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Just in case it wasn't clear, this isn't any of the other role playing games you've played. It's a different one, with different rules. Hope that helps. Sometimes Enkidel can't remember stuff, like the Medusas, and whether he had knowledge of who owned the land. Sometimes he can't answer the question. And that's okay. The fact that nobody is as upset as much should really clue you in.
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Jun 16, 2017 17:57
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 07:46 |
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Maybe... The DM is us all along...
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Jun 16, 2017 17:58
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Maybe... diog is the player...
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Jun 16, 2017 17:59
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I think the problem is that you're expecting Diog to act like a DM, while his actual stated goal is to be the unreliable narrator of a complex and unfair simulation. He's even hinted that the simulation has objective existence outside of his brain, as a dwarf fortress mod or something. I hope that is true, as it would make his style more 'fair', at least.
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Jun 16, 2017 17:59
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scream back "WHY DON'T WE POOP AT IT REPEATEDLY "
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Jun 16, 2017 18:00
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RE: 7birb statue in sandwich lands (spoilered because im not entirely sure how much we remember) The... the occupant. It has some kind of immense snake like body, the width of its coils about ten feet. The snake like body coils atop itself as snakes are at times seem to do. The occupant has scales which are gold, yet look ancient and their color faded. Here and there, alone and in bunches are feathers of... of every color, you have never seen a rainbow before, not truly, not until today. Near the top the snake-shaped, tube-like body the golden scales give way to gradually smaller scales in the color of a rainbow yet the color of each scale is tempered and muted. You see a torso and arms bit like both you and your captors possess, two sets of such arms. The scales near the top of its body look paper thin and you can see flesh just beneath the surface, bones are obvious and the flesh tight against it. and the skin, paper thin. At the top, its head looks similar to that of your captors, yet wider. Two IMMENSE sets of wings sprout from its back and unlike your captors, these wings have feathers, each a rainbow of color. You have the immediate impression that the occupant of the throne is old
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Jun 16, 2017 18:00
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I see, this is dark soul.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:01
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TK-42-1 posted:RE: 7birb statue in sandwich lands (spoilered because im not entirely sure how much we remember) This seems similar but not quite consistent with the description of the Queen Orm...AKA the Qorm.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:02
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Travic posted:Because he's the DM. If the DM stops providing information the whole thing breaks down. He's playing the game as a black hole of information. I'm surprised more people aren't upset. If in any of the role playing games I've ever played someone asked the DM a question and the response was "I dunno you tell me." He'd be out on his rear end so fast your head would spin. Asking questions about Enkidel is often akin to asking questions about your own character description. It's our responsibility to know things. Travic posted:And what's the point in playing if the DM can just make up a new rule and decline to answer any question he doesn't like? Why are you assuming there are new rules? Just because the result of asking a question changed, that doesn't mean there's a new rule. Perhaps the answer is actually different. Enkidel's understanding of information evolves over time. When Diog asks us a question, it usually means we're questioning ourselves.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:06
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Diog: When we dream about the moon singing, what does its songs sound like?
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Jun 16, 2017 18:11
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Travic's inability to understand that part of the world simulation process is simulating our own consciousness and the effects on it by outside forces is fascinating. It's like watching someone argue their way out of self-awareness.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:12
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So we are arguing with our brain now?
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Jun 16, 2017 18:13
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McSpanky posted:Travic's inability to understand that part of the world simulation process is simulating our own consciousness and the effects on it by outside forces is fascinating. It's like watching someone argue their way out of self-awareness. I may be mistaken, but i don't think that's the problem? i think his problem is that (as he sees it) diog won't convey information directly available to our senses - e.g.what does X look like or sound like?
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Jun 16, 2017 18:14
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"SHEKET!"
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Jun 16, 2017 18:15
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"Diog, what did i see with my eyes?" "Yes"
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Jun 16, 2017 18:17
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The search begins within oneself. Time to begin sifting through ourself like sifting sand through water
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Jun 16, 2017 18:19
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Rampant speculation ahead: The song that the moon sings to us and the green stone we find in areas where massive amounts of POWAH have been unleashed are similar in that they are both little bits of spice added to the setting. They have no deeper explanations beyond some speculation by the players and Diog isn't going to explain more because they're not lines of inquiry that will lead us to any new understanding of the mysteries of Ur. They're scenery, nice to chew on but DON'T SWALLOW IT! We can't learn anything new from messing about with the bits of green material/nuclear glass. We won't learn anything new from knowing exactly what the moon's song reminds us of. The fact that the moon sings to us at all is the thing that we should be taking from this revelation. Perhaps it has something to do with the Ophanim of the Moon and Sea? Maybe the being that kept popping up in our headspace when we were younger wasn't Damat, or Xuriel? Yafef is our Melachim Fairy God Mother. Maybe.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:20
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Define the Orm as 'Her'. Define the Orm's status as 'Brought Home'. There we go, mission accomplished, begin retaliation through questions. When the other party refuses to give definitions, it's up to us to fill in the blanks. 
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Jun 16, 2017 18:22
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Magnusth posted:I may be mistaken, but i don't think that's the problem? i think his problem is that (as he sees it) diog won't convey information directly available to our senses - e.g.what does X look like or sound like? This is correct. If the DM's rules say he can just not tell us what we see and hear. Then what is the point? There Bias Two posted:Asking questions about Enkidel is often akin to asking questions about your own character description. It's our responsibility to know things. I've already addressed this. See this and this post. Nyaa posted:Maybe, just maybe, this is a mystery game all along and we have to find clues and solve puzzles. We found Amok against all odds and he was taken away within about 5 minutes so we couldn't learn much. Diog has mentioned that any or all of the things we know and have been told or found are wrong. All chances to learn more have had tremendous downsides to discourage us from taking them. Opening the door we were told "had all the answers to our questions" ended the game specifically in such a way that we couldn't learn any of them.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:23
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Collect a bottle of tears. It might be magical
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Jun 16, 2017 18:23
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ToC is wonderful. I wrote a long post about PL:CotH - CYOA as a game system. It was bad. The point was, I don't actually get the current problem being discussed as if something needs to be fixed. I have read all the posts a couple of times and still don't get it. I get the frustration, just not the assumed cause. Instead- RESIST - specifically emulate control exercises, which might mean beating ourselves as best we can while... - we MUST find her and bring her back. anything not related to this will be impossible for the moment. - what do we need to do that? - seems like we are asking ourselves that already, e.g. swimming all the seas, raising armies, etc. just focus this. - part 1: find her. we need more information: • how long has she been gone? • where did you last see her? • can she change form or does she always look the same? • why aren't you looking for her? • who else should we ask? • etc. - part 2: bring her back • in order to do this successfully we can neither die nor HUNGER in the process. • therefore we must regain some modicum of mental/psychic control. not doing so will violate the primary compulsion. The Orm cannot think these thoughts in this way apparently. Heartbreak and probably a completely 'alien' intelligence, emotional landscape, etc. We can though... FIND HER. BRING HER BACK. And we must think such things if we are compelled to find Her. We are already asking how. We can build on that. I imagine in practice this might look like sobbing and stuttering out "How?!?" interspersed with hitting ourselves as best we can, perhaps leading to "Steps to find Her: A Brief Doctrine on the Nature of Divine Compulsion" and its sequel "How to Bring Her Back". In essence we cannot fulfill the compulsion while we are so compelled. ummm... when/if it becomes possible to do anything else and before we leave fill our wine skin thing with Orm tears. As mentioned "She" might be quite dead, pissed off at Orm (because he's like this alllll the time and man it was just smothering), etc. She might not be remotely findable, much less bringbackable. People who go to see the Orm don't return because they are all on a quest (and have probably died in the process). There is a society of seekers unknown to itself looking for Her. Sogol fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Jun 16, 2017 |
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Jun 16, 2017 18:24
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Mr. Nemo posted:All the people joke voting to eat the goop during a will roll when very recently we faced a similar situation and Diog reminded us that every single votes counts is not making me very happy. Come on people, don't intentionally duck this up. Pretty sure it's actually only one guy every round voting to eat the goop. A weird dedication, to be sure, some might even call it a fetish - then again we've had posters wholly consumed by wondering if we have bowel movements, so not that odd, all things considered. TK-42-1 posted:RE: 7birb statue in sandwich lands (spoilered because im not entirely sure how much we remember) I've been kicking around how what we saw down there could possibly be the Qorm (canon), because the imagery is too similar to not have some sort of tie. The being on the throne is old, and somewhat kind of looking like the Qorm we see depicted here, but apparently much smaller and with not the exact same facial features. Certainly not female in description in any way, and there's the arms as well. There's also the sandwiches 7bird, a spectral 7-everything being that seems to have a symbiotic relationship with the being on the throne. Orm is saying "FIND HER AND BRING HER BACK", which opens the door that the Qorm didn't die. Or maybe can't die, not really, like Enkidel. At times, espcially in the 1st retconn, Enkidel realizes that his own physical body is but a shell, and that he is only contained by it if he lets it. Therefore, I can't help but wonder if the Qorm's physical form was killed (maybe by a nephilim - ABOMINATION!), and it's spectral form traveled the world before finding a race of lizard beasts similar to her previous naga children, co-opting a body and slowly transforming it into something similar to her old form, and then ruling these new beings as a god? Part of me think that's just too pat an explanation - of course the only other major powerful figure we met besides Amok is the Orm's mate - but given some of what we know it seems plausible. Qorm is pissed off at the world due to whatever happened to her physical form, found a new body to influence/inhabit, and is ruling a new group as she had in the past with the Orm. As to why she doesn't seek out the Orm and tell him she's alright? I dunno. Task Manager fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Jun 16, 2017 |
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Jun 16, 2017 18:27
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I missed the last vote. If one more A-vote would have spared us this... whatever this is I might never forgive myself.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:32
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Magnusth posted:I may be mistaken, but i don't think that's the problem? i think his problem is that (as he sees it) diog won't convey information directly available to our senses - e.g.what does X look like or sound like? And sometimes that information itself may be unreliable, obscured, imperceptible or sandwiches. Sometimes you literally don't know what you don't know. You can throw up a wall of indignant entitlement or deal with it.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:32
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Weird coincidence: there's a bunch of snake women in the Final Fantasy XIV expansion that launched last night. Also, good time as any to show off Beaky mount.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:34
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super sweet best pal posted:Weird coincidence: there's a bunch of snake women in the Final Fantasy XIV expansion that launched last night. I'll be sad if that mount isn't slower than regular walking speed.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:36
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McSpanky posted:And sometimes that information itself may be unreliable, obscured, imperceptible or sandwiches. Sometimes you literally don't know what you don't know. You can throw up a wall of indignant entitlement or deal with it. This entire discussion stemmed from Diog saying, "You hear/see a thing." Players ask "Have we ever seen/heard this before." The response was, "You tell me." Very simple. No wishy washy magic. No fancy business. This seems like a fairly simple thing to get so upset about, but it ties into the broader idea that Diog is just toying with us. I'm trying to tell him very calmly and nicely that this is a bad idea and not how any game even one as ambitious as this one should be handled.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:37
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Jesus is colourblin posted:I missed the last vote. If one more A-vote would have spared us this... whatever this is I might never forgive myself. I think the vote was something like 10 A to 26 E + 15 or so other assorted votes. A needed 50% +1 to win it, so it wasn't really close. It's a bummer! It would have been nice to not to have our will completely overthrown right before the event the last 50 years have been leading up to. Maybe we'll be able to resist the poor, sad snake, though. Travic posted:This entire discussion stemmed from Diog saying, "You hear/see a thing." Players ask "Have we ever seen/heard this before." The response was, "You tell me." Very simple. No wishy washy magic. No fancy business. This seems like a fairly simple thing to get so upset about, but it ties into the broader idea that Diog is just toying with us. I'm trying to tell him very calmly and nicely that this is a bad idea and not how any game even one as ambitious as this one should be handled. I haven't reviewed all the cases of this, but I've been thinking that his asking "Do you?" was an invitation for players to informally vote to put more concentration into something. Have we ever responded to one of these with that kind of effort?
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Jun 16, 2017 18:42
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A part of Enkidel is now convinced that the song the moon sings us is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7SI7N22k_A ...and it's really nice. Maybe we'll pick more out of it when we spend more time stargazing. Now our current predicament seems pretty dire. I've often considered what kind of effect the random thoughts and theories posted have on what happens in the game. It seems to me that Enkidel is now pretty much stuck with a quest to find ladysnek and anything not directly productive towards that goal will suffer a voting penalty of some sort. We might be in deep poo poo but at least it's very probably not immediately fatal or dangerous. Though if we resist the mind control effect right here right now in front of pimpsnake then he might eat us. I think it's better to do it when we're out of the ormhole. I'm gonna metagame a bit here and say that Enkidel is (usually) pretty smart and wants to be efficient. Wandering around the (round) earth is looking for a giant snake is in no way efficient so Enkidel wants to approach this as a PI. We need to gather information about ladysnek, we should clear the blockage to her room and search for clues, search the city for clues and interview pimpsnake for clues and then set on out into the world. Enkidel knows that flying around inside of Ur will get him locked up real fast so that's not really productive in our quest. Ask Pimpsnake where we should start looking
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Jun 16, 2017 18:43
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There Bias Two posted:I'll be sad if that mount isn't slower than regular walking speed. Only if you toggle the move speed button, but it does fly like Gamera.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:47
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Task Manager posted:Pretty sure it's actually only one guy every round voting to eat the goop. A weird dedication, to be sure, some might even call it a fetish - then again we've had posters wholly consumed by wondering if we have bowel movements, so not that odd, all things considered. Hey, we all have our areas of particular interest. Nyaa's is cats, Azuth's is hating Ishamal, Tomn's is long lists of questions, Slaan's is EAT SNARLS AND EAT THE BALLS AND EAT TUDIYA AND EAT BAITEL FOR THE GLORY OF ASHERAH. Mine just happens to be eating the black goop. Incidentally, Enkidel Eat The Black Goop. JosephWongKS fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jun 16, 2017 |
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Jun 16, 2017 18:49
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Voting to RESIST (no lettered option for this, it seems?) We have given up SO MUCH to have what little free will we have. Having it taken away is untinkable. I'd rather die.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:51
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Boonoo posted:I haven't reviewed all the cases of this, but I've been thinking that his asking "Do you?" was an invitation for players to informally vote to put more concentration into something. Have we ever responded to one of these with that kind of effort? Not historically, but Nyaa tried a little while ago and B.B Rodriguez asked about this and was ignored.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:51
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Resist Pretty sure the compulsion will lessen somewhat when we're out of the direction presente of a godlike entity. I totally understand what Travic is saying. I think the issue is that there's a difference between answering a question with 'you don't know' or 'I can't answer that' and answering with 'Do you know?' or 'Do you?'. The former is fine, we don't know the answer. Cool. But the latter is unfairly and deliberately confusing the issue by asking us question in response to a question in a game where we cannot answer that sort of question. If there is a meaningful response to our answer to the question asked in response to the original question that would be fine. But I don't think that's happened.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:53
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Outrail posted:in a game where we cannot answer that sort of question. We absolutely can answer most sorts of questions, I think we just all have to vote on it. Part of the game mechanics require voter collaboration, which is pretty difficult to achieve in most rounds. If we get out of this situation, I propose that we all collectively vote to search our thoughts for an unknown answer and see what happens.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:55
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There Bias Two posted:We absolutely can answer most sorts of questions, I think we just all have to vote on it. Part of the game mechanics require voter collaboration, which is pretty difficult to achieve in most rounds. I'd be up for that. Maybe we can influence these things. As soon as we get our free will back that is. Whoops
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Jun 16, 2017 18:58
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Maybe RESISTing isn't enough. This being is using raw and powerful emotion to (perhaps unwillingly) compel us. We have to find something to anchor us to ourself, to our own emotions. Picture Snarls, Picture Naomi, Picture Our Children, Picture Kavodel. Imagine sitting down at Tudiya's home eating the seaweed cakes our mother prepared. Imagine fishing in the sea with uncle Jorah. Imagine a life without the people we love.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:59
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A few of us have stated we want to Resist via Enkidel's desire to ask questions. It's a little different from just outright trying to resist and then screaming "gently caress YOU GIANT SNAKE I won't look for your bitch rear end wife!" I guess it's possible that we end up blurting something out that will piss the Orm off. That's why people voting resist need to specify HOW they plan to resist.
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Jun 16, 2017 18:59
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Travic posted:Not historically, but Nyaa tried a little while ago and B.B Rodriguez asked about this and was ignored. Hmm. I think the next time something like this comes up--perhaps when we're not facing down a snake god--we should work up a proper minivote. It seems like it should be possible to see if passing a voter threshold gets a response. I'd like to see what happens when we either 1) vote to consider or remember an issue or 2) answer definitively the issue in question. There Bias Two posted:We absolutely can answer most sorts of questions, I think we just all have to vote on it. Part of the game mechanics require voter collaboration, which is pretty difficult to achieve in most rounds. Oh. This, basically.
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Jun 16, 2017 19:00
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 07:46 |
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There Bias Two posted:We absolutely can answer most sorts of questions, I think we just all have to vote on it. Part of the game mechanics require voter collaboration, which is pretty difficult to achieve in most rounds. I'll go along with this.
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Jun 16, 2017 19:00
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