Codebreaker II: The Katydid Initiative

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Jump King: Aug 10, 2011

ok, here's my debrief

I'm not sure why this game was so quiet? Maybe it came from how seriously people took it? It seemed like in general people felt less competitive about this than the first one.

I feel a bit bad for somber and grody, since you guys feel we snaked you in the end, cause we kind of did. We had 8 of 12 words all locked into position before ever talking to you though. In addition to needing your words, we also needed Opop and JJ's. When you guys offered to work long term, I didn't feel like there was any possible route of saying like "no thanks, we're already one day away from winning, we need just your words and then we'll win"

Working in pairs was obviously a great strategy, but I'm not sure how i feel about joint wins overall. It's obviously preferable to just having a race to see who can submit the guess quickest after the day opens, but it removes a certain amount of tension that can really make these games tick.

Speaking of the strategy side, I'm blown away by the number of people who didn't make better use of their guesses for narrowing down word position. You can pull a lot of information from each guess.

Here's my usual guess format, with x representing the word I'm looking to narrow, the - representing a dummy word. I've highlighted where the word must be according to each possible result. One guess can narrow a word down to two spots without knowing anything else about the code. As you lock more words in, this becomes easier.

This game accelerates much quicker than people realize, especially if there are no lies. I figured the game would be finished on D4 at the start.

I'm happy to have won, but something feels a little rough about the game after this playthrough, not sure exactly what though

Hal Incandenza posted:

Good work team MMM and MT

Hey Hal, what was with the extremely threatening message you posted in the thread at some point? It really threw me on edge since we never talked directly in this game.

# ? Jul 9, 2017 06:20

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 16:11

Hal Incandenza: Feb 12, 2004

MMM Whatchya Say posted:

Hey Hal, what was with the extremely threatening message you posted in the thread at some point? It really threw me on edge since we never talked directly in this game.

I figured you would talk to me if I told you not to

But I like that it put you on edge. Someone needed to put you more on edge.

I freely admit I did a terrible job of narrowing down my word placements, also I did a terrible job of not even guessing on N4 but in the end it would not have mattered since I was like 3 words behind you guys anyway.

# ? Jul 9, 2017 20:48

STING 64: Oct 20, 2006

MMM Whatchya Say posted:

ok, here's my debrief

I'm not sure why this game was so quiet? Maybe it came from how seriously people took it? It seemed like in general people felt less competitive about this than the first one.

I feel a bit bad for somber and grody, since you guys feel we snaked you in the end, cause we kind of did. We had 8 of 12 words all locked into position before ever talking to you though. In addition to needing your words, we also needed Opop and JJ's. When you guys offered to work long term, I didn't feel like there was any possible route of saying like "no thanks, we're already one day away from winning, we need just your words and then we'll win"

Working in pairs was obviously a great strategy, but I'm not sure how i feel about joint wins overall. It's obviously preferable to just having a race to see who can submit the guess quickest after the day opens, but it removes a certain amount of tension that can really make these games tick.

Speaking of the strategy side, I'm blown away by the number of people who didn't make better use of their guesses for narrowing down word position. You can pull a lot of information from each guess.

Here's my usual guess format, with x representing the word I'm looking to narrow, the - representing a dummy word. I've highlighted where the word must be according to each possible result. One guess can narrow a word down to two spots without knowing anything else about the code. As you lock more words in, this becomes easier.

This game accelerates much quicker than people realize, especially if there are no lies. I figured the game would be finished on D4 at the start.

I'm happy to have won, but something feels a little rough about the game after this playthrough, not sure exactly what though

Hey Hal, what was with the extremely threatening message you posted in the thread at some point? It really threw me on edge since we never talked directly in this game.

you guys did lie tho

# ? Jul 9, 2017 21:08

Jump King: Aug 10, 2011

gif Probst posted:

you guys did lie tho

About what specifically? I don't doubt it, but I didn't have specific contact with you so I'm not sure what you might have been misled about.

# ? Jul 9, 2017 22:09

STING 64: Oct 20, 2006

MMM Whatchya Say posted:

About what specifically? I don't doubt it, but I didn't have specific contact with you so I'm not sure what you might have been misled about.

I was told you dudes didnt have 7 words :v:

I mean yeah you gotta lie about that im just bustin yer chops

# ? Jul 9, 2017 23:42

Murmur Twin: Feb 11, 2003; An ever-honest pacifist with no mind for tricks.

gif Probst posted:

I was told you dudes didnt have 7 words

I mean yeah you gotta lie about that im just bustin yer chops

I swear we'll be on the same team one of these games :ohdear:

# ? Jul 9, 2017 23:46

Jump King: Aug 10, 2011

gif Probst posted:

I was told you dudes didnt have 7 words

I mean yeah you gotta lie about that im just bustin yer chops

Oh yeah somber asked if we were the 7 word guess. We weren't, if you check the mod doc it was bowmore.

I mean I had 9 words on that day and MMT had 8, and I was obviously dodging the intent of the question, but I was never really pushed. If so I would have lied anyway so you're right anyway.

# ? Jul 10, 2017 00:02

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 16:11

Poque: Sep 11, 2003; =^-^=

A few days late, so I hope people haven't completely unsubscribed, but I have some thoughts about potential future games of Codebreaker and I'd love feedback/thoughts on them.

General stuff:

I liked having the additional segment that wasn't assigned to anybody and I think it was a success to combine two guesses on D1, no elimination D1, and not knowing your segment's placement. Agree/Disagree?
I want to keep it so the player doesn't know their own segment's placement, but I have thought about giving them the placement of another player's segment (but not the segment itself). So maybe the game starts and MMM knows MMT's placement. Would that be weird? It feels like it might be defining alliances for people.
Confessionals? Not sure if Codebreaker is FRG enough for it, but it could be fun.

Day end results:

I think revealing the best CUMULATIVE performance might be more meaningful. So for example, Murmur guessed 4 segments on day 2, and guessed 1 on day 3. They were all different, so she actually cumulatively knew 5 segments on day 3, but the game only treated it as Murmur knowing 1. Agree/Disagree?
I was planning on doing this for this season but totally forgot - reveal a player's best results upon their elimination? So it would give the three results for that player at the end of the day as well as the best. If any of the numbers were the same, it wouldn't reveal whether or not there were more players to have reached that amount.
Reveal a histogram of player performance? basically show how everyone was pacing without revealing names. This is another one I heavily considered doing for S2.

Voting and eliminations:

Remove eliminations entirely? There's still voting and code flips, but people aren't actually removed from the game - they're still eligible to win. I kind of like this a lot as their 'elimination' is only information and people could use it defensively rather than offensively. Would probably have to include some kind of rule about not being eligible for multiple "eliminations".
Have votes PMed to me instead of done in thread, and require everybody to vote? Voting felt apathetic this game and I think people were able to rely on the public votecount to know if they needed to show their hand.

Communication:

Discord only? I like having the thread as general chat, but maybe it makes more sense to isolate communications to Discord for potential spectators. Similar to confessionals, I don't know if the game is FRG enough for this.
I think I might prefer the thread (or main discord general chat, if it came to that) to be closed during the night to give people a break. Also, if voting is secret and not public, it might guard against infodumps from people who think they are in danger (which are FUN but I don't know if I want them as a mod?)
I wouldn't mind a scenario in which everybody gets exactly two lines of communication in a night and the whole thing goes in a big circle. I think it would help communication disparity a bit. I'm not sure how I would do this - maybe have everybody submit the names of everybody in order of communication preference, and then somehow determine how that executes? Not sure if this one is really possible or not.

Let me know feedback on as many or as few of these as you want, and I'd love to hear other ideas not mentioned here too!

# ? Jul 12, 2017 19:53

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > The Game Room > Codebreaker II: The Katydid Initiative

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