View Topic

For a change, have a fascinating relevant documentary about how things were done before Adobe InDesign:

Scheduled release date: April 30

A reminder that every article you write in the Orendi is worth 1 point from the Monarch's Game Bag (equivalent to 1/2 a Silver Reward)!

Potential article ideas:
Culture Review - future Werewolf games, new/ongoing RPs (or in standalone article), escape room
RP coverage?
Storting happenings - past term, recent legislation
Citizens' Corner
Steal some writing/art from hardworking Wintreans
Steal more game reviews
If anyone posts more food should definitely do a part 3 on that
Possibly a dedicated article to Clickwar?

Transgender Day of Visibility is coming up (March 31st). Maybe we should do an article of some kind on Wintreath's transgender community, or celebrate the contributions of Wintreath's transgender members.

Transgender Day of Visibility is coming up (March 31st). Maybe we should do an article of some kind on Wintreath's transgender community, or celebrate the contributions of Wintreath's transgender members.

Good idea, timing wise though it may be quite a bit late for this issue and probably would've even been better as part of the previous issue.

So is anyone allowed to write an article? I'd love to try my hand at one of them.

So is anyone allowed to write an article? I'd love to try my hand at one of them.

Yep! Everyone interested is highly encouraged to write articles.

Do you have any ideas in mind? Orendi articles can be about pretty much anything (from serious going-ons in the region, to more lighthearted topics, to completely facetious pieces, etc.).

Good idea, timing wise though it may be quite a bit late for this issue and probably would've even been better as part of the previous issue.

Maybe, but I only just had the idea yesterday, so...

Yep! Everyone interested is highly encouraged to write articles.

Do you have any ideas in mind? Orendi articles can be about pretty much anything (from serious going-ons in the region, to more lighthearted topics, to completely facetious pieces, etc.).

I don't have too many ideas, but I could do RP coverage. I could also cover the dumping grounds in a completely ridiculous piece about all the spam that is accumulating in Wintreath... don't know how that would go over though. Let me know what you need though.

Looking Back at Clickwar Season 1, Two Months Later
by taulover

I came to Clickwar several hours late, as I was busy when Wintermoot had launched the game. By the time I was there, all the tiles were already taken. But many of them had only a one or two points, on them, and with a few clicks, I was able to establish myself over the board.

Informal alliances quickly formed and broke, as we vied to hold onto our tiles for a precious 24 consecutive hours to begin generating the coveted legacy points. Soon (though it felt far longer), I had my few legacy-generating tiles.

In real time, the spam battles became games of chicken, as we continually spammed the same tile until one player gave up. There was a real psychological component; if you could just hold on long enough to convince the other player that you wouldn't leave, they might leave before you need to. I once spent several hours warring with Red Mones while listening to a new album until Mones ultimately conceded.

In the longer term, the war became a long wait, until players were offline, so that you could strike and take tiles when they weren't looking. Of course, once they returned, there'd be a spam war in the making. So point buffers accumulated, numbering into the many hundreds as players sought to protect their tiles best as possible. Pengu, for instance, had tiles numbering at 400 and even higher.

I also began developing an active defense strategy. As legacy points accumulated, there became clear targets for retaliation. When one of my tiles was threatened, I began attacking that player's tiles, threatening to take those down with me. At first, this worked, and I was able to negotiate some shaky peaces out of this situation, such as with Ruguo's Silverfishdom.

Occasionally, more gracious tactics worked. On the night of the January 2019 total lunar eclipse, Elbbsas agreed to a truce so I could go out there to see and help photograph the event.

Fast forward a few weeks to the last day of my winter break, at which point I had become the leader in both tiles and legacy. I was flying out that night, and having one last dinner. But as we drove to the restaurant and waited to be seated, I was only focused on one thing: an incoming spam battle with Wintermoot. As we warred, it became clear that this would not end any time soon, and I was forced to concede the loss of a few of my tiles to spend these last few hours with my family.

But my redeye flight had free WiFi.

When I woke up early that morning, I immediately opened Clickwar and began whittling down on Wintermoot's tiles. Given that my entire defensive strategy relied on threatening retaliation, I thought I needed to act on this. And so, by the time I arrived back at school, I had successfully taken a tile.

Thus began a several-days-long destructive war between myself and Wintermoot. Once Wintermoot realized my goal of accumulating legacy, I quickly lost. Wintermoot was not aiming for the leaderboard in legacy, and so was able to sacrifice his tiles' legacy to destroy mine. We negotiated a peace as I conceded the tiles he had taken.

After this, the game largely stagnated on my end. Points decayed time and time again, with some occasional inactive tiles being taken over.

Until one day, two weeks before game's end, when Elbbsas seized three of my tiles.

Now, I needed to make a move, and quickly, to secure my position. I had learned from my previous battle with Wintermoot not to directly retaliate, as that could be highly destructive and counterproductive, so I took other steps.

First off, I needed accurate information. When back-of-the-napkin calculations became inadequate, I quickly wrote up a Python script to calculate future legacy points. The results: if nothing changed, things would be close.

So I negotiated with Elbbsas. I sacrificed my position at the top of the tiles leaderboard for preserving my legacy points, temporarily held several of Elbbsas' tiles to stop and reset legacy generation on them, and convinced Elbbsas to go after Gerrick, the second-place legacy holder. The latter two turned out not to be strictly necessarily according to my Python script, but I wanted to make sure that things would work out.

And ultimately, things did work out. I finished first on legacy, with Elbbsas coming in as first on tiles at the end of the game. But more than that were the memories generated on this simple but addicting game—equal parts frustrating yet enjoyable.

Clickwar Season 2 is in development, and will feature, among other updates and improvements, a faction system. Stay tuned for more info!

@Gerrick will you write a Culture Review for this issue?

@Katie will you do a Citizen's Corner interview for this issue?

No rush on these at all, I have finals coming up in the next few weeks so it won't be complete for a while anyway.

Thanks!

@Gerrick will you write a Culture Review for this issue?

@Katie will you do a Citizen's Corner interview for this issue?

No rush on these at all, I have finals coming up in the next few weeks so it won't be complete for a while anyway.

Thanks!

Yeah totally! I just finished up with finals myself and am going to make a to-do list for Wintreath and other stuff.

The Culture Review
by Gerrick
(Link to image)

This is the tenth installment of the Culture Review, written by me, Wintreath’s Jarl of Culture. I’ll be talking briefly about some events going on in the cultural areas of the forums, such as Ministry news, forum games, and contests that took place from April to June.

Thanes (Vice Ministers) of Culture are elected positions that serve to manage and represent different areas of Wintreath. At the time of elections in early June, there were four Culture Thane positions: of Werewolf, Roleplay, Gaming, and LGBT Affairs. The roles are now filled by Pengu as Thane of Werewolf, Excalibur as Thane of Roleplay, and Chanku as Thane of Gaming. Shortly after the elections and some talks in the Cabinet, the Thane of LGBT Affairs position was closed since there wasn't much interest in the position, especially due to the fact that a large portion of the government is already LGBT, which made it rather redundant.

Wintreath’s Finest is the name for Wintreath’s citizen of the month. Nominations are for those who stood out as contributing or showing dedication to the region or having been extra active, caused activity, or been a good influence on others. The winner of Wintreath's Finest of March 2019 was taulover for his continuous work on the Orendi as well as being a consistently active member of the community. The winner of Wintreath's Finest of April was Wuufu for porting Cards Against Humanity over to our Discord server so that we can play it using his Discord bot, Zaphyr. The winner of Wintreath's Finest of May was Chanku for starting the new Tekkit Minecraft server, which has renewed activity in the Minecraft area. Other nominees for Wintreath's Finest over the months were Clytirrisia for his work as Thane of Regional Outreach, Ruguo for really getting involved and taking initiatives, Wintermoot for setting up and hosting the new Cards Against Humanity games, and Kane for hosting the most recent game of Spyfall.

Avatar Theme of the Month is the theme (or themes) nominated and voted on by citizens who then incorporate the winning theme(s) into their avatars for the month. Themes are often related to current events, though they may also include themes nominated at the random whims of citizens. April's avatar theme was Earth in honor of Earth Day, beating out themes like trees, pranks, and transgender awareness. May's avatar theme was Flowers since spring is now in full bloom, though other nominations included the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Game of Thrones, and "whatever you want". June's avatar themes were Pets in Outfits, Summer, and Winter after a tug of war between those who live in the northern hemisphere and are experiencing summer versus those in the southern hemisphere who are now in winter.

Werewolf (aka Mafia) is a forum game where the few undercover werewolves attempt to kill all the other players, who in turn try to expose and kill the werewolves. Werewolf XVIII, the fourth "Choose Your Own Werewolf" game hosted by Pengu, took place in mid-June. 13 players signed up and answered the six CYOW questions that had hidden meanings, which resulted in a "Wintreath's Got Talent" theme, the four basic roles plus a negator and an alpha wolf, a higher ratio of werewolves, and an adventurer mechanic for the seer and alpha wolf. After just two day and night phases (one of the shortest complete games we've had), the werewolves -- taulover, Mathyland, Gabrielle, and Gerrick -- won when North, the negator, chose to side with us and not prevent us from making the killing blow at night.

Spyfall is an easy-to-learn forum game where the undercover spy tries to figure out the location of the game while all the other players, who act in their given roles related to the location, try to figure out who the spy is. Spyfall IX was hosted by Kane and took place over the month of April with six players. This game, which was set in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, was unique because there were twists to the roles given to each player. The location for the game was in Diagon Alley where Death Eaters were holding captive the players, who were given the roles of several characters in the series. The game ended when Pengu, the spy, correctly guessed the location. A few weeks later, Spyfall X was hosted by Pengu and took place from late May through early June with nine players. This game was set in the world of the TV series The Good Place and was unique as it had an unknown number of spies (which ended up being revealed at the end to be four!). The game ended when I, Gerrick, one of the spies along with North, taulover, and Ruguo, correctly guessed the location.

Cards Against Humanity is a party game in which players complete fill-in-the-blank statements using words or phrases typically deemed as offensive, risqué, or politically incorrect printed on playing cards. After Wuufu ported the game over to Discord so that his bot Zaphyr can host it, Wintermoot started to set up games, which now take place every Friday. The first games took place on April 26 with Elbbsas beating out two other players and SirDracolich beating four others. May 3's games saw Bloody May and Aragonn winning their games against six other players each. And we've had many more games since then. Come join us on Fridays at 9:15pm ET on our Discord server to play Cards Against Humanity with us!

@Laurentus would you be interested in doing an interview about your experience in the Mafia Championships?

@Katie are you still doing a Citizen's Corner this issue? If not it's fine, with the UH Reports and a game review from Pengu we have enough articles.

And @Gerrick very sorry about asking this again but would you mind updating the Culture Review with the latest Spyfall and Werewolf? Thanks!

Shit yeah.

Ok, I've updated it. Let me know if it needs any more changes.

@Katie what did you mean by the like?