As much as I would like to win, I didn't actually figure out Tehami Darke was healing DSBS. I only made the observation that it started on day 390 but didn't know what that meant.
If anyone else claims to have noticed Cayn but didn't report it, they can take the win. I wouldn't want them to end up tied with me because of a point I didn't earn.
I'm more disappointed I didn't catch Moon Finder, even after noting that my Boltholopew hypothesis didn't quite make sense. I fixated on the staircase pattern of heals vs sectors looking a lot like Boltholopew's appearances, and wrote off the oddities as Boltholopew or the diesases being weird instead of looking for another factor.
This was my first time participating in D&D.Sci after reading a lot of the other ones. This one drew me in with its low advertised difficulty rating and by seeming more amenable to my skillset (writing lots of python scripts yes, fancy stats and ML tricks no).
I'm happy enough coming close to the regulars. I wouldn't give myself the point for Averill - I noticed the irregularity but I assumed even until the end that it was some sort of second order effect like "Averill is mostly in town when class is in session, and someone else only heals rumblepox when class isn't in session."
Thank you for posting this. I agree with the advertised ratings. I particularly liked that some were a lot easier to catch than others, and you could gradually make progrees.
This is a followup to the D&D.Sci post I made on the 6th; if you haven’t already read it, you should do so now before spoiling yourself.
Here is the web interactive I built to let you evaluate your solution; below is an explanation of the rules used to generate the dataset (my full generation code is available here, in case you’re curious about details I omitted). You’ll probably want to test your answer before reading any further.
Who Dunnit?
In rough order of ascending difficulty:
Nettie Silver
Nettie heals Smokesickness; all Smokesickness healing happens when she’s in the area. (She’s been caught multiple times, but she has friends in high places who scupper all such investigations.)
Zancro
Zancro heals Scraped Knees and Scraped Elbows; all healing of either malady happens when he’s in the area. (He has no idea how Calderian culture works, and is pathologically shy; he keeps teleporting out before anyone can detain him or explain things to him.)
Danny Nova
Danny Nova heals random poxes wherever he goes; he never goes anywhere without healing at least one pox of some description, and all Babblepox healing happens when he’s in the area. (He’s pretty obvious about it, but he’s successfully convinced the Calderian police that he’s a government spy and successfully convinced the Calderian government that he’s an undercover cop, and a lack of interdepartmental communication means no-one’s brought him in yet.)
Dankon Ground
Dankon Ground heals people of Gurglepox or Mildly But Persistently Itchy Throat, targeting whichever sector is furthest away from him; all MBPTI heals and all non-Danny Gurglepox heals happened when he was in the sector opposite.
Moon Finder and Boltholopew
Moon and Bolt have agreed that whenever they happen to end up two sectors apart, they magically flood the sector between them with positive vibes, healing a large number of residents’ Parachondria, Problems Disorder and Disease Syndrome; all cases of any of these illnesses being healed happened when Moon and Bolt were on either side of the sector in question.
Tehami Darke
Tehami uses his Health Note to cure people of Disquietingly Serene Bowel Syndrome. He usually heals large numbers of people remotely using the University’s scrying tools, but occasionally heals smaller numbers in person in an attempt to throw off the authorities; all DSBS heals happened when Tehami was either present or in Sector 6.
Lomerius Xardus
Whenever Lomerius visits Sector 5, he ascends the Tower and uses it to purge Chucklepox from a random person in a random sector; all Chucklepox cases not healed by Danny were healed when Lomerius was in Sector 5, and every time Lomerius visits Sector 5 a Chucklepox healing happens.
Azeru (and Cayn)
Azeru heals Bumblepox and Scramblepox in sectors adjacent to her; all non-Danny cases of either of these illnesses being healed happened in a sector next to the one she was in.
(Her identical twin sister Cayn is much more law-abiding, and would never do such a thing. Assertions that they’re “following the exact same weirdly rigid pattern in what sectors they visit”, that it’s “suspicious they’re never in the city at the same time”, that they’re “obviously the same person”, and that she’s “maintaining an alternate identity so she can keep living in Calderia if ‘Azeru’ ever gets caught” are completely unfounded; and the fact that you can get an extra 1gp for reporting their association to the government (if-and-only-if you correctly accused Azeru) is utterly unreasonable!)
((fr tho she did that ****))
Averill
Averill buries Healing Seeds whenever & wherever he visits; 1d4 days later, they hatch and heal a random number of Rumblepox cases in that sector; all non-Danny Rumblepox heals happened 1-4 days after Averill visited the sector in question.
Gouberi
A year or so before the dataset began, Gouberi cast a long-lasting spell which healed random people suffering from The Shivers. This is completely impossible to detect without out-of-character knowledge; nevertheless, it’s true.
After some last-minute recounting, it looks like qwertyasdef literally everyone(?) is the frontrunner. Congratulations qwertyasdef literally everyone(???)!
Reflections
I like how this one turned out. While releasing something so unwelcomingly newly-shaped had its downsides, and the lack of obvious starting points no doubt compounded the problem, there’s a lot to be said for creating something novel . . . even if I had to borrow the novelty from someone else (my thanks, again, to aphyer, for providing the active ingredient).
I also really liked the response. All players got all the obvious solutions, and most of the non-obvious solutions, but no-one caught all conceivably catchable characters; each of the first three players were the first to correctly accuse someone; no-one made a false accusation without catching themselves and retracting in time; and everyone playing was the first to say something worth saying.
In addition to players’ showings impressing me greatly and being fun for me to watch, I consider the form of these playthroughs evidence I did something right. Accordingly, I will be awarding myself 4-out-of-5 for Quality on this one, unless someone tells me not to; feedback on this point, and all other points, is greatly appreciated.
Scheduling
Speaking of things I’ll do unless specifically advised otherwise: my tentative plan is to run the next challenge from the 3rd to the 13th of October (provided no-one releases Portal 3 or starts World War III in the intervening weeks). Assuming everyone's on board with that timing, I’ll confirm it on my Shortform as soon as I’m done drafting the scenario.
There's some slight ambiguity for Cayn in particular: it's possible some players who noticed her interaction with Azeru didn't mention it in their comments, and/or that some who mentioned it didn't choose to report it. I'm open to corrections in either direction.
