Gustav

This just in: Insofar as the mechanics of your role go in this game, at least. I hope that's good enough for some of you to get over those intrusive thoughts of yours. It's time for yet ANOTHER round of Town of Salem! Perhaps the league's higher-ups hope that with every death in this game, my motivation to be here dies a little bit too--but they could not be farther from the truth. Town of Salem isn't the constant it was years ago, but there is also no reason to say that I do not still run it. Case in point--Game 31. Let's get going. I have executive-ordered this game to be STANDARD MAFIA, after a few circumstances of its setup made that make a lot of sense. Your role list is as follows: 1x TOWN PROTECTIVE 1x TOWN SUPPORT 1x TOWN INVESTIGATIVE 1x TOWN KILLING 3x RANDOM TOWN 1x GODFATHER 1x MAFIOSO 2x RANDOM MAFIA 1x NEUTRAL KILLING 1x RANDOM NEUTRAL 2x ANY ROLE Your player list is also as follows, and there are 15 of you: @Adrest245 @Advantage @Da Trifecta @Doomsday @eaglesfan036 @GoodLeftUndone @jhatty8 @Lemorse7 @LucyXpher @N0HBDY @NSG @omgitshim @Ricer13 @SleepyPlayz @Spartan Tell me if you didn't get your role or if I otherwise screwed this up. Now, on to our fabled copy-paste. As per usual, if you'd like to complain that you can't read it because you're in light mode, I will plastinate your body and make it permanently salute me when I come home from work every day. Rules are here The wiki is here -JOIN THE DISCORD SERVER! YOU'RE REQUIRED TO! HERE'S ANOTHER LINK! -I'm going with my usual starting and ending times as a general guideline: WHENEVER THE HELL I WAKE UP marks the start of each day phase, and 10 PM EST marks the start of each night phase. Those will be the times that I'll aim for, but, officially, the start of one phase and the end of another comes whenever I make the announcement. You'll be pinged. I will do my best to give out expected announcement times, but I reserve the right to kick off any phase at any time. -No talking in this thread during night phases. That goes for everybody, regardless of role. I have no power to lock this thread at night, and there's no official penalty for talking in here at night, but if you see one of your fellow citizens doing so, please yell at them for me. I CAN LOCK THE THREAD AT NIGHT, AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT! If for some reason I forget, or if you have mod powers and can comment in locked threads, please keep the "no talking" rule in mind anyway. -Do not edit posts. I've been relaxed about not yelling at people who have, but editing is a sneaky way to take out potentially incriminating information. If you say something stupid, too bad. Don't change it. -If you are reasonably able to be online at the start of the night phases, please make an effort to do so. The JAILOR (if there is a Jailor) is able to speak with you in their own Discord channel at night, and that is when I will put the Jailor's target in said channel. If it is within your power to do so and doesn't present a huge inconvenience, please be online when the night phase starts and please join the server out of respect for the Jailor and their time. If you know you won't be around at the start of the night phase, it might be helpful to give me a message to forward to the Jailor during the day phase should you be placed in jail that night. -DO NOT PM ANYBODY. All communication must happen in this thread, unless you have already received an invite to a Discord server where you may speak as well. If you haven't, keep everything here. Should you wish to contact someone directly, too bad! Whispers don't exist in this format. -STAY ACTIVE. If you do go two day and night phases in a row without speaking in public, speaking in a private Discord, or sending me a night action (or specifically telling me you do not want to take a night action), I will swing the Mighty Gustav Hammer of Death. You do not want the Mighty Gustav Hammer of Death, and neither does anybody on your side. -NO ROLES ARE OFF THE TABLE. If you play the online game, you may be familiar with a Classic mode being the default, where many of the newer roles are not used. In these games, if the evil faction is the Mafia, ALL roles which are not members of the Coven may be used, and vice versa. This includes Any All and Town Traitor. -Last but not least, friendly reminder that no discussion relevant to this game in particular is allowed in the #general channel of the game server while this game is running. -Just kidding! Actually last but not least--IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO CHECK YOUR DISCORD CHANNEL FOR NOTIFICATIONS PRIOR TO EACH DAY PHASE. It might not end well for you if you don't! -And last but not least for the third time, if you choose to change a night action, please, please, send a new message rather than editing your old one. I've missed changes because of this before as an edit doesn't give me any sort of notification if I've already seen and missed the first one...so make sure I've got it right by separating your submissions!

I think a fair way to put it that I surprisingly have never put down anywhere is that I care a lot about the things I can control. I care about what my build looks like, I care about my earning, I care about the quality of the content I make, and I care about what I put into my interactions with people. I do not care about scoring the most points or getting the most likes, because I can’t control those things and they’re just numbers on the screen anyway. It’s nice when it happens, but it’s not going to make me want to quit when it doesn’t. At this point I think I care a bit less in general, because I think the work I’ve done to build myself up is done. I don’t have to worry about getting what I want out of the league from a personal standpoint because I don’t want anything else. But that’s all a product of having cared before, and I still value that.

Yeah I definitely did the same, but I say that as the one who pushed the current system. I have never said that it was perfect and I don’t disagree with anyone missing the personal element. It’s something we tried to mitigate by letting GMs customize the statement that comes with their offers on the portal. Along with making life easier for GMs (which was more crucial than some may realize during a time when we had issues attracting lots of high-quality candidates), there are some things it does to make the M more equitable. A team doesn’t have the choice to NOT make an offer (which I think we can agree was something too many were guilty of back in the day). It also serves the players by letting them pick whichever team situation they would like to be a part of while stopping GMs from misrepresenting how much someone would be used. We’re always open to suggestions for how to improve waivers. Having seen the way it works for a while, I really do like its benefits and would still take it over the way it used to be. The main (fair) complaint is about the personal aspect, and I’d be all for ways to increase that so long as it doesn’t mess with the other parts.

Good to see you back!

Veterans Day! Veterans Day! Big parades with guns and soldiers! Veterans Day! What's there to say? Do all your shopping--at Walmart! Gustav has a 3-day weekend, and Town of Salem is BACK! Both new and returning players are 100% welcome to join in, and I'd love to see us all have a great time with this. I have one small game update, which I have placed in the update thread (reminder of the other update I put in there from last game as well). Please familiarize yourself with it--the Escort and Consort roles have been renamed. I'll try to (possibly slowly) replace those names wherever it's relevant. Vote for your preferred game mode up top, which I will run with if I happen to feel like it. Once again, trivia is back as well. Rules are here The wiki is here CLICK THIS LINK IF YOU'RE NOT IN THE DISCORD SERVER JOINING THE SERVER IS REQUIRED FOR ALL PLAYERS! Non-players are welcome as well. Remember that ALL game-related notifications will be given on Discord! Make sure you join the server, and check it BEFORE speaking in the game thread each day. Also, do your best to be there at the start of each night phase! If you're new to the game, read up on some roles on the wiki and go through some old game threads in this subforum. TRIVIA TIME: HERE IS THE LINK TO TRIVIA! -If you won the last game, you have an automatic 30% chance to receive a role of your choosing, if you'd like to request one. The winners of last game are listed below: @Ptyrell @Doomsday @Ricer13 @rory @jhatty8 @Advantage @Da Trifecta @Lemorse7 @NSG -If you didn't win the last game, you can still request a role! Play trivia, and for each correct answer, you'll earn a cumulative 5% chance toward a role of your choosing, for a maximum chance of 20%. -If you won the last game, you can still play! This possible 20% chance will be added to your 30% chance for a maximum of 50%. -No, you do not need to do this if you don't want to. -If you'd like to play without requesting a role, simply write "Random" in the role request box. Vote for your preferred format up top and sign up down below, as always.

Another change to go into effect starting in Game 31: The roles of ESCORT and CONSORT in original Town of Salem are now known as TAVERN KEEPER and BOOTLEGGER, respectively. That name change will be adopted here as well, for consistency across our forum and the wiki--I'd imagine that a new player looking for the Escort page may have a tough time. No mechanics of either role will change; this is just a name switch.

I just tracked this down. Apparently what I said was: ...which is actually hilarious. I had no idea I called it that directly. I'm going to take credit for that moving forward if you don't mind.

I don't remember this specifically, but that sounds about right. This was still back when I knew every single new member because I was scouting them. I'm not sure I was ever suspicious of anything, especially since I definitely had a positive impression of Horcrux at first. I felt that there were definitely times down the road where things got a bit more...confrontational, I guess? I distanced myself a bit at that point and I feel like that's part of why I was never directly caught up in everything that followed.

I can't believe that the VHL thinks it's as funny as they do to wait for me to write literally everything I can think of about my own personal experiences in the VHL, and then to ask me to do exactly that for theme week right after I've just done it more extensively than probably anyone ever will. I considered a few things for theme week. Do I make a full #31? I could, but I wasn't lying when I said that I had written everything that I thought deserved its own article. Do I do my best to explain some story I've heard things about but wasn't around for? I could also do that and I think I could do a pretty good job of it, but chances are that one of you old nerds would complain about some weird little inaccuracy. I could also just decide that my job pay is my PT this week, but I think that's really stupid. It's not like I've never done that, but I try to avoid it when possible. I should still actually be active despite my job, especially in a setting where "active despite my job" is not already assumed. Because I'm out of ideas, because I did all of those things, I'm going to comb back through and see if there's anything I missed. Have fun with some of the extra fun facts! My first article in the series never goes into the origin of my name. My original name was GustavMattias, which isn't my real name at all, nor is any part of my real name either Gustav or Mattias. It's actually another example of 19-year-old me being uncreative and naming things after musicians I liked. In this case, it's a rearrangement of the name of Mattias Gustavsson, bassist for the Swedish band Dungen. Eventually, I shortened it to just Gustav because that's cleaner and less to remember, and because that's how everyone here knows me anyway. I'm very OK with staying by a fake name around here (to most people, at least) and still having it be a "human" name keeps things personal in a way I really like. The toxic Houston-Philly rivalry I mention in #2 was probably when I first realized that I was actually invested in the VHL. I remember being in the middle of a shift at work and realizing that I'd been working for a really long time while constantly thinking about some stuff that people had said to each other in one dumb argument or another. I realized that that was weird. It's likely that that was also the first time I consciously decided that I wasn't going to let sim league drama affect me in real life. I describe my computer becoming corrupted in my first attempts to run STHS in #3. I also mention trying to get credit for an assignment I had to miss for that reason and I say that the professor probably didn't believe me--I don't think I ever got credit for that assignment. It was also the only time I went into my school's computer lab to do an assignment (and the last time I'd ever get to because they converted it into a gaming room very soon after). Fixing the lottery and commenting "#fixthelottery" in every game thread wasn't something that happened without pushback. I think this was really the only time I was thought of as the annoying new member rather than just the new member, because I remember lots of comments from people who were annoyed that I was doing it. Ironically, the lottery guidelines also explicitly prohibited just commenting #fixthelottery, so I'd make a normal-sounding comment about how many shots on goal my player had and then add the hashtag at the end. Interestingly, one of those things still got much more attention than the other, which I think proved my point a little bit. Something I never mentioned about learning graphics was the influence of a couple informal leaguewide graphics contests held by @Nykonax at a time when I had nothing better to do. I was still horrible when these happened, but I remember taking a little extra care to try new things and pay extra attention to detail. Pretty soon after these was the point when I started to make some acceptable things, and I don't think that's a coincidence. I guess I can give a piece of lore about Gustav 30 in 30 itself. I genuinely had no real reason to start it, and it was more of an "I just felt like running" situation than anything else. Perhaps contrary to popular belief (and contrary to a few more comments to this effect than I wanted), I never wrote it in some weird attempt to tell all of you how great I am as a person or to hear that from you. These were just stories that I knew I could fill up lots of words writing, and it was also really cool for me to experience writing it because it dragged up lots of things I thought I forgot. So, nice try, but I guess I've still got enough left for an article. Catch me next season with some other idea that's along exactly the same lines as my last media spot and see if that does anything for you.

You just stole my theme week reveal smh I just now noticed this. Considering that Anderson did come back and apologize a few years or so ago, and get banned after a review, I do think that it would be at the very least interesting if that were the case. Certainly an all-time case of VHL lore because THIS iteration of me hasn’t done anything bannable and I’d imagine what to do with me would probably be a matter of debate. Good article and not one I was expecting to see.

Both of these need to go IMO. I loved dropping both of the things that correct to them. If you touch the circus monkey though I riot.

Blues out here waiting until I run entirely out of ideas and finish this exact theme week times 30 before dropping this on us smh

I don’t personally listen to a lot of metal, especially in the sphere you seem to be describing. But you would be surprised at how much of it throws together legitimately great songwriting and technical ability, and how much of it is influenced by things like classical music. I’m not going to debate you on whether it’s appealing because that’s a matter of opinion. There’s just also so much metal that isn’t just screaming that probably doesn’t match your perception of what the genre is in the first place. Give Leprous (for example) a shot sometime.