Quote:
Originally Posted by Wanderer
Although I think Renall proposes a false dichotomy when he says this can only mean Genius Battler or Incompetent Battler, since I think Erika's move to kill the fakers in EP6 was retroactive, thus at no point were the fakers dead without Battler knowing. In fact, Renall's version of Genius Battler requires an incompetent Erika who simply assumes that she can do things without the Game Master knowing.
|
There's no way of knowing the move is retroactive and I'd argue it probably shouldn't be seen as such if only because there's never been any indication that a player can take a retroactive move. Besides, Genius Battler doesn't necessitate that Erika incapacitate the other First Twilight victims even if Battler wants it to; he can simply escape the room and let Erika entrap him later, in Scenario X that he never got to show her. But I think it more likely that the move had been taken, he pretended not to be aware of it, and allowed her to think she'd gotten away with it.
There's no reason to believe Erika's attempt to make a retroactive move makes her specifically incompetent, by the way. Why would she assume that? She thinks it's a game, and if she can conceal her moves from the other player, why shouldn't that work? Battler reacts as if she has surprised him, so she believes her moves are invisible to him. He never does anything to disabuse her of that mistake.
I'm curious as to what sort of additional options you would suggest are present here, given that there really isn't much you can do with Battler's knowledge beyond a handful of options. Either he knows in advance what she's doing (or can guess) and is faking surprise, or he doesn't know and is surprised. Ep8 says he has to know. If you're going to throw in "he did know, but until Erika announced she had done it it hadn't happened," you're essentially saying the same thing as "he didn't know." Which is supposed to be impossible.
The only time any retroactive move was ever discussed was the room sealings, and that had to be
explicitly allowed. Battler never said "I'll let you seal three rooms and also make any retroactive moves you want in the future." If Erika had to be given the power to seal rooms after the fact, she couldn't possibly have also gone and decided she'd killed people after the fact without Battler permitting her to do so.
It's still perhaps possible this is what happened, but for such a complex manipulation of a rule loophole it sure is odd that neither the rule nor the loophole were ever discussed at any length. Whereas the thing about GM knowledge being absolute was rather explicitly brought up. So you're free to believe it, but I don't see where that idea is in any way supported by anything.