more of this discussion-but-not-voting once the teams are clearer.
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I'd like to pre-emptively vote Ciato for King (Queen?) because her scumdar is absolutely insane. >_>
I really, really shouldn't play. But if I get to call Ciato "my King" then I'm going to be very tempted....
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When are you looking at starting? I probably won't be able to play (except as a hardcore lurker) in January, but in February should have enough time to contribute at least enough to be a net plus to the game.
Setup sounds insane and interesting enough that I very much want in. :)
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Somewhat adjustable/when we can get enough players? Probably not starting till around the 15th.
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Count me out unless something changes drastically. Loss of internet is not fun. :(
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I've never actually played Mafia before but this sounds like great fun. Count me in on whichever side needs more players.
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So we're sitting at 20 now, I'd like to get this off the ground in say a week or so? Preferably with about 6 more players, tell your friends, ask your neighbors!
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It's been a long time since we've had 20 sign ups in a given Mafia thread, and you still want more! Greedy.
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Sure, I can sign up for this if another can even it out, inventory at my work will be over soon so I should have free time plus new laptop which means I can actually get back in irc again.
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Needs four more with that~
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After a bit of consideration, I'm definetly /in.
This semester's pretty easy in comparison to what i'm normally used to, in any order, so yeah. So weird having actual free time again, btw.
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I stopped by randomly, to find a really nifty setup in the works.
I'll /in or if the numbers don't even out, stand by as a replacement for either thread. I'd prefer not to be a King.
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I want to be the king.
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Three slots left! (More welcome of course!)
If you'd like to switch sides, this would be the time to post and say so. This is also the time to start thinking and talking about who wants to be Kings!
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I'd like to pre-emptively vote Ciato for King (Queen?) because her scumdar is absolutely insane. >_>
I really, really shouldn't play. But if I get to call Ciato "my King" then I'm going to be very tempted....
pwease play mc!!
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I'd like to pre-emptively vote Ciato for King (Queen?) because her scumdar is absolutely insane. >_>
I really, really shouldn't play. But if I get to call Ciato "my King" then I'm going to be very tempted....
pwease play mc!!
Arg, the guilt tripping! So tempting!
(Honestly, both times I've played Mafia--at the DL and elsewhere--it has seriously cut into my doing work at work. I honestly feel like I shouldn't).
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I think we're at the limit of what we're going to get. When are we starting up?
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:(
Well all right then, I'm going to start making roles, last chance for kingship discussion or thread request changes. I'll say right now that Ciato seems a lock for one king, the other... anyone in the Ko side want it?
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##VOTE: King Xorn
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Okay, gonna lock it down here. Kings are Ciato and Shale, role PMs within the next day or two or three depending on how much stuff drags me out for.
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Gonna have to sit this one out. I won't have the time in the near future.
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Also going to need to bow out, I fear. Am suddenly having computer troubles with no easily apparent end in sight; I can't consistently promise computer time for more than a half hour or so per day, it is extremely obnoxious. Especially frustrating because I have so much more free time now than I have had in the past two months. Sigh. Enjoy the game, all.
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WHAT!! you are my minion you can't QUIT!
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Well, sad to hear that. It does solve some problems though. Mage and Excal have also been missing and I was asked not to start until they return... argh.
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Pretty sure they should be back soonish.
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And by soonish, we mean now.
My computer upgrades are now complete, and damn is this thing spiffy. And my brother now has a new network card. Best of all, we now each have independant network cards so we no longer need to worry about being on at the same time.
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It's true! So we're both good to go as of now, I do believe.
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Ha. And after my sad little post, I now return with a computer that is functional once more! So, um. If it's not obnoxious or precluded by Bard having dropped out, I'm once more ready and eager to be in the game. If you've already shuffled things around, though Alex, I'll sit on the sidelines and spectate.
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Double-ha. Spoke too soon. Computer is still finicky, and I continue to be unable to play. FML.
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*sits around, looking eager to play if there's an open spot now*
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I can play now. Hols are coming up, and the time after that's remarkably more peaceful.
Djinn, I finally understand why teaching kids is fun. :')
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Just wondering what was going on with this.
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Think it's dead?
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LFT 2 Forever bro
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Will it trainwreck in a morass of planning and never get off the ground like that Arkham game I still hope to run sometime: no, this time I actually did plan ahead!
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I think the greatest irony is in Alex nearly getting his ambitious 26. :V