#The Gardener or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Randomization

99 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

valid scarab
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As codified in the live game rules, a Storyteller is not allowed to manipulate the bag.
This to simulate a more Reallife game experience. (And perhaps some other reasons, This is not a place to discuss the why, go make your own suggestion.)
As we all know, everyone is always honest and keeps to the rules. But I, as a player would like to know if the ST did garden. The ST could put up a gardener, but in practice that never happens (to my knowledge).
So, how would we go about enforcing this rule? We could use the app, but as all live players know, the app is stinky and we have #official-app-recruiting for if you want to play on the app.
My suggestion is to have the ST send out roles and then, afterwards shuffle seats one (1) time, to assure proper gardening is kept to a minimum.
This will not stop ST's from assigning specific roles to players, if someone has a suggestion for how to combat this, please go ahead.

Expected problems:

  1. Adoption will be rough, as players and st's are used to the current way.
    Well, after its adopted, it hopefully would go fine. Any ST who doesn't do it gets perma banned immediately. /s

  2. Currently when shuffeling seats on the site, I believe that the token stays at the old place, while the names get moved. Atleast I have had it happen before when I tried running my games this way. This can cause confusion.
    Perhaps, if the suggestion gets accepted, the person who works on the site could add a functionality that characters stay with the same seat, not just for the host, but also the other people.

TL;DR To enforce gardener, have people send out tokens and then randomize the seating.

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-# picture was really big and ugly, so I posted it in two messages

bright wing
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I like this and do this already.

zenith quarry
valid scarab
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When I started doing this (and the main reason I stopped) Was that people got confused, because they Saw that Bob was the vigormortis. Coincidentally, Bob is sitting where they used to sit.

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If it gets normalized, this will no longer be an issue. Or the web fixes it.

zenith quarry
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What do you mean sorry?

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Like “I should have been the Vigormortis?”

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When in reality it was always Bob

valid scarab
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The person that drew the vigor token, saw the vigor token in their old seat. Then they thought, oh something must have gone wrong with the app, because I can see bob's token but not my own.

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More testing is required, to get a definitive answer on why it happens. For now the suggestion is trying to tackle secret gardening.

languid fable
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That most likely happened because roles were sent out, then seats were randomized. If you distribute roles, randomize seats and then send roles it won't be an issue - but that also won't stop any bad actors from gardening anyway.

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I feel like most incidental gardening that happens on unoffical is probably not specific players being targeted, it's more like... roles get sent, ST sees Empath is getting a two, there is no drunk, so they change Empath to the Monk. I don't know if STs who do this even know it's against the rules.

wet brook
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I've played enough games where I can just get a sense of the deus ex machina making things just a little too convenient.

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Thumbs up from me

manic linden
valid scarab
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I haven't played on the app for quite a while. But last time I did, I remember not being able to add bluffs to myself. And the chat (text based) functionality is less good compared to discord.
But reasons why I prefer the web version, are not the issue here.

thick halo
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What is the purpose of the seat shuffle, here? Is it to "confirm" to the players that characters have just been distributed on the STs end?

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Is the expectation then that STs that don't immediately send characters after the shuffle get ticketed? That would definitely result in a lot of false positives. If no tickets are to be involved, then what does this add other than a false sense of security for players, since bad actors can still act badly.

I feel as though I'm missing something important in this suggestion and am not fully understanding it.

night mortar
valid scarab
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The idea is first sending characters and then shuffling seats. To stop sts from gardening in cases like: empath next to imp and Minion. ST doesnt know seating when handing out characters, but does know which characters go into the bag, just like real life.

wet brook
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The classic 'oh look at all these minions and outsiders in a line with a nodashi...'

night mortar
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Sven what is wrong you are being awfully on topic in this thread

wet brook
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I got a warned by one of you reds.

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||red=green||

pliant minnow
thick halo
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I think I understand it now, and I don't really see any harm in asking for a shuffle after sending.

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Keeping it manual would be best, though, for cases where STs actually intend to and legally can garden the grim. Mainly applicable for scheduled games but also for any pickup game scripts polled with the Gardener shown

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That or I suppose auto shuffling after sending UNLESS the Gardener is in play. That may be reasonable also
Actually no, any automatic behaviour would be obnoxious for anyone outside of this community who uses this tool

night mortar
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Yeah I think this approach is the best because it fits this server’s rules while not breaking anything

valid scarab
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Yes, Personally I believe a manual shuffle would also be best.

wicked solstice
thick halo
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Anyone who's not in this community and not reading this suggestion wouldn't know that

wicked solstice
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and have it asked to be manually removed for people here

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I feel like its so much easier to fix this on website end

thick halo
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It's already "fixed" on the site: roles are distributed randomly. The issue at hand is unique to this community and shouldn't have an impact on anyone else, imo

wicked solstice
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for the rest of the people it would be the same

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@austere vine can you share what are your thoughts on the implementability of this? is it something possible/ something you thought about doing? or would it take a lot of effort and time? I can also help out with coding part if need be :3

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just to be clear I was talking about the current version of web be a version that comes with gardener and removing gardener would make it so that when you click on assign 12 characters randomly it would auto send it rather than by clicking send characters

austere vine
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Shuffling after sending roles would break things. But if you want to have a gardener automatically added when the ST manipulates the grim, that is possible.

wicked solstice
wicked solstice
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as soon as ST changes the tokens from after hitting assign 12 characters randomly

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gardener appears

austere vine
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Right

wicked solstice
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would it be possible to have a timed gardener appearance

austere vine
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I think so

wicked solstice
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like gardener will appear for X minutes

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so that STs dont immediately get rid of it to cover up

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I just didnt know gardening was such a big issue in our community. Do u think this will be a good change? @austere vine and how hard is it to implement this

pliant minnow
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But what about with like drunk and lunatic? Is that gonna affect things?

austere vine
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I didn't know either. It's not a lot of work to implement though.

wicked solstice
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not the pings and stuff

austere vine
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I was going to put in an exception for roles that think they are something else

wicked solstice
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like if you are putting drunk token on someone that would be fine I'm guessing

austere vine
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Since people tend to assign drunk randomly rather that adding the token

wicked solstice
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and for lunatic its up to u nicc

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if its too much work then we can have it as demon token

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and make lunatic a reminder token maybe?

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to make it easier for STs

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actually gardener would only appear in between the time it takes to click assign 12 roles randomly and actually sending out the roles

austere vine
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Yeah, I've seen too many players get the lunatic token and say out loud "I got the lunatic token". 😔

I'd rather let STs send two demon tokens.

wicked solstice
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people should be able to switch it fine afterwards

wicked solstice
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if so village idiot might also be an issue

pliant minnow
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Just a worry that you can start metaing from people changing out tokens and gardening appearing and then being like, oops guess a drunk is in play

austere vine
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Oh that... I forgot about VI

wicked solstice
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whats the issue with leaving duplication as is

austere vine
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I mean it shouldn't trigger gardener

wicked solstice
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I think duplicated stuff should never trigger gardener anyways

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if ST put 2 empaths in the bag that shouldnt make gardener appear

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(just an ST mistake)

wicked solstice
austere vine
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I need to get back to work, I'll circle back to this when I have some time.

wicked solstice
torn parcelBOT
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Gave +1 Thanks to @austere vine (current: #177 - 239)

wet brook
night mortar
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Just making sure

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This will not happen after the roles are sent, right?

wet brook
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That wouldn't work to my knowledge, a player would see a token and know its in play, then see the next one...u less I've got the terminology wrong.

austere vine
thick halo
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I strongly believe that automatically adding the Gardener fabled is a bad idea for a variety of reasons, many of which were pointed out above

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I absolutely do not want the Gardener to appear because the Imp just starpassed, that is awful

night mortar
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I assume that Gardener addition will only work until st sends the roles

thick halo
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That solves a lot of problems, though any scripted logic still needs to account for travellers and redistributing characters after the player count changes, and any other edge cases there may be

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vs just adding a server rule of "just shuffle seats once yo" 🤷

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But that's just my opinion, we shall see what consensus is

wet brook
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Yeah I'm on board with rules just setting an expectation of a shuffle followed quickly (10 seconds?) With sent roles. Make the ST feedback form ask 'did the ST shuffle and send?' As well to highlight its importance.

bright wing
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Or at least “if the Gardner was not in play…”

austere vine
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Players have no way of knowing if the ST sent the roles immediately after assigning them.

I tend to assign the roles soon after creating all the seats. Then while I'm waiting for everyone to sit I'll figure out the pings and stuff.

The concept I'm thinking of is if the ST changes a player's role between assigning roles and sending them, then Gardener gets added. There would be an exception for drunk, lunatic, etc. But if there's an Atheist in play then it shouldn't get added...

It should be easy, but we run things quite a bit differently online than we do in person for a variety of reasons. I just want to make sure we don't add it when we shouldn't.

Let me think about this a bit more.

wicked solstice
night mortar
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Hey @valid scarab

Thanks for opening this suggestion and thanks for all who contributed to it. At this moment we do not think there is any action is necessary. We believe that the concern around gardening is not big enough to warrant a rule change or app update. However we will be on the lookout for this issue and return back to this suggestions if needed.

In the meantime, please feel free to share any feedback you have or report to us if you think a certain game is due to gardening

Sincerely,
Utku

torn parcelBOT
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Gave +1 Thanks to @valid scarab (current: #32 - 742)