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Seven players was too few for a vanilla game with two wolves, but I also wanted the dynamics to be more interesting than a manhunt. The inspiration for this setup was the following: What if everyone was playing two games in parallel, and the roles between the two games was connected in some way? This ended up becoming the final setup where the two games were the "Fire" game and the "Ice" game, each with one wolf and one seer. With two seers in seven players, I didn't want a seer-seer alliance to narrow the PoE too much and break the game, so I also allowed for the possibility that a seer can be a wolf. This does subject the human-wolf balance to some variation, similar to the tic-tac-toe setup, but not so much that I thought it'd break the game.

The game was meant to encourage wolf-wolf collaboration as a high-risk, high-reward play, in a similar fashion as a faction game. During N1/D1,I was surprised to see how much people thought of the wolves as being "against each other," but as the game progressed the threat of wolf-wolf collaboration loomed larger in people's minds. Teaming up with the other wolf is a very difficult strategy to achieve reliably, but if one wolf rolls seer, there is one simple way: claim a false result. Since the other wolf knows who they painted, they'll know if the seer is lying, and if so, it gives them reason to believe they're a wolf. (TZP attempted this himself, but unfortunately the other wolf was no longer around to take advantage of it.) This was the major intended avenue for wolf-wolf collaboration, and the ideal counterplay would be for the human seer(s) to recognize this and claim a false result in hopes of baiting a wolf. (Unfortunately this wouldn't have worked on TZP, since TZP, as a wolf seer, knew that the other seer wasn't a wolf.)

Ostensibly, if a wolf rolls seer, they'd be in a much stronger position than the other wolf, but that's not actually the case; I think that if a wolf rolls seer, both wolves are benefited quite similarly. The wolf seer still has a human seer hunting them down, while the non-seer wolf can only be seered by someone who's incentivized to collaborate with them.

Overall, the game seemed somewhat wolf-sided; in hindsight, a day start might have been more appropriate. Perhaps the biggest flaw with this setup, and the toughest aspect with regard to balancing, was the amount of swing that depends on who the wolves target each night: If they only target humans, humans only get one mislynch (and have a very hard time controlling the lynch if the wolves team up), whereas if the wolves target each other and one wolf dies early, the lone half-vote wolf needs to survive multiple mislynches to win. I'm not sure what the best solution to this would be, but it's something to consider if a similar setup ever gets run in the future.

Night 1: The night is fairly quiet, but Specs and TZP (as it happens, the two seers) attempt to spark discussion about whether and when the seers should claim, and also whether to reveal their colo. The conversation touches on the possibility of a wolf (either a real seer or a fakeclaim) teaming up with another seer.

N1P2 locks in a burn on THC right away, and TZP sends his chill on THC in halfway through the night, meaning that THC is a dead man walking before he's even opened the thread. The night ends with his sudden death, much to everyone's confusion.

Day 1: Everyone tries to make sense of how THC was double-targeted N1. Oricorio suspects that the wolves teamed up, while BDS believes it to be a coincidence and looks back at previous games to see who might have targeted THC. TZP agrees that it's a coincidence and suggests (potentially honestly) that the wolves may have wanted to keep a burn/chill on an unlikely lynch target.

Xiao kicks off the voting with an early suspicion on TZP, seemingly based on TZP's insistence on discussing seer reveals.

TZP begins writing up ISO analyses for all players thus far. N1P2 puts suspicion on TZP based on a "hunch," driven by TZP's perhaps suspiciously specific explanation of THC's wolfing, and also draws flak for his comment on tending to take a backseat role.

Specs PMs BDS and Oricorio individually revealing himself to be a seer, but not claiming which color, in response to the growing suspicion on him. Only BDS responds so far, but for the rest of the day both of them keep an eye out to ensure Specs isn't lynched. However, BDS also passes this on to TZP and expresses his doubts about Specs' claim, based on Specs' having missed that the seerings only start N2. Consequently, as both Ice Wolf and Fire Seer, TZP now knows that Specs is the Ice Seer, giving TZP one fewer target to paint at night.

Suspicions at this point tend to be hedgy all around, but two main wagons emerge, and mere hours before phase end, the stage is set for a KitB between TZP and N1P2 — the two wolves, as it so happens. BDS votes for N1P2 to break the KitB while N1P2 posts his thoughts right before phase end. His vote switch to Oricorio and his refusal to claim seer look towny for him, but unfortunately, it's too little too late, and he goes down.

Night 2: The remaining players agree that N1P2 was likely town, based on how he acted in his final moments. Thus, everyone believes two wolves are still alive.

Specs chooses initially to seer Xiao, but switches it to Oricorio shortly after. TZP chooses to chill Oricorio and seer BDS, but forgets to send in a painting target.

TZP sends a message to each of the other four players claiming to be "the other wolf" and proposing an alliance. Specs privately responds by calling it out as a reaction test; BDS pretends to play along (perhaps not so convincingly, given how trusting his response was) and anchors his plan on Xiao; and Oricorio publicly outs it to the thread.

TZP finally sends in his painting target: Oricorio as well. By correctly guessing Specs' seer target, TZP's painting is going to heavily influence the course of the next day's discussion.

Near the end of the night, Oricorio and Specs strike up a conversation about TZP's claim, though it doesn't seem to strongly sway their TZP read one way or the other.

26 seconds before phase end, Specs sends a group message to TZP and Xiao saying that he claimed seer to BDS and Oricorio D1 and that one or both is likely a wolf if Specs ends up dying tonight. (Specs, at this point, is not yet aware that TZP already knows of his role.)

Day 2: Continuing the conversation from the end of N2, Oricorio proposes that he acts as seer cover for Specs and asks him for his seer result, which turns out to be a blue flip on Oricorio himself, successfully painted by TZP.

Oricorio contacts BDS to double-check Specs' seer claim. BDS and Oricorio attempt to coordinate more PMs about seer claims with Specs and TZP behind the scenes, but it ultimately proves inconsequential as Specs and TZP publicly claim. Town coordinates a plan to verify that Specs and TZP are legit by having BDS and Xiao cross-check their colors.

The blue Oricorio hit starts driving a wedge between town as tensions rise between Oricorio and everyone else. Meanwhile, TZP's purported green Oricorio hit mostly gets overlooked because of how late it's revealed (mathematically, a player with one blue hit and one green hit D2 is actually roughly equally likely to be a wolf as anyone else). Under the assumption that two wolves remain, Oricorio aggressively pushes for a Xiao lynch — a logical move from his position, but one that the rest of town reads as desperate, especially once Oricorio starts criticizing Xiao's play.

Further discussion revolves around the question of whether the two wolves have connected — which, if they had, means bad news for town. The pressure mounts near the end of the day as a lynch in (seemingly) LYLO with (seemingly) proportionally large wolf influence draws near.

10 minutes before phase end, Xiao switches their vote to TZP, and informs TZP via PM that it's a reaction test on Oricorio and that they'll switch back. Oricorio then joins the TZP vote for self-preservation, giving TZP the perfect excuse to vote Oricorio and ensure (with Oricorio's vote reduced) that he'll be lynched this phase. TZP also sends Specs the following:

Quote from: TheZeldaPianist275 on July 01, 2024, 04:56:41 PMHello fellow seer. Xiao just privately told me his vote on me was a reaction test on Oricorio and that he'll change it back... but if he doesn't change it before the deadline and I die, you know who to go for.

Xiao switches their vote back to Oricorio last-minute, and Oricorio futilely attempts to revenge-vote Xiao from beyond the grave.

Night 3: The true votecount reveal sends town into a confused frenzy: Oricorio was the only targeted player N2, meaning that unless a wolf chose not to target anyone N2, one wolf is already dead. Thus, even though Oricorio was a mislynch, town still has one more chance to get it right. Xiao sends BDS a PM expressing suspicion of TZP.

Town spends the night reasoning through the possibilities to figure out the game state. N1P2's final words seemed very human, but the voting results point toward him being a wolf. Barring an elaborate scheme, Specs is largely cleared at this point in the game, since the Ice Wolf was alive N2, meaning that the first wolf who died must have been the Fire Wolf. Thus, the pool of suspects is down to Xiao, TZP, and BDS — the last of whom has been fairly townread by this point, setting the stage for a face-off between Xiao and TZP.

TZP wolfslips (https://www.ninsheetmusic.org/forum/index.php?msg=443209) by publicly assuming that if the Fire Wolf is still alive, then it was the Fire Wolf, not the Ice Wolf, who was inactive N2 — something only the active Ice Wolf would know. Fortunately for him, nobody catches it.

TZP's night actions are completely unsurprising: chill Specs (the least likely lynch), paint Xiao (the other most suspicious player), and seer Xiao (the one player left who could be the Fire Wolf).

Specs, on the other hand, faces more of a dilemma. He initially opts to seer BDS, but later changes it to TZP. Unfortunately, a seer result on TZP won't prove as informative, since (by his own admission D3) TZP would have been a likely painting target for both IceWolf!BDS and IceWolf!Xiao. On the other hand, a green result on BDS would have at least narrowed the pool of suspects down to two.

Day 3: Specs faces the same dilemma as yesterday: a positive result, with 50/50 odds of TZP being a wolf. Unlike with Oricorio, though, Specs is taken by TZP's humanness, particularly with TZP's message to him at the end of D2. Upon receiving the seer result, Specs replies to me:

Quote from: SpecsFlyer17 on July 02, 2024, 05:09:41 PMHuh. Alright then. Lol idek

Specs correctly points out that unless the chilled human is lynched, town only has one more lynch left. He also notes that the Ice Wolf both chilling and painting Oricorio provides an optimal setup to mislynch him, and analyzes each player's reaction to Oricorio's blue result.

BDS remains concerned about the possibility that TZP and Xiao are the wolves, and sends this to Specs:

Quote from: BlackDragonSlayer on July 03, 2024, 03:41:42 PMOver the past few hours I've been mulling over the possibility that TZP and Xiao could be the wolves together. It would make sense how Oricorio was both vote reduced (by red wolf Xiao) and painted (by blue wolf TZP). TZP would have skipped his vote reduction, possibly more worried about hitting his fellow wolf. In this situation TZP would know Xiao was red and lied about seering Xiao green—but TZP might have no idea whether Xiao was a wolf or simply painted red. On top of that he doesn't even know who if anyone the red wolf vote reduced last night (wolf!TZP probably skipped vote reduction again), so he can't exactly spill the beans publicly lest he risk a KitB.

I'd appreciate a fact check for the above, but it gave me an idea: what if I try and bait TZP into claiming blue wolf to me by telling him I know he lied about seering Xiao green because I painted Xiao. I'd also say I didn't vote reduce anyone because of the risk of hitting my fellow wolf and asking him how he wants to proceed from there.

If he's the blue wolf he then thinks I'm the red wolf. If he's human his seering is correct and he knows I'm lying about painting Xiao, which would (in my eyes) confirm Xiao as the wolf.

Specs agrees, and BDS sends this to TZP:

Quote from: BlackDragonSlayer on July 03, 2024, 04:42:16 PMA'ight, I'm going for broke here, but after mulling all the scenarios over I'm fairly certain you're not just pretending to lie about your seer results. I'm the fire wolf and I painted Xiao red last night so I know you're lying about your seer results. I didn't reduce anyone's vote last night because I figured that if Oricorio wasn't the ice wolf (which I'm pretty sure at this point he wasn't) it was too much of a risk to accidentally hit the other wolf.

If you're indeed the ice wolf and vote reduced anyone other than me, I'm pretty sure we've just won. If you had the same logic as me and didn't reduce anyone, then, well, we can work with that. I feel like Specs could be convinced to vote for Xiao without too much effort, especially if I'm the first one to lead the charge.

Unfortunately it doesn't work, since the Fire Wolf is dead:

Quote from: TheZeldaPianist275 on July 03, 2024, 05:32:47 PMBro, no you're not, I seer'd Xiao green 😂 solid gambit though, I respect it, sending receipts to the thread

TZP and Xiao, unsurprisingly, vote each other. BDS has been taken in by TZP's human-seeming plays and votes Xiao as well — and since Specs' vote is cut in half, BDS's vote is exactly what TZP needs to secure the game. Specs votes for himself, possibly in an attempt to bait a vote switch from one of the other players, but since he obviously has no reason to keep his vote on himself by the end of the phase, the play doesn't pull much weight.

In the final hour, Xiao switches votes to BDS. The day ends, somewhat quietly, with the remaining wolf being the only player without a single vote on them.

Oricorio: You came in swinging with good analysis of the setup N1 — figuring out how many mislynches humans have in this game is complicated but crucial, and you also took the time to think about what kinds of alliances might pop up and how trustworthy the consensus lynch target would be in a small game like this. I think your play up through N2 was quite human, and I'm not exactly sure why people suspected you before then. However, the further D2 went, the less surprised I was to see momentum piling up against you — although it was reasonable from your perspective to believe Xiao was likely a wolf, I think you tunneled a bit too aggressively, calling out wolftells in Xiao's posting style without giving other players' ISOs the same scrutiny, and I don't disagree with TZP's comment that it seemed like your back was against the wall. Having a positive seer hit on you here sucks — though ironically, as a wolf, you seemed to play much more calmly in this situation in the Grinch game, which let you get away. Perhaps your town and wolf meta are flipped in this regard.

BlackDragonSlayer: You put a lot of energy and enthusiasm into solving the game via your analysis and your gambits, which gave you a lot of towncred. You were never really considered a lynch target, and having you around in the final phases helped keep the analytic conversations going. Unfortunately, you were taken in by TZP the whole game, although it's hard to fault you for that since he played so cleanly. Still, I wonder if there were times you could have pressured TZP more, since as far as I can tell you never questioned that read too hard, although you did attempt to catch him out as a wolf several times (unfortunately the circumstances each time meant TZP wouldn't fall for it). For your efforts in solving the game, I grant you an Honorable Mention.

ThatHiddenCharacter: I intentionally designed this game so that everyone could play up through N2, but damn, that's some bad luck. Sorry, man, next time. Sure reminds me of something...

Quote from: ThatHiddenCharacter on August 31, 2023, 04:07:26 PMTZP rolling wolf again was just bleh. He's too good at deception and no one suspected him until the end. It looked like a very fun game, though. Shame luck is not my strong suit. Next game I'm in better not be related to luck-based kills.

SpecsFlyer17: You were given an interesting hand as the sole human seer this game, and I think you played it quite well. You clearly put a lot of thought into how to play your role, and your choice to reveal to BDS and Oricorio D1 kept suspicion off you. That said, BDS ended up passing your claim on to TZP, which might've contributed to TZP's successful framing of Oricorio. I think you did a good job of remaining calm and clearheaded during D2 when deciding who to vote for, although TZP's purported green hit on Oricorio probably should've given you some pause. My main observation is that you did a good job analyzing the game based on what had happened so far, but could have done more in driving discussion and pressuring people more to get further information. As the most likely human player D3, using your position to convince other humans and control the lynch would have been critical to win — if you had believed it was TZP, you would've had to convince BDS of the same. Nonetheless, I grant you Honorable Mention for this game as well.

XiaoMigros: I think you did a good job of generally playing like quite human-like, and you only really became the D3 lynch target by process of elimination since TZP's wolf game was so clean. You had a surprisingly accurate hunch of TZP being a wolf early in the game, although it seems like that read was pushed to the wayside by the events with Oricorio D2. I like the mindset behind the reaction test D2, though I think it'd prove more fruitful to test those who aren't already about to be lynched (and ultimately it gave TZP a convenient excuse to vote Oricorio without being suspicious). I was a little confused why thought D3 wouldn't be LYLO (it was), and maybe because of that, you didn't seem to put up much of a fight D3. I think that if you had put forth a stronger case for why it wasn't you and/or why it was TZP or BDS, the final lynch could have gone another way.

Nana1Popo2: With such a small game and so little room to hide, rolling wolf in a game like this is scary! You expressed some frustration about how activity only really picked up once you were no longer available — I think my advice would be to play more proactively, rather than reactively. Rather than waiting for others to ask you questions or suspect you, writing early strategy posts, readlists, etc., or even just asking people questions about their posts to understand their reasoning better, can you help you get more towncred. I don't think it was unwarranted for suspicion to fall on you for the post about taking a backseat, especially after the context of the Luigi game. I liked your choice to not claim seer before being lynched, since it did convince everyone you were human, but unfortunately at that point it was too late.

TheZeldaPianist275: Golly gee whiz you sure have been rolling wolf a lot huh. You had the fortunate position of getting both seer and wolf, which you leveraged well. You made several plays that seemed very human and took the heat off you, including the N2 gambit and the PM to Specs about Xiao's reaction test. You managed to pocket BDS the whole game, which basically ensured your safety. The choice to both chill and paint Oricorio N2 was an interesting one, and one I didn't fully understand myself, but it successfully sowed chaos in humans while also not reducing the number of lynches you needed to reach parity. It was clever to claim a green hit on Oricorio in hopes of forming an alliance; however, I do think it was weird to publicly claim a green hit early in D2 but then wait so long to reveal it actually was, especially since Specs had already claimed a blue hit on Oricorio. A human seer with a green Oricorio hit likely would've claimed earlier to protect him, and your behavior could have been called out as a wolfseer play to fake a target of choice later (which is exactly what you did). Fortunately, nobody called you out for that, nor for the aforementioned N3 wolfslip. Despite these minor points, for being the well deserved winner with a very clean game, you earn the honor of MVP.