3d20 – The Great Board Game War [GAME OVER]

[Thor Ragnarok]

I'm confused

[Thor Ragnarok]

I rolled Town Roleblocker but the mod gave me something completely different

I'm messaging them to try and work it out

[Thor Ragnarok]

Can someone who rolled Reroll Twice use one on me? I think I could do a lot better with another role, this one doesn't complement my strong points

[Thor Ragnarok]

If you're cult, please recruit me. I joined this game to have a team to work with yet I have no information and feel lost knowing there's so many different teams out there all plotting, and I'm in on none of it

[Thor Ragnarok]

How is it even possible to find scum when they don't even know who the other scum are? Can't they just search for the other scum and then no one is lying?

We're trying to find the liars but if no one is lying then we're just arbitrarily voting people we don't like out

[Thor Ragnarok]

Please cult me

I don't mind which faction, I'm willing to join mafia, werewolf, alien, or anything you recruit me to. I just want to be part of some larger scheme

[Thor Ragnarok]

But while I'm town, I'll try and help with insight when something catches my eye

That's just a offer that anyone can take me up on if they want

[Thor Ragnarok]

Okay will you summarise the next post I make in 1 minute, cyrus? It's a challenge for you

[Thor Ragnarok]

The Star
©Arthur C. Clarke

From The Nine Billion Names of God: The Best Short Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (1967: rpt. NY: Signet/NAL, 1974: 235-240)

All rights reserved; not to be reprinted without permission of the author

It is three thousand light-years to the Vatican. Once, I believed that space could have no power over faith, just as I believed the heavens declared the glory of God’s handwork. Now I have seen that handiwork, and my faith is sorely troubled. I stare at the crucifix that hangs on the cabin wall above the Mark VI Computer, and for the first time in my life I wonder if it is no more than an empty symbol.

I have told no one yet, but the truth cannot be concealed. The facts are there for all to read, recorded on the countless miles of magnetic tape and the thousands of photographs we are carrying back to Earth. Other scientists can interpret them as easily as I can, and I am not one who would condone that tampering with the truth which often gave my order a bad name in the olden days.

The crew were already sufficiently depressed: I wonder how they will take this ultimate irony. Few of them have any religious faith, yet they will not relish using this final weapon in their campaign against me—that private, good-natured, but fundamentally serious war which lasted all the way from Earth. It amused them to have a Jesuit as chief astrophysicist: Dr. Chandler, for instance, could never get over it. (Why are medical men such notorious atheists?) Sometimes he would meet me on the observation deck, where the lights are always low so that the stars shine with undiminished glory. He would come up to me in the gloom and stand staring out of the great oval port, while the heavens crawled slowly around us as the ship turned over and over with the residual spin we had never bothered to correct.

“Well, Father,” he would say at last, “it goes on forever and forever, and perhaps Something made it. But how you can believe that Something has a special interest in us and our miserable little world—that just beats me.” Then the argument would start, while the stars and nebulae would swing around us in silent, endless arcs beyond the flawlessly clear plastic of the observation port.

It was, I think, the apparent incongruity of my position that cause most amusement among the crew. In vain I pointed to my three papers in the Astrophysical Journal, my five in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. I would remind them that my order has long been famous for its scientific works. We may be few now, but ever since the eighteenth century we have made contributions to astronomy and geophysics out of all proportion to our numbers. Will my report on the Phoenix Nebula end our thousand years of history? It will end, I fear, much more than that.

I do not know who gave the nebula its name, which seems to me a very bad one. If it contains a prophecy, it is one that cannot be verified for several billion years. Even the word “nebula” is misleading; this is a far smaller object than those stupendous clouds of mist—the stuff of unborn stars—that are scattered throughout the length of the Milky Way. On the cosmic scale, indeed, the Phoenix Nebula is a tiny thing—a tenuous shell of gas surrounding a single star.

Or what is left of a star. . .

The Rubens engraving of Loyola seems to mock me as it hangs there above the spectrophotometer tracings. What would you, Father, have made of this knowledge that has come into my keeping, so far from the little world that was all the Universe you knew? Would your faith have risen to the challenge, as mine has failed to do?

You gaze into the distance, Father, but I have traveled a distance beyond any that you could have imagined when you founded our order a thousand years ago. No other survey ship has been so far from Earth: we are at the very frontiers of the explored Universe. We set out to reach the Phoenix Nebula, we succeeded, and we are homeward bound with our burden of knowledge. I wish I could lift that burden from my shoulders, but I call to you in vain across the centuries and the light-years that lie between us.

On the book you are holding the words are plain to read. AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM, the message runs, but it is a message I can no longer believe. Would you still believe it, if you could see what we have found?

We knew, of course, what the Phoenix Nebula was. Every year, in our Galaxy alone, more than a hundred stars explode, blazing for a few hours or days with hundreds of times their normal brilliance until they sink back into death and obscurity. Such are the ordinary novas—the commonplace disasters of the Universe. I have recorded the spectrograms and light curves of dozens since I started working at the Lunar Observatory.

But three or four times in every thousand years occurs something beside which even a nova pales into total insignificance.

When a star becomes a supernova, it may for a little while outshine all the massed suns of the Galaxy. The Chinese astronomers watched this happen in A.D. 1054, not knowing what it was they saw. Five centuries later, in 1572, a supernova blazed in Cassiopeia so brilliantly that it was visible in the daylight sky. There have been three more in the thousand years that have passed since then.

Our mission was to visit the remnants of such a catastrophe, to reconstruct the events that led up to it, and, if possible, to learn its cause. We came slowly in through the concentric shells of gas that had been blasted out six thousand years before, yet were expanding still. They were immensely hot, radiating even now with a fierce violet light, but were far too tenuous to do us any damage. When the star had exploded, its outer layers had been driven upward with such speed that they had escaped completely from its gravitational field. Now they formed a hollow shell large enough to engulf a thousand solar systems, and at its center burned the tiny, fantastic object which the star had now become—a White Dwarf, smaller than earth, yet weighing a million times as much.

The glowing gas shells were all around us, banishing the normal night of interstellar space. We were flying into the center of the cosmic bomb that had detonated millennia ago and whose incandescent fragments were still hurtling apart. The immense scale of the explosion, and the fact that the debris already covered a volume of space many millions of miles across, robbed the scene of any visible movement. It would take decades before the unaided eye could detect any motion in these tortured wisps and eddies of gas, yet the sense of turbulent expansion was overwhelming.

We had checked our primary drive hours before, and were drifting slowly toward the fierce little star ahead. Once it had been a sun like our own, but it had squandered in a few hours the energy that should have kept it shining for a million years. Now it was a shrunken miser, hoarding its resources as if trying to make amends for its prodigal youth.

No one seriously expected to find planets. If there had been any before the explosion, they would have been boiled into puffs of vapor, and their substance lost in the greater wreckage of the star itself. But we made the automatic search, as we always do when approaching an unknown sun, and presently we found a single small world circling the star at an immense distance. It must have been the Pluto of this vanished Solar System, orbiting on the frontiers of the night. Too far from the central sun ever to have known life, its remoteness had saved it from the fate of all its lost companions.

The passing fires had seared its rocks and burned away the mantle of frozen gas that must have covered it in the days before the disaster. We landed, and we found the Vault.

Its builders had made sure that we should. The monolithic marker that stood above the entrance was now a fused stump, but even the first long-range photographs told us that here was the work of intelligence. A little later we detected the continent-wide pattern of radioactivity that had been buried in the rock. Even if the pylon above the Vault had been destroyed, this would have remained, an immovable and all-but eternal beacon calling to the stars. Our ship fell toward this gigantic bull’s eye like an arrow into its target.

The pylon must have been a mile high when it was built, but now it looked like a candle that had melted down into a puddle of wax. It took us a week to drill through the fused rock, since we did not have the proper tools for a task like this. We were astronomers, not archaeologists, but we could improvise. Our original purpose was forgotten: this lonely monument, reared with such labor at the greatest possible distance from the doomed sun, could have only one meaning. A civilization that knew it was about to die had made its last bid for immortality.

It will take us generations to examine all the treasures that were placed in the Vault. They had plenty of time to prepare, for their sun must have given its first warnings many years before the final detonation. Everything that they wished to preserve, all the fruits of their genius, they brought here to this distant world in the days before the end, hoping that some other race would find it and that they would not be utterly forgotten. Would we have done as well, or would we have been too lost in our own misery to give thought to a future we could never see or share?

If only they had had a little more time! They could travel freely enough between the planets of their own sun, but they had not yet learned to cross the interstellar gulfs, and the nearest Solar System was a hundred light-years away. Yet even had they possessed the secret of the Transfinite Drive, no more than a few millions could have been saved. Perhaps it was better thus.

Even if they had not been so disturbingly human as their sculpture shows, we could not have helped admiring them and grieving for their fate. They left thousands of visual records and the machines for projecting them, together with elaborate pictorial instructions from which it will not be difficult to learn their written language. We have examined many of these records, and brought to life for the first time in six thousand years the warmth and beauty of a civilization that in many ways must have been superior to our own. Perhaps they only showed us the best, and one can hardly blame them. But their worlds were very lovely, and their cities were built with a grace that matches anything of man’s. We have watched them at work and play, and listened to their musical speech sounding across the centuries. One scene is still before my eyes—a group of children on a beach of strange blue sand, playing in the waves as children play on Earth. Curious whiplike trees line the shore, and some very large animal is wading in the shallows, yet attracting no attention at all.

And sinking into the sea, still warm and friendly and life-giving, is the sun that will soon turn traitor and obliterate all this innocent happiness.

Perhaps if we had not been so far from home and so vulnerable to loneliness, we should not have been so deeply moved. Many of us had seen the ruins of ancient civilizations on other worlds, but they had never affected us so profoundly. This tragedy was unique. It is one thing for a race to fail and die, as nations and cultures have done on Earth. But to be destroyed so completely in the full flower of its achievement, leaving no survivors—how could that be reconciled with the mercy of God?

My colleagues have asked me that, and I have given what answers I can. Perhaps you could have done better, Father Loyola, but I have found nothing in the Exercitia Spiritualia that helps me here. They were not an evil people: I do not know what gods they worshiped, if indeed they worshiped any. But I have looked back at them across the centuries, and have watched while the loveliness they used their last strength to preserve was brought forth again into the light of their shrunken sun. They could have taught us much: why were they destroyed?

I know the answers that my colleagues will give when they get back to Earth. They will say that the Universe has no purpose and no plan, that since a hundred suns explode every year in our Galaxy, at this very moment some race is dying in the depths of space. Whether that race has done good or evil during its lifetime will make no difference in the end: there is no divine justice, for there is no God.

Yet, of course, what we have seen proves nothing of the sort. Anyone who argues thus is being swayed by emotion, not logic. God has no need to justify His actions to man. He who built the Universe can destroy it when He chooses. It is arrogance—it is perilously near blasphemy—for us to say what He may or may not do.

This I could have accepted, hard though it is to look upon whole worlds and peoples thrown into the furnace. But there comes a point when even the deepest faith must falter, and now, as I look at the calculations lying before me, I have reached that point at last.

We could not tell, before we reached the nebula, how long ago the explosion took place. Now, from the astronomical evidence and the record in the rocks of that one surviving planet, I have been able to date it very exactly. I know in what year the light of this colossal conflagration reached the Earth. I know how brilliantly the supernova whose corpse now dwindles behind our speeding ship once shone in terrestrial skies. I know how it must have blazed low in the east before sunrise, like a beacon in that oriental dawn.

There can be no reasonable doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?

London, October 1954

[Thor Ragnarok]

Okay will you summarise the next post I make in 1 minute, cyrus? It's a challenge for you

You want to hear a joke I joined hoping to get scum so I could kill you and say I killed Thor .

You're allowed to kill me if you recruit me to be scum first

[Thor Ragnarok]

I really don't know how to use my role and I'd love some advice for how to use it

If there's a neighborizer or recruiter, just talk to me now so I can get pointers early before I use it on someone I shouldn't

[Thor Ragnarok]

What are my strong points you think?

[Thor Ragnarok]

Very good story I honestly didn't think we made it that far into space since are rover has just made it to Mars . And to discover such things but didn't we just make it to the moon in 1954 ? Was that whole story science faction?

It really is a good story. I'm not sure either if it's just science fiction or if there's truth to it, but I want to explore one of these stars one day.

[Thor Ragnarok]

What are my strong points you think?

I couldn't tell you, we haven't played a game together nor have you done much just yet.

I won't say much, but I'm confident I will find scum at some point, and then I'll go lightning mode and you'll be able to tell

[Thor Ragnarok]

What is a clime, cyrus?

[Thor Ragnarok]

No, it's okay, if it's the name of a role you shouldn't say what it is to give scum any information.

Do you have any good story recommendations?

[Thor Ragnarok]

What is a clime, cyrus?

I think your the cult bus driver hence asking to be made cult knowing you can't be so the next day you can say the same thing and still act like you want to be cult . Town never ask for it..

If I was cult, I would be happy. Town is boring, especially when I don't know who to use my role on.

Should I use it on you?

[Thor Ragnarok]

No, it's okay, if it's the name of a role you shouldn't say what it is to give scum any information.

Do you have any good story recommendations?

I ment claimed .

The forbidden books are fun to read .

Like Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto?

[Thor Ragnarok]

Don't be rude please, I'm bored and lost so far

If you have any pointers that could help, just tell me

[Thor Ragnarok]

I'm a town role

[Thor Ragnarok]

Yeah, I'm on that list

And I just realised there's TWO players with Reroll Twice in their role, can one of them target me? I'd make it worthwhile for them and try and help them win

[Thor Ragnarok]

Actually, it's three!

[Thor Ragnarok]

Oh so recruiting is my only hope then

Fingers crossed

[Thor Ragnarok]

On the subject of that list, it should probably be updated for dwlee's mistake of rampaging and not multitasking.

Thor, let's assume you don't get culted and that you want to win as town. How would you plan on doing so?

kyouko, throw me a bone here - where's your head at?

Well I can use my vote to help out. If someone else gets a check on another player which reveals them to be scum, I can help out by voting that person

[Thor Ragnarok]

I know wanting to be cult is a little evil, but I would be fine with being a neighbour too

[Thor Ragnarok]

Someone asked if I was an alt but I can't remember who. This is my new main, does that person know my old one? If you do, don't tell anyone since my meta was really easy to read and everyone could always tell when I was scum.

[Thor Ragnarok]

I'm not the cult leader but I would make a great cult member if the leader just gave me a chance. Also, some players may have more than 1 role since 5 were added to the pool according to Cook, so it's possible someone has more roles than James's list of roles may let on

If there's a mafia/werewolf recruiter, you know what to do

[Thor Ragnarok]

We should probably try and kill mafia and werewolves before the cult leader

[Thor Ragnarok]

There's only 1 cult

[Thor Ragnarok]

Happy birthday, kyouko. I hope you win in everything you do

[Thor Ragnarok]

I'm still working for the town while I'm town, I know I can only win with the town so I'll be voting for who I think is scum? It only changes if someone recruits me

[Thor Ragnarok]

Who do u think is scum?

I have a read but I'm gonna reveal it when they're here

[Thor Ragnarok]

6 which was odd night

[Thor Ragnarok]

Thor, are you waiting to out a scumread on RMH or someone else?

How did you know it was Robert?

[Thor Ragnarok]

Kyouko is a mind reader. Why are Robert and I both town or both scum anyway though? Did he claim an innocent check on me that I missed?

[Thor Ragnarok]

cyrus is my top townread

[Thor Ragnarok]

cyrus is my top townread

I am absolutely 1000% confident which role you are.

G o on

[Thor Ragnarok]

VOTE: thor

VOTE: Nero Cain

Nice try

[Thor Ragnarok]

Actually

VOTE: T3

[Thor Ragnarok]

Are you talking about me?

[Thor Ragnarok]

Trust me, it'd be a bad idea to vote me out. I don't really know how to use my role but it has a lot of potential if I target the right person with it, just trust me on this one.

If you want to vote me out because you think scum will recruit me, fair enough, I get it, but otherwise it's a really bad idea.

[Thor Ragnarok]

What if Thor's begging to be recruited is actually the cult leader?

There's no way Nero actually believes this, right?

VOTE: Nero

The last thing you wanna do as cult leader is talk about cult leader a lot so that more people are discussing it and it also has more people looking at you while thinking about it.

[Thor Ragnarok]

Also totally onboard with policying Thor because I'm kind of annoyed with the "I'm going to play anti-town as town cause I can get recruited." He did it as town before so he could be town here but I don't really want to play with that schtick again.

I am not doing that and I never stated I was going to do that. The fact this narrative has been spun somehow truly baffles me. I will once again reiterate:

While town, I will be playing for the TOWN. I will be voting who I think is scum, and not playing anti-town.
If I get recruited, I will start playing for whatever faction I am recruited for.

Who came up with this narrative in the first place? Because whoever did is very likely scum.

[Thor Ragnarok]

Nero and Robert are both scum

[Thor Ragnarok]

Once again: I am not deliberately playing anti-town or playing worse on purpose

[Thor Ragnarok]

redtea posts a lot of nonsense and asks questions without follow ups, especially recent posting but his earlier posting is solid and legit, he's probably pushed by scum. Thor is the worst and some of his posts have a cult feel. His role is interesting, he doesn't know how to use it, we probably should eliminate him today for that etc. The wording here "If you want to vote me out because you think scum will recruit me" really pings me because he says scum instead of cult. It's a sign of deception.

VOTE: Thor

This is such a bad post. Let's repeat Robert's reasons:

-Thor is the worst and some of his posts have a cult feel
-His role is interesting, he doesn't know how to use it, we probably should eliminate him today for that etc
-The wording here "If you want to vote me out because you think scum will recruit me" really pings me because he says scum instead of cult. It's a sign of deception.

1) Some of my posts have a cult feel because I've spent a lot of the game talking about cults? Well done for noticing that, Robert. Bravo.

2) My role is interesting and I don't know how to use it, so I should be killed for that? How is this a town thought?

3) We don't know if there's a mafia or werewolf recruiter as well as a cult one, what is he talking about?

VOTE: Robert

[Thor Ragnarok]

And let's be real, he's only voting me because the only scumread I expressed before was him.

[Thor Ragnarok]

I hate this game. It's like no one can even see my posts and doesn't care to comment on anything I'm saying. Good job sorting and reading me by just ignoring all of my posts. Dragon of the West annoys me a lot

I'm the Town Paranoid Gun Owner

I've been trying to get myself recruited or targeted by scum so that they would die when they visited me

[Thor Ragnarok]

I also tried crumbing a lot that I was some kind of powerful investigative or vigilante so that scum would try and kill me

[Thor Ragnarok]

The reason I'm annoyed is because no one is reading my posts, as you've just demonstrated

redtea posts a lot of nonsense and asks questions without follow ups, especially recent posting but his earlier posting is solid and legit, he's probably pushed by scum. Thor is the worst and some of his posts have a cult feel. His role is interesting, he doesn't know how to use it, we probably should eliminate him today for that etc. The wording here "If you want to vote me out because you think scum will recruit me" really pings me because he says scum instead of cult. It's a sign of deception.

VOTE: Thor

This is such a bad post. Let's repeat Robert's reasons:

-Thor is the worst and some of his posts have a cult feel
-His role is interesting, he doesn't know how to use it, we probably should eliminate him today for that etc
-The wording here "If you want to vote me out because you think scum will recruit me" really pings me because he says scum instead of cult. It's a sign of deception.

1) Some of my posts have a cult feel because I've spent a lot of the game talking about cults? Well done for noticing that, Robert. Bravo.

2) My role is interesting and I don't know how to use it, so I should be killed for that? How is this a town thought?

3) We don't know if there's a mafia or werewolf recruiter as well as a cult one, what is he talking about?

VOTE: Robert

[Thor Ragnarok]

I figured crumbing all sorts of powerful roles would get more scum targeting me than town

[Thor Ragnarok]

SIRCAKEZ, YOU HAD ONE JOB

[Thor Ragnarok]

VOTE: Dragon of the West

I saw him in the East wearing a bunny onesie

[Thor Ragnarok]

I'll vote for him or Robert Madlad Hunter.

[Thor Ragnarok]

3 kills though means probably another alignment that wasnt revealed?
PGO could have killed any one of them. Roleblocker does not stop passive roles like PGO, so assuming T3 checked or clarified that first, safe to assume Thor was recruited or voyeured, unless he's in a hood with James' second target

That's if the person culted dies not if the person who culted dies. So I'm thinking maybe PL Thor on chance Cyrus lied about roll or Cakes targeted them hoping they'd live to end game on "conftown" status.

Why on Asgard would the cult leader try and recruit me after I'd claimed Paranoid Gun Owner? Why ever take that risk?

VOTE: Dwlee

[Thor Ragnarok]

Why doesn't everyone in the game target me leaving only me alive? The game should end if all the scum die that way.

[Thor Ragnarok]

VOTE: Robert M Hunter

He's basically pulling a comedy routine at this point. "Isn't Thor near 100% scum at this point?" when it relies on me being scum

exactly

with cyrus and both of us coming up with this convoluted play.

If you look through my posts and see how much I was trying to crumb powerful rolls and ask to be recruited, it is very obvious what my motives are and how I'm the Paranoid Gun Owner.

Get this madlad out of here please.

[Thor Ragnarok]

Considering I'm town and impossible to safely kill for scum at night, my existence is incredibly detrimental for scum and they gain so much by getting me voted out. No town should be taking the risk of losing me on the off-chance I'm somehow not what I claim to be.

The number of people expressing they're down with voting me today or close to just astounds me. Those of you who aren't scum need to reread the wincon in your role pm, those of you who are scum... carry on.

[Thor Ragnarok]

Whatever

[Thor Ragnarok]

Sheeping redtea

VOTE: Nero Cain

[Thor Ragnarok]

If there's a serial killer I'd like them to make their presence known so that we can work with them. I think it's fair to leave each other alive and share a joint win in the end if we can kill all the other scum.

Come forth please, you won't regret it.

[Thor Ragnarok]

I sorta feel like redtea actually thinks he's right and then scum are the ones that are taking the path of least resistance.

I don't even get Thors vote on me if he thinks scum are the ones that are trying to get rid of the PGO (wich is what I think too)

Yeah, fine, vote one of those with me then

VOTE: Robert

[Thor Ragnarok]

Can we have a gentlemen's/ladies agreement from scum to avoid shooting town and try and exterminate scum first and foremost? There's no agency when you could be shot by any scum in the mix, so aim for the other scum with killing power before you kill innocent townies like cyrus.

[Thor Ragnarok]

I have basically no thoughts on Gamma but I prefer him over Kyouko as well

VOTE: Marashu

Unless someone wants to start something cheeky?

[Thor Ragnarok]

If there's a serial killer I'd like them to make their presence known so that we can work with them. I think it's fair to leave each other alive and share a joint win in the end if we can kill all the other scum.

Come forth please, you won't regret it.

SK doesn't joint win -_-

That's up to the player in question. If they are honourable it's certainly feasible to coordinate a joint win. I promise to not betray the SK and vote them out if they come forward.

[Thor Ragnarok]

Unsuprised, care lacking

Marashu transparent scum using the opportunity to get me out after it's clear I scumread him

I'll take my paranoid gun owning to the witcher 3

[Thor Ragnarok]

If Thor's really off the table, then I propose this:

tonight I will target Thor

. I encourage at least one other person to do so as well. If I'm the only death and at least one other person did target him, then Thor was lying.

Yes please. Your suggestion of this makes you less likely to be scum though.

VOTE: Dwlee

Literally no matter what I do he wants to policy me. He's either anti-fun incarnate or scum.

[Thor Ragnarok]

Do people not understand the downsides of voting out a PGO are much much greater than the upsides of voting me out? I'm literally an unkillable townie in the view of scum and you're voting me out.

Why would cyrus and I as scum partners link ourselves so heavily? Look at cyrus talking about the PGO and his suspicions on who it could be, that's the most genuine part of his ISO. And look at the way I played in an attempt to make myself look like a PR.

This game is beyond frustrating.