Gustav

Art VandeLAy

I think these are fair statements and you can choose to play in the E for any reason you want. I just also think that any argument that skipping it will get you more career success was already really lacking in credibility and keeps losing what it had as one looks into the details. Neither of you is doing this but I would say it’s completely baseless to argue that a top draft pick isn’t raising their ceiling by staying down, and that this isn’t really appealing to lots of top draft picks. In theory, it should be fine, shouldn’t it? I’d love a world where going up doesn’t effectively forfeit two seasons of hard work. I think the logistics of working this out on a broader scale are a separate discussion, but I hope a “make your last depreciation not as bad” purchase isn’t seen as a bad idea.

tHe SyStEm dOeSn'T eNcOuRaGe YoU tO sTaY dOWn iT's a TrAdE-oFf AnD yOu'Re GeTtiNg ExTrA sTaTs iF yOu Go Up pEoPLe dOn'T sTaY dOwN tO aVoiD dEpReCiAtiOn It's been a minute or two since I've aired out the laundry on this, but my strong opinions about the way depreciation works have not changed. I've always thought that it's absolutely ridiculous that top earners get to sit around in the E and "give up a season of numbers" (at a time when anyone who's been around for longer than 5 seconds knows that those numbers' contribution to a career will be fairly minimal in most cases) to completely avoid depreciating in their last season. To very quickly recap a manifesto that's been posted quite a few times: Point: the E was created to be played in and skipping it shouldn't be a regular thing. Counterpoint: the E was created to address VHL roster overflow. A top earner in the draft should be in high demand on a VHL roster, especially during a time when a top earner can be around 500 TPE by the time the playoffs come up. It's outrageous to suggest that such a player belongs outside of the big league. Point: the E is a necessary evil and we'd be dealing with massive roster issues otherwise. Counterpoint Point: there's nothing wrong with the current depreciation system, it doesn't provide any reward for staying in the E, and if you choose to go up and get hit with the huge one in your last season, a) that doesn't really matter and it was great that you did it, but, b) that's also what you get and you shouldn't have done that. Sure. I've done basically all of my complaining about the above with the belief that the system works a certain way. And, in fact, I can fairly say that there should have been no reason for me to believe otherwise, because this was something I know we've talked about behind the scenes and that I thought we agreed on. Why isn't there a depreciation fighter for the 9th season? If this league wants to pretend even a little bit that players who skip the E aren't human pieces of garbage who deserve to be depreciated into irrelevance, then maybe it shouldn't make that third hit entirely unfightable. I've always thought that there was an option for this and still hated the way it worked--so learning that there isn't and that it's even worse makes my opinion quite a bit stronger. Seriously, we're starting to run out of arguments for "guys, it's actually a fair choice you can make between two pretty cool options," especially when every blue hasn't missed TPE in who knows how long and not one of them skipped the E. You're seriously avoiding an otherwise completely unavoidable 300-some TPE hit at the end of your career by changing nothing about your earning and probably not sacrificing a whole lot of rookie season numbers. I can tell you firsthand that "has 44 more points and one more full season played" isn't really a good thing in HoF voting, and even that assumes that all the other numbers would be exactly the same when you give yourself 300 more TPE to work with. I'll let you think about that for a bit. I'd like to hear one person who legitimately wants to play up under current circumstances for reasons other than not wanting to be in the E. Meanwhile, the reasons for staying down are all over the place, and for those active enough that they shouldn't need to, all of those reasons are performance-incentivized. It's absolutely laughable that I'll inevitably get people telling me here that there's nothing wrong with that, or even that the scenario I'm describing doesn't exist in the first place. Constructive feedback? If you're going to make those of us who want to do what the development leagues are supposed to do in the first place pay a penalty, at least give us an option to mitigate it. I'll admit that a lot of this article is ragebait, but there's something in here I'm advocating for that I seriously think could help the league out.

Art Vandelay - RT

I really don't understand how it's even possible to just forget to put your starter back in. That's why you don't have your backup in your Day 10 lines; even if you don't touch what you've got in there it will just flip back to the starter for future games. That's just common sense. I'm not going to have opinions here about who I think was actually tanking, but it really is just as simple as...play your starter the right amount. IMO this is way harder to screw up than the Louth Rule and that's pretty easy to follow.

Somebody. Here comes my first finals since S68...and second ever. I'm excited. Art Vandelay

TBH I've managed to get to this point without really caring deeply about player success. My first player sucked, but I still had a lot of fun in the league anyway...and while it was really cool to see Taro be one of the league's best and win awards and make the HoF and all that, I don't really think about him much. I will say that I'm more invested in Vandelay as a player when I'm doing well (i.e. "not last season"), but making the HoF doesn't need to be a requirement for me to look back on a player and remember that I had fun there. All I ask on the management end is that we're able to have a good, honest talk about the team's future and that I'm not just being signed for the sake of doing it. I've gotten that so far and don't have much reason to believe I won't this offseason.

Hi VHL! It's been one week since you looked at me. As we get to the end of the season, we see a few of the usual threats laid out in public: "I will be a free agent unless we win a championship," "I will be a free agent regardless," all of the things. People will be free agents, and that's their choice. That contract won't sign itself and the grass is always greener. It's a process that makes me wonder if I'm getting all the good I should be getting out of the VHL when I've never been a free agent. I've never been a cup chaser or a trade demander or a 10-million-dollar wanter. I'm generally a GM's perfect little dream, which is something I think contributed quite a bit to my draft position. But with Vandelay's contract up after this season, is it time to re-evaluate? You see, while I've been a VHL member for years at this point, first-gen me signed a career contract at first notice and second-gen me spent the bulk of his career under none other than himself as GM. Vandelay is really the first chance I've gotten to decide, independent of team factors, whether I'll get to sail the seas of GMs pretending to care about any part of me other than my TPE (yes, I've been one too--don't complain that I said that). And I think it's fair to say that my career has seen its share of disappointment--I've earned hard for a long time and that's gotten me zero awards, zero championships, and somehow missing the playoffs last season. And while I've been nominated for MVP and top goaler a few times, it's always been unclear to me why. So far, I'm headed straight for the Hall of Not Bad, and I might have an article out a year from now if I'm motivated enough to make one. So, would it work to my benefit to tell my team to go eat shit and move somewhere that's had more luck? Quite possibly. I don't even think I'd do it on bad terms, either--I don't start drama with people and I'm sure I could craft some reasoning if I wanted to. I'd even make sure to give some notice (which perhaps could have been this article). But while I'm not a big "team loyalty" guy in the conventional sense of the phrase--I don't consider myself any more attached to LA than to any other team in the league--it's always hard for me to justify it. My short answer to anyone looking to give me a contract extension is that as long as you're trying to compete and as long as you're doing things that make me believe that, I'm usually willing to recognize that effort and contribute to it. And, while I'll have the conversation when it comes up, I have no reason to believe that LA isn't going for that in the future. We'll have a big need for defense, but that will be part of said conversation. And assuming I can believe that we'll have a shot to go places, Vandelay is likely here to stay. It would be nice, though, to do a little bit better in the playoffs. I'm hoping for a nice comeback this series...but at least if it doesn't work out I'm used to it.

Art Vandelay

It wasn't until very recently that this happened, maybe in the past year or so, but I've finally come to terms with being an older VHL member. I've written a ton about how my activity in the league has shifted a bit from when I was 19 and stupid (how many times have you read "I'm not on Discord as much anymore"?) but I also continued to keep a certain regard for those who had been here for, well, still many times longer than I have. They were just the ones that knew better, and I was just Gustav. Even marginally newer people used to tell me all about how they joined in S48 or whenever, and I'd have a bit of a "wow, so long ago!" moment. But I've been here 25 seasons at this point, since S65, and that probably blows some of your minds. It's weird. I think it became clear to me that I was old here when things started mashing together in my head. I used to know just about every single active member--not only by name, but by profile picture, player, and having talked to them directly. I also used to know every single part of the rulebook and thought it was really weird that some older members didn't really seem to. And I'm not sure when this changed. I still click on Discord every day and open it up to see what's going on, but I don't really feel the need to contribute that I used to, and sometimes whoever is contributing isn't someone I know. I also know of all the good players, but I couldn't tell you who manages half of them. Plus, I see some of your names on the forum (and I'd shout you out if that probably wasn't disrespectful) and I really just...know you exist, and that's it. And on the very rare occasion when I talk about the VHL rulebook, sometimes things are brought up to me that I forgot ever happened to the rulebook, because my idea of the rules is the rules as they were when I was hell-bent on memorizing them. And then a lot of my cool articles became articles about league history (aside from the one about deleting the E that no one bothered to actually read), because my first days now qualify as league history. Need I say more? It's also weird because I'm 23. I'm not outside of any of the league's target demographics. I haven't aged out of anything; I just happen to have gotten to the places I wanted to get and made the connections I wanted to make here already. I'd love to get to know some newer members! I just don't think I need to get super involved to be trusted anymore. Besides, real life is a beautiful mess--I'm balancing lab work with classes and TA stuff and being somewhat popular for the first time in my life. But at the end, I want to make it clear that there's a big difference between getting old--and everything that comes with it--and no longer caring. I still want what's best for the VHL. I still look at the forum every day, and multiple times at that. I'm still available to any GM who wants to talk and sometimes I don't even hate the slightly worse VHLM Commissioner all that much. It's just that I'd rather be making tacos than sitting on Discord and sometimes that also means I decide to claim welfare. I really like tacos. And the really cool thing? Even though I can't directly tell, I know some of you guys look at me the same way I used to look at our other old guys. Sim league ethos is an interesting thing.

Art Vandelay

"What in the wide world of sports is going on here?" says @GoodLeftUndone, the SBA household name who's the last elected MAYOR of Salem. He catches @rory, undoes the noose, and dies. Since stepping down from office, he's been moonlighting as a BODYGUARD, and not a particularly good one either. He's saved only one life this time around, and it's the POTION MASTER. There will be no lynching tonight, but we'll very likely be down to either zero or one Town, all of Coven, and an incredibly suspicious SOUL COLLECTOR. Ptyrell will transform tonight if he targets GLU, but Coven has the majority and knows who to kill. So, we get together and agree that there's no point in continuing. CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR WINNERS, THE COVEN! I'm going to come out and tell those of you still alive that the dead chat consensus is that this wasn't a good game, and I agree. But that's just what happens sometimes. I'd still like to run ToS2 again at some point in the future, because I'm unconvinced that this was a bad game because it was ToS2--there's a mix of things that I'll talk about on Discord if you're curious. But, even though you might not have had the greatest time on earth this time around, thank you as always for being part of it. I don't regret trying--it gave me something to do this weekend (one more negative tomorrow morning, and Covidstav can officially no longer be Covidstav!) and I hope all of you learned a thing or two about the rules and can get excited for a replay at some point in the future. Until next time! @Adrest245 - RETRIBUTIONIST @Advantage - SEER @Alex - PSYCHIC @Berocka - ILLUSIONIST @Doomsday - POISONER @eaglesfan036 - SHROUD @GoodLeftUndone - BODYGUARD @jhatty8 - PROSECUTOR @Lemorse7 - COVEN LEADER @omgitshim - VIGILANTE @Ptyrell - SOUL COLLECTOR @Ricer13 - ADMIRER @rory - POTION MASTER @Subject056 - TRAPPER @vincentlg2007 - SHERIFF

Town history checks out. A certain SBA household name was indeed the last elected MAYOR of Salem. And there are, indeed, 5 votes for Rory. In a last desperate attempt to turn Town luck around, @Ptyrell tries to do it himself. The setup is there, and he's been hitting the gym lately--it's pretty easy to make this happen. Ptyrell kicks the chair away and starts the long walk home, not even waiting to see if he was right. The rest of the town, however, gathers around to check.

"We've got this in the bag," say the COVEN, who hasn't lost a member to this point. "..." says Gustav, who first gets home late and next locks the thread and somehow forgets this is a thing? I'm not sure exactly how that happened. While the Coven has their nice little bag, of whatever, perhaps they should have checked what was outside that bag. @Ptyrell is getting voted up tonight. And then he picks up the Prosecutor's old gavel and slams it into the table. "I'm MAYOR," he says--"vote up @rory!" The votes are counted: 5 of 8.

Gustav forgets about this and goes to work. So I'll be keeping this short. @Adrest245 was a RETRIBUTIONIST who was killed by the COVEN. List of living players (8)

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust--Gustav went to Sheetz right before getting COVID, and to Sheetz he returned today after being allowed outside and testing negative. I was hungry, dammit--and if I get another negative on Wednesday, I get to change my nickname back on Discord! It's the simple joys in life. Anyway, factor in Gustav's misunderstanding of Vigilante mechanics, and 6 votes is enough for today. For the second day in a row, the town has agreed upon a target: @Subject056. It's difficult to imagine a world where we all love each other and go home at the end of the day, isn't it? Whether we're in the Salem in Massachusetts, or the one in Oregon, or even the one out here in Ohio, Subject was... It's time for the night phase! I'll see you close to the same time tomorrow. List of living players (11)

Yeah but it's cute and it's funny because you're making fun of someone who's been in mod trouble! /s It's up to the person to accept or reject it imo. You can make fun of me with your player names all you want and I'll probably think it's funny but I'd agree that doesn't mean it should be a free pass for anyone.

Hi everyone—it’s been brought to my attention that in ToS2, a Vigilante shooting a Town member dies at the start of the next day, not the night after. So, @omgitshim—get absolutely yeeted Last will that I don’t know how to format on mobile: N2: I shot Eagles (sorry friend). N3: I'm shooting hatty (didn't vote D3, been coasting not contributing)

Good morning--such as it is. Gustav jumps out of bed and immediately into the shower and tries not to fall asleep standing up. (That's how this game is making me feel too!) Until today, that is. For the first night, we have two dead. First off, it's @Advantage. Claiming SEER, we find that's actually true. He was killed by the COVEN. Second off, it's @jhatty8, with a bullet wound indicating that a VIGILANTE has seen enough. Hatty was... We head into Day 4--what could be waiting for us here? N4 should come fairly on schedule. List of living players (10)

The day is over, and Gustav has slightly regained his sense of taste--a hot dog actually kind of tastes like a hot dog, and I've stopped listening to Nickelback. In any case, we're here to do one of my favorite things and kill someone. This time it's @eaglesfan036, and I wouldn't disagree that y'all are metagaming too hard. In any case, Eagles is going to die. Between multiple claims from multiple sources, it's never been suggested here that he was... Tomorrow will start sometime in the actual morning--who would have thought? My best guess is the first half of the 8:00s, but I'm not sure yet. List of living players (12)

Do you think I'll be able to taste Wawa food? I'm getting desperate here. Gustav feels perfectly normal otherwise at this point, and the quarantine period is over! Time to (cautiously) go outside...much like most of Salem does this morning. Except @vincentlg2007. Maybe the cowboy hat and the trench coat gave it away to the evils--he was the town SHERIFF. Maybe he should have been packing real guns instead of prop ones, although I'm not sure those would have held up to COVEN magic anyway. Before you ask, no will. Day 3 starts! Let's see what it has in store for Salem. List of living players (13)

Day 2 starts with Ricer dead, as is apparently tradition (?). "Eagles is evil!" says Alex. "Alex is evil!" says Eagles. Children, this is Town of Salem 2. There are multiple impostors among us. Regardless of the sussiness of either of our candidates, votes come in, votes add up, and those who voted are largely disappointed. 8 votes were needed today, and the town recorded 7. Night 2 starts tonight! I have football reasons to be up at least before 1 tomorrow. So we'll see. List of living players (14)

Which Salem are we in this time? Oregon? Massachusetts? Somewhere else? Regardless, it's now almost 2:00 Eastern, and every Wawa in the country is open for business. The residents of Salem 2 wake up, hopefully not annoyed at their overlord for the timing. This was outlined at the start, though. One who doesn't quite have the opportunity to be annoyed, though, is the first victim of the COVEN and someone who can at least say that they were the first ever death in a ToS2 game: @Ricer13. Ricer was... Today should end right around the Colorado-Colorado State kickoff. That's "as scheduled" for the rest of you. List of living players (14)