Hello, Spectators!
The mods inform me that you have approximately nine hours left to read this. So a few observations:
1) This was my second game of Survivor, and the first I was booted early from.
2) I really did try to be as honest and ethical as I possibly could - that was not a ruse, character, or lipservice. I wasn't always successful, but so far as I recall I didn't tell a bald-faced lie until the last few hours as I was trying to stay alive.
3) That said, I allowed certain loopholes. If you've ever read Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, I based my ethical approach on theirs. They are: 1) To speak no word that is not true. 2) To make no weapon with which one man may kill another. 3) Never to use the One Power as a weapon except against Darkfriends or Shadowspawn, or in the last extreme defense of her life, the life of her Warder, or another Aes Sedai. That last one is a bit bound up in the lore of the series to be useful, but it felt wrong to not include all three. I took some general "do no harm" principles from 2+3, but the first was the important one. "Speak no word that is not true" has loopholes you can drive a truck through - the Aes Sedai in the books are constantly making neutral statements which are deliberately crafted to give a certain impression, which leads people to their own erroneous conclusions. For example, one of the characters in the first book is able to travel under an assumed name simply by introducing herself with, "I am called Alys." That's easy to make true by having her Warder (bodyguard) call her Alys once or twice, but it's not her name (Moiraine). I did that sort of thing on numerous occasions, whether planting an idea or allowing people to think things which were there. "I think a vote on Holly would be a good idea" might be true, but it doesn't commit. Other times, I was on board with a plan and then just never informed people when the plan changed. This was most visible on the vote when Scruff went out - I made a plan with Scruff, Rust, and Leon to save Rust by going for Lucifer instead, trying to bring Lennie on using the specter of the 99th. Lennie didn't go for it, so I acquiesced and flipped back to Rust. No one was lied to, but neither did I give Rust a heads-up.
4) I've got to learn who to trust. Some hits and misses this game. Scruff and Penelope were mistakes - maybe if I'd brought them in a bit more things might have been different, but I missed that Scruff was getting paranoid and I missed that Penelope always had her own agenda and wanted no part of bring second fiddle to mine. Lennie and Poirot were good bets, though. I know, Lennie always viewed me as a resource, but I bet big on Poirot and I think it paid off.
5) A guiding strategic principle was to make friends with everyone and gather as many potential allies as possible. That was wildly successful...TOO wildly, as a matter of fact. The only people I came into the merge not on good terms with were Lucifer and perhaps Judy, and I had good relationships with them both at various points. The problem seemed to be that there comes a point when success on that scale flips around to the other side - when everyone's your friend and/or ally, no one is.
6) Be way more careful with sharing long-term plans. I still need to analyze exactly what went wrong at the merge, which I can't do until everyone's cards are on the table post-game, but people were leaking all over the place. I want to say it was Penelope, but it also could have been Scruff, or even Leon. I don't know. I got overzealous with making plans, and that was ultimately what killed me.
7) Playing one side against the other only works if no one knows you're doing it. Obviously. Dummy.
NEVER PLAY IN THE SUMMER AGAIN. EVER.
9) REALLY. YOU DON'T HAVE TIME.
10) This was fun anyway.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk!
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