Gustav

I think this is an overlooked part of why it's a really good thing to not have every single draft class packed full. It's a big reality that the VHLM will always have some level of self-interest mixed in with its GMing. You can't try to stomp that out entirely (i.e., ban all draft pick trading) because then all the self-interest also disappears out of being a GM to begin with. The trick is more so to try to find ways to divert that into making it work for you. In this case, having somewhat limited player numbers is good for the M because it places development of every player in the GM's best interest. Packed rosters don't do that because it places ignoring people and hoping they go inactive while holding onto a solid top end in the GM's best interest. Of course, a dead M is bad for players in its own way. But there's an ideal balance and it isn't the "every team is full" thing that lots of people like to look back on nicely.

1. What are your thoughts on the current state of trivia? Is it what you envisioned when you initially advocated for it to be automated? 2. Obviously, the "old members" are much older than they used to be. If I had to guess, I would assume that the league in a general sense now has much larger differences in age between its members than it used to. Things like Discord and the portal are more appealing to younger members--are there any parts of the league that you see as stuck in the past, and how do you see those changing to accommodate the preferences of the younger end that keeps getting younger? 3. What kept you around the forum when you didn't have a player? What made you not have a player? 4. Unless you know who I am, which I guess is entirely possible, what's your completely subjective take on what you think I look like? 5. From someone who is quickly becoming old and washed up around here, to someone who has always been, what's your best advice for how to enjoy that most? 6. What's the fastest, best way for a new member to get on your radar and earn your respect? Who are some recent examples? 7. Living outside North America, are you (or Ahma) a fan of any sports that we don't play over here? Which ones, and what are some athletes/teams we should know about?

I considered it but I don’t think I ever had issues with anyone specific as much as I had a problem with how things seemed to be in general. At the end of the day it’s all love and I appreciate that the league is in a place that I like it; I may have disagreed with lots of mod stuff over the years but I recognize the time and effort it must take to keep everything going nicely.

I mean we’ve certainly disagreed on enough but we’ve never had any personal issue. These are more about things I don’t like; I’m sure you can imagine what at least one of them will be

I see you’re the first to notice my “I Hate” series-within-a-series

I don't often have problems with people in the VHL--and when I do, I generally keep it to myself. Not in the case of league moderation for some time, though. I'm pretty sure I used this exact GIF at the top of one thread or another at one point. This was all in good fun even though I'm pretty sure @fishy was still a mod at the time. I could always count on our ability to have a good conversation about league happenings, even despite that circumstance. I've been in positions of power here, mainly as a GM, that have required me to uphold certain moral standards. Running my own locker room was almost never something I had to do in an active sense. Thankfully, the worst it ever got in my own server was sometime in S68 when I had to yell at two of my players over DMs to stop fighting with each other, and I've only ever come across one situation in the league as a whole where I needed to escalate things to the mod level. It helped that, for the most part, I had control over the players that joined my teams and my servers in the first place. Most of the time, any given player would never be an issue. But, the times I chose to specifically avoid someone, something would usually happen later on that made me glad I did. Mods, on the other hand, don't get this choice of who to deal with. Everyone is welcome to post on the forum and to join the league's Discord server. There's no conveniently avoiding people who create issues when the nature of the job is to deal with issues created by people. For that reason, I completely understand why the need to take any sort of official action comes up more frequently for a moderator than it does for my own probably-less-than-yearly. In fact, the VHL had only a couple people with the mod role on the forum, who I never saw do anything, and zero officially designated moderators on Discord until mid-2020. That was when I said this in a BoG thread that I don't remember at all: By that time, the VHL's Code of Conduct had already existed for a while. I know this without checking because in that same post, I call for Discord to also be subject to the rules set forth therein. On the surface, I do think that this is a good idea. I agree for the most part with what the actual Code of Conduct has to say, and I think for logistical reasons that it's best to make sure that what doesn't fly in one part of the league also won't in others. If you've known me for a few years, you know that the next logical progression of words out of my mouth starts with a pause and finishes with some sort of hand motion and a very pointed "But..." ...because here's where I tell you all about how many issues I had with league moderation. I'll have problems with league policy and very enthusiastically attack the system itself, but there's only been one issue over which I will take to the forum and tell people directly (and repeatedly) that the actions they have personally taken are wrong. Unfortunately, that's all been a result of the thing I suggested in BoG in 2020 (it would have happened anyway)--a sharp increase in mod power in the league's public spaces. I won't act like the VHL was a perfect place prior to the Code of Conduct and prior to the moderator job meaning anything at all. It's not my opinion that the league as a whole was out of control and that most of us ran around all day slinging hate speech at each other (as some would have you believe for some reason), but the fact that the league had a strange level of tolerance for things like a certain since-banned member telling first-gen me to go kill myself on Discord was an example of something I had a problem with. I have pretty thick skin, but those words can really hurt under the wrong circumstances and they were being used indiscriminately on far more members than myself. The league could have used a bit of cleaning up, and I was very OK with it happening. At first, this was a very good thing, and I think that the overall effects of the Code of Conduct and its enforcement have been a net positive for the league. Let's just say that the mod team's vision of what that enforcement was supposed to look like wasn't in line with my own. I want to make it clear that most of what I'm saying here is a matter of my own personal thoughts, but I will say that I noticed more agreement with them than disagreement from those outside of the mod team. My opinion is that league moderation should be more reactive than proactive, and that mods should have nothing to worry about unless something that is harmful to someone else goes down. My opinion is that the VHL should not be trying to restrict the free speech of its general members and that things that are not directly harmful to other members should not be held back, regardless of mods' personal takes on the things at hand. My opinion is that the Code of Conduct should be a tool that is used to standardize the moderation process of things where common sense already dictates that something should be done, more so than a checklist of criteria that every single post must run its way through to avoid punishment. My opinion is also that moderation actions be taken with as much transparency as possible, with details only omitted to respect members' privacy, so that the mod team remains accountable to the community that implicitly agrees to be part of the system. And my opinion is that, at various points throughout 2021 and 2022, the VHL's mod team failed completely to live up to this set of expectations. I was not at all afraid to raise my voice about this. I did for this article what I find myself needing to do for many others, which is to search through my old posts to jog my memory about these things, and by just searching up the word "mod," I find: Me speculating in October of 2021 that a controversial forum thread was hidden or deleted. After being told by a huge amount of people with more power than I had at the time that this wasn't for any malicious reason, I apologized. That said, I was still clearly frustrated with league moderation at that point. As one of my posts in that thread, I said: A mod update thread from 2021 where I complain about an incident I'd seen on Discord. I actually remember this happening--a member was banned with no real information about the infraction being given in the corresponding post. One member (I don't remember who) asked in genchat for more info, reason being that the league doesn't know where the line is if it's never defined. Immediately, at least two mods very rudely responded, saying no in a much more sour way than the situation deserved. There are much better ways to do this (@Grape has a post in that thread in favor of keeping things under wraps that's worded in a way that I actually really appreciate), and I felt the need to advocate for someone who I thought wasn't being treated respectfully. Interestingly, things get a bit tense in that thread between myself and @Horcrux, one of the VHL's most bizarre stories. Horcrux was super active all over the league around this time and was purportedly a woman from Seattle with a strong passion for progressive causes. Horcrux was also never afraid to back down from an argument and also had a tendency to fight for strict, active moderation to keep the league as "progressive" a space as possible. This actually led to lots of increased awareness of lots of things, some of which I really appreciated, but the community ended up mindblown a few months after this thread when it was revealed that Horcrux was actually an alter ego (and an alt account) of @Kachur, a controversial member from years past. Because Horcrux's actions were directly tied to a big spike in the wielding of mod power, sometimes I wonder how much the mod team was essentially manipulated into acting in ways I had issues with. Another thread from November of 2021 that concerns @Hogan talking about being punished for something that I don't remember. I do remember the situation he describes in general and can verify that it's true--Hogan was (probably maliciously) reported for something he said in a draft stream months prior to that thread and was punished for it. I don't see any comment in that thread, apart from those made by the blue team, that claims that there is nothing wrong with this. I'd call this an example of a big problem I had with the situation in a general sense--as representatives of the community, the mod team is meant to act in ways that are representative of the community. If those with power rush to defend a decision, while everyone there without power expresses dissatisfaction with it, then something needs to be done to evaluate whether the use of power is correct in that situation. My most recommended reading material on the subject, the results of a survey I put out regarding league moderation. The survey itself received one criticism that I think is fair (surveys in general tend to draw in people who feel strongly about their content, and those who don't generally won't take it, so maybe it isn't perfectly representative), but there wasn't really anything I could do about that and the results were very informative. At least among those who took the survey, a majority identified Abuse of Power/Unnecessary Punishment and Favoritism/Lack of Consistency as issues with moderation. Some other comments caught my attention as well. @thadthrasher had a lot of very fair things to say about how he experienced faith-based discrimination in the VHL, and how the mod team's focus on enforcement for progressive reasons had left this mostly unaddressed. Multiple people left comments specifically objecting to the Hogan punishment. And overall, @Spartan contributed lots of things for every question that I still think are valuable today. A general discussion thread started by @Moon where he talks about some of the ways that Discord specifically is moderated. Lots of the discussion focused on one specific situation where someone found one specific GIF and kept posting it, and multiple members of the mod team cracked down hard on that and anyone else who dared to post it (for reference, it was this. I understand being creeped out enough to not want to see it, but today I also think it's pretty funny that something so stupid turned into a situation that serious). I purposely linked to one of the more egregious complaints I've ever seen, which was @fonziGG describing how some mods would delete his posts for no reason and with no explanation, but I have a lot to say earlier on in the thread as well. A media spot I wrote about something that still upsets me a bit to think about--the sheer amount of over-policing of topics in the league's general chat extended to new members joining the server, immediately finding themselves in general chat, and asking a question in general chat, only to be told that this wasn't allowed and that they needed to take it to the newcomers' chat. As I say there, I understand diverting it to the newcomers' chat if there's potential for it to be buried in surrounding conversations, but something I saw on multiple occasions was someone's question being shut down by a mod in genchat and then not being answered by anyone, including the mod who was clearly online enough to immediately notice it, after it was asked again. I still think that--instead of taking the time used to swing the hammer to just answer the question--is a terrible thing to do and those who did it should know better, but who am I to judge? A complaint thread started by another member detailing attempts made by the mod team to enforce rules related to trivia that weren't even on the books at that time. I talk a lot as usual. A BoG thread from April of 2023 that's my last time talking extensively about my issues with the mod team. I took major issue to a suggestion therein that perhaps mods could have some freedom by which to take official action based on personal moral systems--something that still blows my mind as to how anyone could possibly think I'd just let it go. Good news: as far as I'm aware, that part was never officially put into place. I do think that most of what I wrote was a bit more fiery than I'd be willing to present myself today. Looking through some of it, I also think there were times when perhaps what I said was a little hyperbolic. But I don't think I opened up anything where I now think I was dead wrong. I think back to that time in league history and I remember forum threads being locked the second any disagreement popped up, mods hanging around Discord only to try to hold every other message in check, and punishments being handed out often without any transparency at all and with a heaping load of personal bias-based inconsistency when we had any idea why they happened. I was an influential member at that point and saw lots of people "lesser" than myself being treated with far less respect than I'd prefer to receive myself--and in a league where everyone is supposedly equal under the magical, perfect Code of Conduct, I felt the need to make as much noise as I could to raise awareness of situations where I didn't think that equality was fully present. I'm not sorry for anything I said then, and that feels good to say. I will also conclude by noting that I don't think I have many issues with moderation today. Maybe it's because I'm less invested in Discord, but I don't really hear about anything happening over there. Speaking from the forum perspective, at least, things like trigger-happy thread locking are certainly no longer prevalent. As with any new system, the Code of Conduct and the role of mods on Discord took time to figure out and ran into some difficulties along the way, and I understand that it couldn't have been immediately perfect. I was certainly one of the loudest voices in pointing out where the team fell short of that perfection, and I like to think that if someone were punished out of spite or ego or a perceived need to crack down on a nonexistent issue, I would stick up for them today as well. Things have improved a lot, though! And maybe it's out of my own ego, but I hope I was overall a positive influence on that being the case. Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience: #1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name #2: Can't We All Just Get Along? #3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway? #4: The House That I Built #5: Can We Fix It? #6: American Beauty #7: The Kids Are Alright #8: Dogs In A Pile #9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake #10: This Old House #11: Go Directly to Jail #12: If You Can Dodge a Color, You Can Dodge a Ball #13: How I Messed Up Davos #14: Ello Gov'nor #15: Weewoo #16: Jolly Kranchers #17: How I Messed Up Davos, Part 2 #18: I've Been Everywhere, Man #19: The Sun Also Rises #20: Ripple In Still Water #21: How I Messed Up Davos, Part 3 #22: I Hate the Meta

Sort of? I didn’t really have an issue with the first part because it made solid builds/a couple high attributes accessible to more casual earners, and I didn’t really have an issue with the second part (until the S70s ended) because even though it was dumb it at least worked (until it didn’t). I always understood the appeal of making it more “realistic” or whatnot with extra layers but also always pushed for the most basic version of fixing the issue possible.

I stole the clever, witty article name that this one deserves from myself. Whatever--it's time to do what I do best and make more excuses for my GM track record. Good old build advice! We all know it. You probably had it shoved down your throat the second you ended up in a VHLM locker room. You've probably had people explain it to you from the second you stepped into your first server, and you've probably also noticed the sheer amount of stuff that gets tossed around that directly contradicts all the other stuff. From camps of people insisting that Simon's website saying that team strategies do nothing means that they do nothing and others insisting that lived experience proves otherwise, right on down to the (surprisingly numerous) instances where I've heard tell that my build guide is outdated or incorrect with no accompanying explanation as to why, it's fair to say that large portions of the league like to think they know far more than does anyone at all. Guess what--I don't really care what you say about my build guide. My real guide to building, as is also explained in my build guide, is that you should build in whatever way makes you happy. There's no single correct way to build. Or is there? That was a question unfortunately answered by our unaffiliated counterparts in the SHL back in the VHL's S70s. The strategy that led to the highest success over there, from a team standpoint, was as follows: all skaters upgrade Scoring as much as possible while never touching Passing. Repeat for seasons on end and profit as the rest of the league hates you. Often, this would come with stricter guidelines like "don't touch Skating; it messes with the decision-making formula" and "don't touch Checking; hits are bad and dumb and give you penalties." For all purposes, a player with 99s in Defense, Scoring, and Puck Handling was essentially perfect to some SHL GMs. This allowed for disproportionate amounts of success to be achieved in the SHL, with one team winning everything all the time, to the extent that league operations ground to a halt as the league switched its sim engine entirely. When we first learned that this was the case, a few things happened around the VHL: The higher-ups did some test simming and found that a team formed from "meta" players (as the build became known) could be pretty good in the VHL but not unstoppable. This was chalked up to differences in league settings and largely considered a non-issue. A conversation went down in GM chat on Discord where most of those of us in management at the time agreed not to directly pursue the meta. This was just an informal agreement, but it seemed sincere. A handful of "proto-meta" teams popped up over the mid-S70s (Warsaw/Chicago/Moscow/Malmo all come to mind). As VHLers picked up on the SHL story, more members started to build in ways consistent with the meta, and some teams seemed to prioritize this more than others. This doesn't mean that those teams were discouraging build freedom (my personal line), just that the players they sought out tended to be of that variety and no one really objected. These were very strong teams, but it was still OK. As time went on, though, effects of the whole meta business compiled. People saw more meta builds working, so they built even more meta in response. Teams that targeted meta players now had a greater pool to pick from, while meta players gave back by specifically wanting to play for meta teams. This screwed over teams that didn't push any sort of agenda on their players as their success dipped and most non-meta players were only able to find a home on non-meta rosters as many teams scrambled to scrub their rosters of any upgrades to PA. I wonder if this had any sort of effect on my success or enjoyment as a GM during the later part of my tenure. Overall, by the end of the S70s, it became exceedingly clear that whatever supposed agreement there was to not pursue the meta practically didn't exist anymore--it didn't help that GM turnover had taken hold and by that point I had some people telling me that said agreement never happened to begin with. In any case, things eventually became super-ultra-screwed when the @Nykonax-led Vancouver Wolves took off and became practically unbeatable. Players with relatively little TPE were blowing the roof off of the scoring leaderboards, while the team cruised to an easy three cups in a row. The era was also understandably rife with drama--lots of "you're ruining the league" comments came from those outside the Wolves, while lots of "hate us 'cause you ain't us" came back. To be clear, Vancouver was far from the only team trying to pull this off. The mask had come completely off of any "we don't push for the meta; it just happens" claims for lots of teams who were now actively campaigning for whatever players they could find to build one way and one way only. I specifically remember a @JardyB10 podcast where he talks about going through draft interviews and having the fun experience of being one of the most influential VHL members ever and being told to reroll one's build to match someone else's goals. I personally hated this and took pride in never telling my team what to do. I dealt with people who didn't want to play for me for that reason and very likely took a lot of losses that I otherwise wouldn't. And I even think that blew up in my face unfairly as it was during this time that my (somewhat deserved) reputation as a "bad GM" was at its peak. My team knew what the meta was and watched it work, and my players would have made the choice to reroll and become that if that was what they wanted. But, I never asked them to and they remained happy with what they had, and that was important to me. At the time, I would always say that I didn't blame any GM or player who went for the meta, because I couldn't really blame anyone for wanting to do what worked best. That's still something I agree with, but I think I get to be more critical now that some time has passed. As a course of individual action by any GM or any player, I have no issue with it for the reason I already stated. But as a fact that a really stupid philosophy took hold of the entire league? It was a really shitty thing that happened. Maybe it's weird to blame the group and not the individual, but I think I do blame the group for seeing absolutely nothing wrong with what was going on so long as they were on the right side of it. As a whole, it doesn't really need to be said specifically that the meta was a leaguewide problem. Not to mention the idea that doing anything other than the one correct build could get a player shunned by half the league, it was also very against the spirit of building that someone grinding for an entire career could lose out, every time, to someone who was only around for a couple seasons but in better circumstances. So, like not nearly enough league problems do, this went to the BoG and spawned an extensive discussion. Something that you'll come across in lots of my posts is that I tend to be in favor of simple solutions. Some of my ideas (the portal waiver system, for example) can be very involved, but even those are drawn up with the intent of being easy to work with. A big reason for this is that I have been in lots of different sim leagues where I am either too stupid or not attentive enough to understand everything right away, I have my own story of almost leaving the VHL forever after a day or so, and I've seen enough first-gens quit almost immediately to know that we have lots to learn and we ideally shouldn't add more to that. My suggestion? And something I pushed for pretty hard over the entire course of the thread? Just make it so Passing and Scoring can't be separated more than a certain amount. Let's say we make players build to at least 99-75 instead of 99-40. Sure, meta teams will throw a fit at anyone who wants a 76, but it brings the lower limit up. The rule could also be enforced the other way, so that players who wanted to go pass-first could be at most a 75-99 and would still bring some goals to teams that more or less had to take them in by virtue of being the ones who were willing to. That was one idea, and another idea (not mine) was to introduce player archetypes. In many other leagues, a player type is selected at the start of a career, at which point certain limits are introduced to that player's build. The idea here was that we could just slap the limits we wanted onto a player and make it all part of player creation. I didn't like this for a couple reasons--I felt like everyone would just go for the most meta archetype, and I also felt like this was just a fancy and overcomplicated version of my idea. The whole league knew what was up and I didn't see any need to bury our efforts to fix it under a layer of roleplay. Which was also what I hated about a new proposed system that buried our attributes themselves under a weird layer of roleplay, while also introducing math that would be really confusing to new players who didn't understand our attributes. You know what I'm talking about--it's our current system! Named then and known today as "hybrid attributes," someone (originally @Beketov in the first post of the thread, but I'm pretty sure it came from an old proposal from @Beaviss) dropped an idea to do what I still just viewed as a needlessly cursive version of my idea, and this time extremely so. There are a few things I will criticize BoG for publicly, and that is because they're things that--much like all the meta players and GMs--pertain more to the group than to any individuals. One thing is that I feel that BoG members are generally unwilling to discuss things that they aren't personally excited about. Another is that threads that come to very solid conclusions still end up dying because time often isn't taken to roll out new ideas. And a third thing, which pertains here, is that I feel that BoG will generally gravitate toward more disruptive changes, not because they're perceived as any more effective but because people want to be important and do big, exciting things. This has been, on more than one occasion, strongly at odds with my own personal philosophy, and so it was here. I watched and yelled at everyone as the group got super excited over what I felt was the dumbest way imaginable to address a pretty simple issue, and the hybrid system was eventually put into place. I ran from the system early on by creating a goaltender. Art Vandelay wouldn't be affected by the new changes, and I was happy about that. I also wasn't a GM at this point anymore, and that was something I was relieved by. Overall, I hated the way the league went about things, but the fact that the meta was gone in an instant was a huge success. The league only made one change since, that being tweaking depreciation in a way that I hate to this day (and that has more to do with my E issues than anything else). So, contrary to my fears that changing the attribute system would kill everyone's enjoyment of the VHL, it actually worked pretty well. I understood it fine when I recreated as a skater and I actually enjoy the added dimension that it adds to building from a veteran perspective. As far as first-gens go, I really don't see how this isn't a more confusing system than the way it used to be, but the VHLM hasn't imploded on itself with it and I'm cool with the way building works. The moral of the story here is that I can be convinced about stuff. Lots of you know that I've carried lots of strong VHL opinions with me and that I'll still stick to most of them today. I would say that the hybrid system is the one issue where I've reversed the course of my opinion the most--I think my simple idea would have worked, for sure, but any issues we have now are far lesser than any we had in S79. I don't apologize for having fought against it, but I'm glad we have it. Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience: #1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name #2: Can't We All Just Get Along? #3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway? #4: The House That I Built #5: Can We Fix It? #6: American Beauty #7: The Kids Are Alright #8: Dogs In A Pile #9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake #10: This Old House #11: Go Directly to Jail #12: If You Can Dodge a Color, You Can Dodge a Ball #13: How I Messed Up Davos #14: Ello Gov'nor #15: Weewoo #16: Jolly Kranchers #17: How I Messed Up Davos, Part 2 #18: I've Been Everywhere, Man #19: The Sun Also Rises #20: Ripple In Still Water #21: How I Messed Up Davos, Part 3

Hasn't Malmo learned their lesson on this once or twice? Always good to see @Advantage back in management!

Heck yes

Back-claiming a week 2 on this for last week because I'm stupid

What do you use to make music? I'm into a few instruments (mostly as a hobby these days) but I'm horribly under informed when it comes to recording/production.

Noting a change after Game 30: On Night 1, @jhatty8 investigated a Juggernaut and I realized that this was a potentially big issue because we were playing an Any All game with a Witch. The Coven expansion removes Witch from the Juggernaut's investigative results entirely, showing Lookout, Forger, Juggernaut, or Coven Leader. The Witch, on the other hand, is only present in the real game's Classic mode, and will show up as Lookout, Forger, or Witch. I chose to give Hatty the Coven results--because that's what the rules say--and pray that he wouldn't investigate the Witch. If he didn't, no one would ever know this was weird until after the game. So, of course he goes and investigates the Witch on N2. I also decided to give the proper role list, knowing that nothing I did at that point wouldn't make it look weird. To avoid this in the future: Witches will appear to an Investigator as Lookout, Forger, Juggernaut, Coven Leader, or Witch. Other roles in this role list (Lookout, Forger, Juggernaut, and Coven Leader) will be affected in the same way. I will note that enforcement of this update is subject to my remembering to enforce it. I will kindly ask two things of you as players: Remember that if someone gives a role list that is on the wiki as opposed to the one I just provided, I very well could have screwed it up and you shouldn't be too hard on them for doing so. On the flip side, please don't metagame that. Don't report a default role list and claim I gave you weird results to be deceptive--not only does it call my ability into question (I do that enough myself), it's outside the scope of what the game is supposed to be and makes it less fun for everyone else. Thanks for your patience in dealing with this, and hopefully we won't come across this issue in the future!

The process actually changed this game--some of you know this, but Jail Bot is now active! I hope it's been more convenient that @Lemorse7, our JAILOR, doesn't have to switch Discord accounts every night. Anyway. @Adrest245 has drawn lots of attention, and he's also drawn lots of votes. Claiming to be a DOCTOR is a fine claim for a HYPNOTIST that was even believed for a bit, and it's farther than many get in this game. At this point, though, Adrest was the MAFIOSO and the last surviving member of the MAFIA. Our neutrals were mostly a non-factor. One of our JUGGERNAUTS killed the other (yes, it's a unique role and this was my error in creating the list. I think having two could be lots of fun though). Our WITCH was investigated early and fell victim to a unique situation that I'll have to make a VHL guideline for over in our updates thread--yes, we're still learning new things about this game thirty times after we started it. With that being said, I don't want to take away from the achievement of a game well played by the uninformed majority. CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR WINNERS, THE TOWN! I will be the first to tell you that this game was not the best one I've ever modded. Some of you dealt with unfortunate circumstances that never should have come up, and for that I apologize for taking away from your right to a fair game. But I also consider it a compliment and think it's a great testament to the VHL's understanding and forgiveness that lots of you have already asked when we can play again. It will happen soon--I promise! The game's spreadsheet is here for anyone curious. Thanks for playing as always! @Adrest245 - HYPNOTIST @Advantage - LOOKOUT @Alex - JUGGERNAUT @Berocka - JUGGERNAUT @Dadam30 - GODFATHER @Da Trifecta - TRACKER @Doomsday - DOCTOR @eaglesfan036 - WITCH @jhatty8 - INVESTIGATOR @Lemorse7 - JAILOR @N0HBDY - MAFIOSO @NSG - VIGILANTE @omgitshim - FORGER @Ptyrell - BODYGUARD @Ricer13 - MAYOR @rory - TRANSPORTER

"TALLY HO LADS" shouts the JAILOR from across town. It's a classic. Tonight, it's @Dadam30 being executed--and the Jailor guessed right. Dadam was the GODFATHER. D5 starts now--I am not sure whether I'll be able to be exact with the end of it. List of living players (7) @Adrest245 @Advantage @jhatty8 @Lemorse7 @NSG @Ricer13 @rory

It's 10:00, and Gustav is ready to tell you whether @Berocka was, in fact, the resident VETERAN. Guess what--he wasn't. Even if he was, Australia lost the Emu War anyway. Berocka was a JUGGERNAUT. Tomorrow starts later than today did, but don't let that get you lazy. List of living players (8) @Adrest245 @Advantage @Dadam30 @jhatty8 @Lemorse7 @NSG @Ricer13 @rory

Three deaths kick off our next Day phase, and please pardon Gustav if he rushes through this to get to work again. @Doomsday was killed by a member of the MAFIA. He was a DOCTOR. Last will: @omgitshim was executed by the JAILOR. He was a FORGER. Finally, @Alex was killed by a JUGGERNAUT. He was a JUGGERNAUT. Last will: Gustav likely sees you on time tonight. List of living players (9) @Adrest245 @Advantage @Berocka @Dadam30 @jhatty8 @Lemorse7 @NSG @Ricer13 @rory

Things finally get spicy in Salem today--almost as spicy as the General Tso's chicken that Gustav made tonight. You wish that you knew how good Gustav is at cooking--it's a hobby that serves one well in life, and looking into the history and culture of what I make has taught me lots of stuff about lots of different places. Anyway. Things got a bit spicy today. @Berocka accumulates enough votes to be lynched, and a last-second change keeps him in the game. The rest of the game will tell whether the town made the right choice. Tomorrow's day phase will start earlier than today's. Don't try to get your things in at the last second. List of living players (12) @Adrest245 @Advantage @Alex @Berocka @Dadam30 @Doomsday @jhatty8 @Lemorse7 @NSG @omgitshim @Ricer13 @rory

God. Long story that's making me late to stuff. Off the bat, @eaglesfan036 has been modkilled for accidentally revealing his role as a WITCH in the public channel of the game server last night. Because we know this was seen by other people, I would rather not deal with the game being compromised by people pretending to know nothing or to waste a day watching a lynching happen that we knew would. Sorry. Last will: More stuff: @Da Trifecta was killed by a JUGGERNAUT. He was a TRACKER. Last will: @N0HBDY was the MAFIOSO, who was killed by a BODYGUARD. I don't think Bodyguards get Death Notes normally, but one with no real info was found and I thought that was funny: And @Ptyrell was that BODYGUARD. Last will: Gustav needs to go but will see the rest of you later tonight. List of living players (12) @Adrest245 @Advantage @Alex @Berocka @Dadam30 @Doomsday @jhatty8 @Lemorse7 @NSG @omgitshim @Ricer13 @rory

Had I managed to get a Cup the second time through the competitive cycle, I think all would have been forgiven and I would have gone down quite positively in VHL GM history as the one to break the curse. Instead, I'm writing the third article of this same variety. Part 2 of this series-within-a-series took you through my second intentionally non-competitive period. I'd been a GM for nine seasons through S78. Over that time, I'd had some of the league's highest-TPE players on my roster, made some massive free agent signings, and swung and missed on a large handful of big-name trades. All that translated to a couple wild-card appearances and a second rebuild after I managed myself into some roster turnover through retirement that let the whole bottom of the roster fall out in the middle of what I thought was just a bit of a retool. Regardless, Davos after S78 was an interesting case. I'd just brought my own player, Taro Tsujimoto, into his prime, I was doing OK in terms of draft capital, and prospects like Reylynn Reinhart had spent enough time in the organization that they were set to make a real impact in S79. What I also had coming up in S79, though, were a whole bunch of prospects--I don't want to say "no-name" and I don't want to dismiss them as "clickers," but the objective fact was that my system was loaded with more players than I had room for and that most of these players were around to hit the welfare button and check out for the rest of the week. I needed to get lots of room freed up on my roster if I wanted to compete, and this was a huge issue because we were a few seasons after the S75 draft. Players that objectively needed to be dismissed as clickers for a team to make it to the next level were a problem for everyone, and no one wanted who I had. I'd need to pay up big-time for my roster to have room. Which was an opportunity I jumped on the second I saw that Helsinki was tanking. PROBABLY THE BIGGEST TRADE I'VE EVER MADE (S79 PRESEASON): receives: Declan Wolf Griff Mackenzie Raihan Heavems S80 CGY 1st S80 DAV 2nd S80 DAV 4th S81 DAV 2nd receives: Patrik Laine S80 HSK 4th S81 HSK 4th *condition added that would send ezechiele pierde enel to Helsinki if making it up to the VHL I'm not sure how much it comes across to anyone who wasn't around at the time that this was a HUGE trade. If it happened today, it might puzzle some people--all that draft capital for a player with two seasons left whose activity had dropped off a little? Why would I do that? Consider that no other team was willing to help me solve my problems. Also consider that if I didn't jump at the chance to empty out my prospect pool, someone else was right around the corner. On top of that, @Laine was a solid player and there wasn't really anyone else selling. If any other team, at all, got in before me and worked out a deal to either buy Laine or to send low-earning prospects to the Titans, Davos would have been completely locked in to the lower tier of the league for S78 and possibly beyond that. I justified it a tiny bit more on my end by reasoning that clearing out as many picks as I was would serve to keep my prospect pool on the emptier end in the future, which might actually be a good thing. Nonetheless, I remember spending a very long time handling all the specifics of this with @Rayzor_7--I'm sure I gave up quite a bit, but it was not a trade I regretted at all. At a time when other teams still had to deal with overcrowded farm systems and had a hard time buying players, creating really terrible opportunities for team mobility, I'd managed to swing Davos around the corner and into being competitive on paper, with a 6-4-2 roster and a prospect situation I wasn't worried about. On to the rest: OTHER NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS OF S79: Preseason: S80 DAV 3rd traded to Calgary for rights to Gunnar Odinsson S80 DAV 1st traded to Seattle for S81 SEA 4th and Marshall James Frostbeard Poopy Peepants drafted 4th overall Jakub Brozik drafted 18th overall In-Season: Jakub Brozik, S81 DAV 1st, and S81 DAV 3rd traded to Toronto for S81 TOR 4th and Addison McLaren And we were serious about competing! Lots of the offseason was spent on trying to figure out defense, and I thought I'd shoot my shot on @BOOM. He was taking his player to free agency immediately after his rookie contract was up, and as a max-earning player entering his prime, he was worth a ton to whoever ended up signing him. It was pretty clear that free agency was his priority from the start (Odinsson would go to Malmo where he immediately put up a run of a few historic seasons), but we had a good talk and I could have made a great move for cheap--you just never know. After that fell through, though, I still needed a spot. I had two first-round picks in S81, and one of them went off to Seattle. Thankfully, I got a return I was happy with in @FrostBeard, who formed the second half of a top pairing with Reinhart and gave me who I needed on the back end. The last big-name player I ever drafted came in S79, too. @JardyB10 was inactive when I joined the VHL and was always a member whose name I heard come up in one story or another. So, when he came back and all the old members were super happy, and I had a great time getting to know him as he max-earned his way through the VHLM, Poopy Peepants ended up high up on my draft board. He was a pass-first build, but still solid defensively and I figured I was getting a good addition to my locker room on top of someone who would cover the ice well off the stat sheet (maybe I should have learned my lesson from building Garcia). It became pretty clear, pretty quickly, that we were still lacking in forward power. In a deal that was probably an overpayment, I (more or less) gave up a first-round pick for @tcookie's Addison McLaren. Like Laine, his activity had dipped down a bit by the time he ended up on Davos, but I did have someone with a decent amount of TPE and almost half a career left. I felt a little bad about this one because I gave away my other first-round pick in S81--I had S81 draftee @Doomsday strongly hint that he wanted to play for me and up until that point did intend to follow through on that--but moves needed to be made to win. And after all was said and done in S79, Davos was back in the playoffs! We got past Prague in the wild-card round, too--I believe the first time I'd ever won any sort of playoff series in the VHL. Our next round would be a taller order, as Malmo was top in the conference, and that proved to be the end of our campaign in six games. Still, despite losing and despite forking over lots of our assets to other teams, I was very happy with how things went. We had taken care of our super pressing issues before the season and had watched that pay off during it. Plus, we had star players young enough to stick with us for a while and newer draftees who were set to be our next generation. Sound familiar? NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS OF S80: Preseason: Miles Johnson traded to DC for S82 DCD 3rd S82 DAV 1st traded to Seattle for Isabella Campbell Me, and trading first-round picks for aging players--name a better combo. I'm not completely sure why I always found myself in these situations, but I'll say that GMs aren't typically willing to let go of players with lots of time left and there's a bit of a sweet spot where a player still has a couple seasons and will be a real short-term addition, but has a GM who is usually looking a step ahead and has replacements lined up. The key to long-term success is to be able to properly cycle those players in and out, and that's a big part of the reason why GMs like @Banackock usually tend to have lots of high picks from GMs like me. In any case, I moved another first-rounder for Bana's own player. And Davos looked GOOD on paper. We were right up against the cap (necessitating our sell of Johnson in a cap dump), and most of our roster had only gotten better. I remember scrolling through the predictions before this season and seeing lots and lots of Davos. Taro was even a pick for lots of awards. We underperformed a bit--making the wild-card round for a repeat matchup against Prague--but making it into the playoffs was an accomplishment that we knew not to take for granted. This time, though, Prague got the best of us in the wild-card round. This was a disappointment, to be sure. But things weren't over yet--I had most of the team returning (and still doing pretty well) in S81. NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS OF S81: --- (basically) Because I had most of the team returning, and still doing pretty well, S81 had a highly uneventful offseason. Laine retired, and that was about it. We still had a good roster and had our eyes set on success. This was something that would come to us in the regular season, and we had our best time in it yet! I managed to take Davos to fourth in the conference for the third season in a row, still good enough for a wild-card spot. This time, we had a matchup that wasn't against Prague, as fifth place went to Warsaw. The Predators knocked us out in four games. I'd taken the Dynamo to the playoffs three seasons in a row, and it looked like the writing was on the wall again, and yet again more quickly than most would expect. I had Campbell retiring and three players--Tsujimoto, UnGuri, and McLaren--going into their last seasons. It's possible that I could end up trying to squeeze one last playoff run out of S82, but why bother when I already had no draft assets? It was going to be a long rebuild if I entered it in S82, but it was going to be an even longer one in S83. Plus, I was starting to not care anymore. Davos would need time and energy spent on them that I just didn't have. So, I left--and I'll get into that whole thing some other time. It was frustrating to try season in and season out and watch my team continue to perform mediocre at best. And there are reasons for that that I'll get into in other articles. There are other things, though, that were my fault. I mentioned earlier on in this article that I was very prone to giving away draft resources for players near the end of their careers, and it's not all that much of a stretch to imagine that giving up 8-season-long assets for 2-season-long ones will lead to shorter competitive windows if you do so very often. I think I was driven quite strongly by a desire to make Davos good NOW, and that I always felt bad sitting around watching my young and promising players build up their careers on teams that I didn't think were quite ready to support them. I still look at most trades I made and understand their reasoning. I still put myself in the place of looking at my roster, imagining where the holes were, and realizing that I took steps to fill them--and that for the most part, it worked just fine, on paper, at the immediate time that I made the deal. But deals that look good don't always work out, and that's why I need three whole articles to describe one thing: How I Messed Up Davos. Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience: #1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name #2: Can't We All Just Get Along? #3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway? #4: The House That I Built #5: Can We Fix It? #6: American Beauty #7: The Kids Are Alright #8: Dogs In A Pile #9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake #10: This Old House #11: Go Directly to Jail #12: If You Can Dodge a Color, You Can Dodge a Ball #13: How I Messed Up Davos #14: Ello Gov'nor #15: Weewoo #16: Jolly Kranchers #17: How I Messed Up Davos, Part 2 #18: I've Been Everywhere, Man #19: The Sun Also Rises #20: Ripple In Still Water

A couple brief hints at a couple things, but Salem remains entirely quiet through its second day. Could things break out on its second night? Time (and your actions) will tell. List of living players (16) @Adrest245 @Advantage @Alex @Berocka @Dadam30 @Da Trifecta @Doomsday @eaglesfan036 @jhatty8 @Lemorse7 @N0HBDY @NSG @omgitshim @Ptyrell @Ricer13 @rory

Too many people look at the VHL as something they HAVE to do, when in reality it's something that you GET to do and you should be doing things because you want to do them. If you don't want to, then there's nothing wrong with that. Plenty of players have put together solid careers and enjoyed the VHL for a long time without doing point tasks in most weeks--just ask guys like @Baozi or @Garsh. You have the OPTION to do as much as you'd like, and we'll be happy to see you do whatever you do! I've loved doing things like VHLM draft streams with you and I don't want you to feel like you can't be around at all if you wouldn't like to be around all the time.

I'm stupid and almost forgot to claim this