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Post by Paranoia on Jun 12, 2013 13:25:10 GMT -5
As it stands, there are five living witches to five living villagers. As none of those villagers have any killing power, and with the judge being a witch (hi texcat), I see no reason to *not* call this game in favor of the witches. so congratulations to Cookies, Mahaloth, Texcat, Colby, JBG, Peeker, and Sai.
Commiserations to the town, who I am fairly sure my shoddy handling of things harmed, and apologies to CPI for butchering things as badly as I did. As I had stated, I should have backed out when I got rolled, went 'nah I can totally handle this' and then proceeded to completely flub it. so uh. sorry. Let's move onto something *more* productive.
As it stands, the final two deaths before overrun were Hal and BillMC.
In any case:
WITCHES WIN
This is the google spreedsheet that was being used throughout the game. It will contain links to all qts.
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Post by ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies on Jun 12, 2013 13:36:36 GMT -5
Interesting game. I'd like to play another like it someday, now that I know what to expect. Pleo played a perfect spy, and Colby played a great Jr Witch. Thanks everyone. Non-participation sucks.
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Post by guiri on Jun 12, 2013 14:16:12 GMT -5
Well done witches... Oh, everyone else was right about Cookies, well played.
Yeah, participation sucked, really.
Thanks paranoia & chocoPi
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Post by Pleonast on Jun 12, 2013 15:05:25 GMT -5
Interesting game. I'd like to play another like it someday, now that I know what to expect. Pleo played a perfect spy, and Colby played a great Jr Witch. Thanks everyone. Non-participation sucks. Thanks! And non-participation sucks big-time. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I like this game setup in general, but I feel it's heavily biased in favor of scum in several ways. 1. Requiring a majority of living players while giving players only one vote is very bad. I like majority requirements, but with only a single vote townies are forced to vote for who they can be lynched, rather than who they think is scum. This means the voting record is not an accurate assessment of who players think is scum. This majority plus single-vote combo also makes the game very fragile to low participation. Low participation is the players' fault, but no need to design a game that breaks when it happens. 2. No reliable feedback on dead players. This makes it hard to find patterns in the voting record and Night kills. It also removes an immediate incentive players have to participate. Why vote when you can't really be certain if you were right? 3. A large number of scum. 16 vs 7 is very tough to overcome. That means town loses on the game on the 5th mislynch, or equivalently, we must get 7 out 4+7 equals 63% of the lynches correct. That is very hard to do! And that's in a game where the voting record is useful. Extra kills at Halftime might compensate, but it very easily not. The split between Elder and Junior Witches doesn't weaken scum very much, since they can easily avoid killing anyone on the Spy-Witch list. 4. No participation at Night. This is simple a push by the game design to reduce participation. There's no game balance reason to prevent participation at Night. Townies will rarely talk at Night anyway, for tactical reasons, but those who feel like doing so should be allowed. This rule is anti-game more than anti-town, but combined with the other rules also pushing players to low participation, it really hurt town more than scum. Each of these by themselves would be tolerable in a game. Maybe even two of them--there's no reason to expect the game to be easy. But of all them combined put a huge tilt in scum's favor. I hope the moderator and designer take these comments into consideration for future games (even if I'm only a mediocre player, I do have years of mafia game play and design experience). And to explicitly call out what I really liked about this game: 1. The separation of alignment and power is great. This makes it much easier for scum and forces town to think about behavior instead of lazily following claimed power roles. Yeah, I guess this is another thing making it harder for town, but it's something I think more games should do. 2. Posting the role PMs and not trying to restrict what players post (which isn't really possible anyway). Without this, it's too hard for scum to false-claim. Similar to the previous point, this makes it harder for town, but it's something all games should do. 3. The post-death powers. They're simply cool. I had something similar in my previous game. I'll have to see how effective they were in this game. I'd love to play the game again with corrections.
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Post by Mahaloth on Jun 12, 2013 15:14:00 GMT -5
Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, I never quit playing. I just laid low since town was.
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Post by Mahaloth on Jun 12, 2013 15:15:33 GMT -5
Dude, what was up with Town in this game? I couldn't believe how few people played! Man, that was one weird game.
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Post by Mahaloth on Jun 12, 2013 15:17:17 GMT -5
So, cookies, who were our jr. witches then? I don't get that spread sheet.
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Post by texcat on Jun 12, 2013 15:50:53 GMT -5
I was jr. witch along with Colby and Ginger. Didn't you get our breadcrumbs? Colby talked about cats and cinnamon and I talked about cheese and nutmeg. And the non-participation along with my judge power doomed town. And I kept killing active town because I knew then that I could control the lynch. I originally thought I had a very weak power that likely would never come into play, little did I know... And Cookies, exposed as a witch, on Day 2 or 3, survives til the end! I think it would have been a fun game with active players.
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Post by ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies on Jun 12, 2013 15:54:59 GMT -5
Texcat, Colby, and Ginger. One of the ways that lack of participation on the Town's part helped the Witches win, imho, was allowing us the luxury of not ever having to try and kill in the spy/jr pool. Early in the game I was sure Pleo was a Jr., later I became more paranoid that a good Spy would look like a good Jr. The witch consensus almost landed on killing Colby a couple of times (but I pulled for you, man!), but we never had to go there. Of course Texcat the Judge was a brutal force, and that is where the lack of participation took the biggest bite, letting her run amok.
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Post by ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies on Jun 12, 2013 16:00:46 GMT -5
And Cookies, exposed as a witch, on Day 2 or 3, survives til the end! Yes. No more attempts to throw lifelines, however weak, to Peeker, or anyone else who shoots a hole in the bottom of their boat in the scum flotilla.
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Post by Mahaloth on Jun 12, 2013 16:21:16 GMT -5
And I kept killing active town because I knew then that I could control the lynch. And I was adamant that we NK talkative townies, thus increasing the silence. It was an odd game, and the second game in the row where I have been silent in the game thread. Last game, Apocalypse Mafia, I died a few Days in but was active in the scum board for weeks and weeks. Two games in a row I've been scum in a game where death doesn't end your role. This time I didn't die, but the conversation sure did. I still insist we won or drew that last game.
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Post by guiri on Jun 12, 2013 16:51:30 GMT -5
I just laid low since town was. Wow. I'd always refused to believe a person who enjoys mafia would intentionally choose to not participate in order to further their side's position. Post less, even lurk a little, maybe, but choosing to law low intentionally is the epitome of anti-game behavior and it sucks. I refuse to vote for non participation, which I distinguish from active lurking, and will never consider a game lost if the opposing team resorts to non-participation as a strategy.
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Post by Paranoia on Jun 12, 2013 17:54:54 GMT -5
The thing is, I can't really blame the witches for shooting how they did - they *do* want to win. It was kind of a shame their targets basically got picked for them, but oh well. I was jr. witch along with Colby and Ginger. Didn't you get our breadcrumbs? Colby talked about cats and cinnamon and I talked about cheese and nutmeg. And the non-participation along with my judge power doomed town. And I kept killing active town because I knew then that I could control the lynch. I originally thought I had a very weak power that likely would never come into play, little did I know... And Cookies, exposed as a witch, on Day 2 or 3, survives til the end! I think it would have been a fun game with active players. That right there: The judge power is weak if town is doing its job, talking, participating, and voting. If they're not, that means people are gambling on if the judge is a witch or not which can end very, very poorly. Which it did. Even when the judge is town, you still don't want them deciding everything because with a lack of participation means they have no way to formulate who they think is a witch or that they might throw everything out the window in favor of going after their pet lynch, outing themselves in the process.
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Post by texcat on Jun 12, 2013 18:42:24 GMT -5
It was all Meeko' s fault that town lost!
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Post by Mahaloth on Jun 12, 2013 21:26:04 GMT -5
I just laid low since town was. Wow. I'd always refused to believe a person who enjoys mafia would intentionally choose to not participate in order to further their side's position. Post less, even lurk a little, maybe, but choosing to law low intentionally is the epitome of anti-game behavior and it sucks. I refuse to vote for non participation, which I distinguish from active lurking, and will never consider a game lost if the opposing team resorts to non-participation as a strategy. Well, I guess we disagree, though you may be wrong about me a bit. I wanted to win the game and feared that with such low participation from Town, my participation would make me a likely target for lynch. If Town was heavily talking in the game, so would I. Actually, you mention non-participation, which I did not do. I was strongly and actively participating during Days and Nights on the witch discussions, which I'll link for you below. I was super involved in the decisions and played as much in this game as in nearly any. In my opinion, you should consider this as a loss due to your own team not participating at all. I participated and won. Below are our discussions: www.quicktopic.com/50/H/Vv3sgCgFxsATdThen, we got a new one: www.quicktopic.com/50/H/QPuPLHj84EaThen, we got a third one. www.quicktopic.com/50/H/surFjLZiQqe
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Colby11
Administrator
Creator of Hell's Kitchen Mafia
Posts: 1,193
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Post by Colby11 on Jun 13, 2013 0:35:36 GMT -5
From the Elder Witches- pay up your bets. (See board 2)
I played my role as such because I was attempting to play as Town, and I would have claimed information as a cornorer ASAP.
Good game everyone, and bummer on the inactivity
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Post by gnarlycharlie on Jun 13, 2013 5:18:45 GMT -5
From the Elder Witches- pay up your bets. (See board 2) I played my role as such because I was attempting to play as Town, and I would have claimed information as a cornorer ASAP. Good game everyone, and bummer on the inactivity sorry, i can't say good game everyone. thanks to Paranoia and Chocolate Pi are in order. there was a lot of effort put into this game. congratulations, witches. certainly, you deserve the win although i would say that it wasn't so much great play but poor opposition.
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Post by Silver Jan on Jun 13, 2013 12:05:18 GMT -5
Oh dear, we kept protecting Colby.
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Post by scáthach on Jun 13, 2013 14:06:44 GMT -5
I like this game setup in general, but I feel it's heavily biased in favor of scum in several ways. 1. Requiring a majority of living players while giving players only one vote is very bad. I like majority requirements, but with only a single vote townies are forced to vote for who they can be lynched, rather than who they think is scum. This means the voting record is not an accurate assessment of who players think is scum. This majority plus single-vote combo also makes the game very fragile to low participation. Low participation is the players' fault, but no need to design a game that breaks when it happens. ^ This and this: And to explicitly call out what I really liked about this game: 1. The separation of alignment and power is great. This makes it much easier for scum and forces town to think about behavior instead of lazily following claimed power roles. Yeah, I guess this is another thing making it harder for town, but it's something I think more games should do. Pretty much sum up how I felt about the game Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh, I never quit playing. I just laid low since town was. Actually, you mention non-participation, which I did not do. I was strongly and actively participating during Days and Nights on the witch discussions, which I'll link for you below. I was super involved in the decisions and played as much in this game as in nearly any. I actually think that's worse for the game and more unfair than not participating at all.
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Post by ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies on Jun 13, 2013 14:28:43 GMT -5
That's right. Sai owes me some monopoly money.
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Post by ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies on Jun 13, 2013 14:37:40 GMT -5
Being an old as dirt seasoned player, I am quite surprised to hear people finding fault with Mahaloth's strategy. And that is what it was, strategy. Laying low is and always will be a viable scum tactic, even in circumstances like we're seeing lately where non-participation has become a cancer. It actually becomes a much more successful tactic the more non-participation there is to hide in. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
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Post by guiri on Jun 13, 2013 14:49:32 GMT -5
Intentionally disappearing from the game thread for three weeks is not laying low, it's anti-game pure and simple. Who cares if he was active on the off-boards? Even more anti-game.
Yes, town lost this game.
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Post by guiri on Jun 13, 2013 15:01:09 GMT -5
On reflection, I may just be bitter. In general I prefer to simply ignore non-participants until forced to do something. The logic being that no lover of the game would intentionally not play for significant periods of time so some real life event must have happened, and since real life doesn't not discriminate by alignment, non-participation is not indicative of alignment. Fool me once...
Cookies, are you also OK with scum lying about real life events as a strategy to excuse their non-participation?
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Post by Mahaloth on Jun 13, 2013 15:19:15 GMT -5
I feel like the whole thing is just getting too personal. I participate, I think, really well in most mafia games and was stunned that Town wasn't in this one. Sorry if my reaction(laying low) was poorly received; my intention was not to become an unpopular player or to lose friends over the whole thing. I'd rather have a good reputation than win the game, to be honest. I just thought I was using Town's poor play correctly to my advantage.
Uh, did I give any fake "real world" excuses for not posting? I'm sorry if I did, but I don't think I said anything about it.
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Post by ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies on Jun 13, 2013 16:25:11 GMT -5
It is an apples to oranges comparison, but my view on lying about real world circumstances is that it is shitty sportsmanship, and I will usually give people the benefit of the doubt that they are not indeed shitty. If memory serves, I've always given benefit of the doubt in such circumstances, but that doesn't mean the absent player got a free pass in all situations. It just means that I did not use lack of participation as a data point in any cases against them.
My participation level went way down in this game too, both on purpose and because I'm a reactive player and you can't react to nothing. An argument can be made that if Sai had been a quieter player, that he may not have been investigated and may have lived longer. I think a flow of traffic analogy fits, since there were no rules regarding participation, and no subs available even if there had been rules. Was Mahaloth's play or mine really any 'worse' for the game than Idle's or Bill's? I don't think so. The change in participation level is actually a risky red flag and possible data point in cases against us, whereas Idle and Bill were consistent in their very minimal participation. The fact that no viable cases could be brought because there weren't enough people playing to vote past the Judge is irrelevant.
Imho the best way to mitigate for non-participation fairly is a Mod willing to poke and prod at people privately, sub requests made privately, and a bench full of subs for those times someone either requests a sub or has one provided because the mod can't reach them. A sub goes into the game, and no one (aside from fellow masons or scum buddies) knows why the sub is there, and the why doesn't matter. All that matters is having a warm, active body in the slot to play with or against.
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Post by guiri on Jun 13, 2013 16:42:34 GMT -5
I feel like the whole thing is just getting too personal. Sorry about that, I realize it's just a game, nothing personal.
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Post by Mahaloth on Jun 13, 2013 17:12:26 GMT -5
I feel like the whole thing is just getting too personal. Sorry about that, I realize it's just a game, nothing personal. Thanks. We're cool.
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Post by chocolatepi on Jun 13, 2013 18:15:04 GMT -5
Thanks for playing guys, as well as the feedback. (Particularly Pleo--the time it takes to put together one's thoughts and commit them to a post should never be undervalued; good game testers are incredibly rare.) Sharing some thoughts and observations with you guys is the least I can do. Non-ParticipationThis game was basically killed by people not participating, which is as much a responsibility of the game and its presentation than the individuals. (Pointing fingers is a non-solution.) Normally when I run an online game, there are some safeguards and tricks in place to encourage participation, in addition to tighter, automated deadlines. Participation rates have never dropped below 90% before, so this is a good opportunity to examine this problem that has up until now been largely dodged. What I'm looking at, for play-by-post games, is a requirement that every player vote/post at least once per game cycle day. Those who fail, get a warning after the lynch. If it happens again, they are mod-killed. This should be non-exploitable by either side, since deliberately mod-killing yourself requires committing to it two full game cycles in advance. Flushing non-participants out of the game is never desirable, but strictly preferred to any alternative. Replacements are a pipe-dream non-solution in most cases, and often create as many problems as they solve. (Mostly involving game pacing and disruption, in addition to meta obnoxiousness.) This is the root of all voting concerns. Night TalkingSo I'm an adamant zealot for reducing night phase length in play-by-post games. I used to be called insane for running play-by-post nights with only 24 hours. Then they called me crazy for running 12 hours nights. These days I gravitate to 8 hours. (12 if there is a significant time zone span.) The idea that players should sit and twiddle their thumbs for long periods of time is obnoxious and "anti-game", as has been said. The notion of players being allowed to talk publicly at night is new to me, and was interesting to think about. (I've honestly never heard of a mafia game doing this.) I think I'm currently of the mindset that a silent period does bring some non-trivial value to the game. It makes private chats less overwhelming, and encourages players to collect their thoughts and privately review the previous day(s). I think this is overall a good thing that has merit, but am still very strongly of the opinion that this period should be as short as possible. Having an hour or two to reflect is valuable. Having a day or two is frustrating and boring. InformationPreface 1: So this varies by community, but lots of mafia is played strictly no-flip. That is to say, there is zero concrete information propagated, and often the only info-role is the Priest/Seer/Cop/Whatever. I am not a fan of such little mechanical information, but it's always interesting just how much information players in these games can figure out by voting records alone. Generally, when town wins in these games, they basically know who the scum team was with 100% accuracy. Preface 2: I think there is a lot of value in card-flip. Feedback is *critical* in game design, especially for new players. I'm often in the strange position of advocating the setups be card-flip, but maintaining a game that is no-flip. Mafia groups are often ingrained to playing setups of one style versus the other, so I've had this conversation a lot. So why is this setup no-flip? There is a finite amount of information that can be given to the town before the game starts to degenerate. Like a lot of things in game design, this can be thought of as a budget. ("We can give town-side X amount of information.") Public role-flips are a massive expenditure of that budget--for massive benefit. Ok, but is it worth it? All costs are evaluated based on their alternatives. What can we get instead? Instead of giving information to the town directly, we give it to players individually. This can be done either as character abilities in a few different ways, or as a mason group. (Spies) What are the advantages of this? - The information can be more varied.
- The information can be more unpredictable in content, and drive narrative in more ways.
- The information is not reliable when the player cannot be trusted--this dilutes its power, and lets us include more raw information. (This is the most important advantage.)
- How the information itself is communicated is now meaningful meta-information itself.
- Some of the information ends up in scum hands, which creates cool gameplay and further dilutes the power. (letting us add further more raw information)
- As consequence of all of these factors is increased town discussion.
These are really all just different angles at looking at a common theme: Less certainty with more information creates more gameplay. The question isn't flip vs. no-flip, nor is it flip vs. Gravedigger. The question is flip vs Gravedigger+Inquisitor+Investigator+Innkeeper+Spies. BalanceThis game had a town gimped by non-participation. It was unrealistic for town to win, if I'm frank in my opinion. As an interesting bit of trivia, the current prevailing attitude among people who play this often is that the game is currently non-trivially biased in favor of town. If I had to ballpark my observations, I'd say town wins about 60% of games. I personally do not suspect there is a significant pro-town bias in spite of this. Mafia games have a common trend in which skill skew among players on average favors town, which is a hard-to-impossible thing to balance around. (In other words, a game with players skill-levels that vary significantly will on average run more pro-town than a game with more evenly matched players--high or low.) But I digress. 7 Witches is a lot! 7 town-confirms is also a lot. If Witches fail to hit more townfirms than town hits Witches, they straight up lose. (Outside of incredible gambits) Witches are also on a potentially steeper time limit, depending on how well those guys play. The only saving grace keeping Witches in the fight is having neutral character abilities to leverage, combined with "winning ties". Two weekends ago, a new group of people played and Witches won the first game in a blowout. They complained that the game had a serious Witch bias--then played 4 more and town won them all. *shrug* I'll post more in a bit.
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Post by ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies on Jun 13, 2013 19:13:43 GMT -5
I have some more feedback. Some is regarding n the example role PMs (posted for this game at idlemafia.com/post/106663 ) I can't speak for Peeker, but for me the use of 'IMAGE' as a placeholder for the gifs that actually contain role-related text contributed to my slip because I didn't go back and refer to my PM where I might have been more mindful that the image was not simply an illustration. Even though all of the Character gifs are in the post above the examples, it isn't technically an accurate representation of example PMs and provides an opportunity for handshaking, or to be more precise, it incurs a risk of exposure for anyone of any faction who might want or need to comment in an informed fashion that does not rule them out as having received a given PM. My second observation is regarding the various rule and setup related posts. This tripped me up a couple of times and contributed to me slipping that I wasn't a Spy. If I were doing the tech writing for this ruleset, I'd say that there were three parts to each role, not just two: Faction (Village vs Witch) Class (Basic/Spy/Holy for Villagers in our setup, Elder/Junior for Witches) Character (insert relevant Character cast). I don't know for sure whether it would have prevented my not-a-spy slip in my case, but after my first reviews of the rules I was under the mistaken impression that Spy was a Character card, not a Class. I know that you were introducing multiple possible expansion options, but I'd make the actual rule post as specific as possible. No references to Lovers if there are none in the game, for example. Part of what made the game challenging to parse at first was, I think, the fact that it 2/3s of the Rules content had no bearing whatsoever on the game that we were actually playing. People probably would have misunderstood and misinterpreted things even if the rules had been more narrow, so any additional details just exacerbated that. It may have even been enough to contributed to some of the awol players not engaging, but that is just a WAG.
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Post by chocolatepi on Jun 13, 2013 19:55:24 GMT -5
Normally manual PMs and QTs aren't even a thing. That was just me flying by the seat of my pants.
The presentation of team, type, and character (what you listed as faction, class, and character) has been debated a whole lot by a lot of people for a long time. Faction and class have both been used in the past--nothing I've tried has been a home run on this, so the current status quo is what seems to confuse the least. I more than welcome any ideas for a robust solution.
The rules dump was a mistake, and a consequence of flying-by-seat-of-pants. I should have shoved halftime down you guys throats knowing you'd pick it anyway, which is what I do and recommend for any group normally. The rules, both offline and online, normally exclude unused info.
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