God's Imitator

As one of Community 2’s core game players, Ye Lin’s grasp of game rules tended to come quickly.

Although Huang Shengjie hadn’t fully worked through his own thoughts yet, the most sensible move in these last few minutes before the game began was to compare notes with Ye Lin as soon as possible. As audience members, the two of them jointly controlled their two opportunities to assist the offender player, and they needed to align their thinking right away.

Ye Lin already seemed to have a fairly clear idea in mind, ”I’m considering whether we should send Wen Wan a message right now telling her to confess early.”

This caught Huang Shengjie slightly off guard, since he hadn’t yet arrived at that particular angle himself.

His grasp of the mechanics was solid enough, though, and having already thought carefully through the rule details, he worked out the logic behind it quickly.

”Sister Ye Lin, you mean, because the Second Trial reuses the exact vote tally from the First Trial, the earlier and more voluntarily she confesses, the lighter her crime will appear in the audience’s subjective judgment?

”Best case, if she’s found not guilty outright at the First Trial, that solves everything. Even if not, as long as the Guilty vote count is lower, fewer Sympathy Votes will be needed at the Second Trial to offset it.

”Either way, it lowers the overall difficulty of the game.”

Ye Lin gave a nod, ”Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

The reason Huang Shengjie had been able to follow this so quickly was that the trial mechanism in this particular game was somewhat unusual.In most other games, exposing an offender’s crime would lead directly to a vote, with a majority Guilty vote resulting in immediate death. The process tended to be very straightforward.

But in this game, the trial was split into two separate stages.

At the moment a crime was exposed, the offender immediately underwent the First Trial. Even without a Death Exemption Ticket on hand, death could still be avoided by borrowing one in advance.

In other words, no offender player could die at this stage.

But a Second Trial waited before the game’s conclusion, and it wouldn’t involve a fresh vote at all. It would simply reuse the exact vote tally from the First Trial.

An offender could work to earn Sympathy Votes to offset the number of Guilty votes and change the outcome of that trial.

Only if the Sympathy Votes proved insufficient would the offender be certain to die.

Given that, the obvious strategy became clear: choose the optimal moment to expose your own crime, ensuring the First Trial’s vote tally came out as favourably as possible.

Based on past experience with these games, when an offender’s actual crime was relatively minor, it was generally better to expose it as early as possible.

Judgment Games tended to lay traps tied directly to an offender’s crime, and as the game progressed, an offender’s true nature would often surface, causing the Guilty vote count to climb steadily.

If an offender confessed proactively in the early stages, they retained a degree of control over how their crime was framed, allowing them to put a more favourable spin on their own actions and secure a better vote outcome.

Ye Lin continued, ”Of course, this approach isn’t foolproof, and there are real concerns to weigh.

”First, Wen Wan’s actual crime can’t be too severe, or this would amount to walking straight into a trap.

”Second, we have to seriously consider the possibility that she could conceal her number successfully for the entire game. If that’s achievable, there’s no need to expose herself at all.

”My judgment, though, is that the number is very unlikely to stay hidden for long.

”If she gambles on concealment and ends up exposed at the wrong moment, it would put her in a far worse position than if she’d confessed early.

”There’s also another point worth noting. The rules explicitly state that the first player to expose their crime becomes the Production Director and takes charge of the production process.

”That’s clearly a position of advantage.

”While an advantaged position likely comes with hidden traps of its own, it typically also offers greater freedom and authority, giving someone more control over their own fate.

”Falling into a trap while holding an advantaged position yourself is bad enough, but letting the wrong person seize that position and fall into the trap could be far worse.”

Huang Shengjie thought it through quickly and said, ”I think we should let Wen Wan decide for herself based on her actual crime.

”We can only send five characters. There’s no way to give her a detailed explanation. If we use the broadcast, that would announce the information to everyone, which obviously isn’t an option.

”Let her judge it against her own crime.

”If the crime is serious, conceal it. If it’s minor, confess early.”

Ye Lin thought about it, ”Send it now?”

Huang Shengjie nodded in agreement, ”Yes, send it immediately.

”Because this message will go directly to Wen Wan’s waiting room, and once the game formally begins, she won’t be able to see it until her next return to the waiting room.

”And she might not grasp our meaning right away. It could take her a while to think it through.

”The longer we wait, the less effective it becomes.

”And we still have the broadcast as a backup option.

”Use the written suggestion to get ahead of the situation, and save the broadcast as a fallback. I think that’s a sound approach.”

Time was running short. Ye Lin made up her mind quickly, walked to the operating console, and typed in four characters: ’Crime light, confess early.’

According to the rules, suggestions could run up to five characters, but each character cost 2,000 minutes of visa time. For Ye Lin, those four characters were already enough to convey the intended meaning, and adding a fifth wouldn’t have provided much additional information.

After a brief pause, she pressed Send.

At the same time, Wen Wan was working through the rules carefully in her own waiting room.

”On the whole, this game really only has two core mechanics, doesn’t it?

”One is guessing the numbers, the other is producing the medication.

”But the detailed rules for production won’t be visible until the game officially starts, so the priority right now is the number guessing.

”Guessing someone else’s number exposes their crime. Protecting my own number, keeping the others from guessing it, keeps me safe from trial.

”So how should I actually approach the guessing?

”On my end, I can see Liang Guicheng’s crime number is ’XX67,’ and I can see Zeng Yiming’s crime in detail: serving customers improperly cleaned plates.

”So maybe I can use the crime details to roughly narrow down the range for each number, then try filling them in repeatedly.

”If I enter the correct number, it gets confirmed. If I get it wrong, presumably one incorrect possibility gets ruled out.

”But each digit could be anywhere from 0 to 9, ten possibilities, with only 5 guesses allowed. That’s genuinely difficult.

”Maybe sharing information could help.

”Since I have two pieces of information, Liang Guicheng’s last digit and Zeng Yiming’s crime, the others must each have two pieces of information as well.

”If we pool what we know, the number of guesses needed would drop significantly.

”Suppose someone shares Liang Guicheng’s crime details with me. That might let me narrow down the rough range of his first digit, which would cut down the guesses I’d need considerably.

”And the reverse holds too. To keep myself safe, I need to find whoever holds information about my crime, build a good relationship with them, and make sure they don’t share it with anyone else.”