Gir!
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Post by Gir! on Nov 18, 2008 1:52:06 GMT -5
And the Tenth Day did end...
Pollux Oil stood alone as the remaining mutants circled him accusingly. Each one cast their vote for him to be the one to die that Day. And then, they waited.
And waited.
And then waited some more.
Until, finally, peekercpa growled his impatience and advanced on Pollux. There was a sound, as of shredding flesh, and the others flinched as blood spurted from the cuts that had appeared on Pollux Oil's chest. As Pollux sank to his knees, the image cloaking his identity flickered and vanished, revealing his true appearance.
Pollux Oil, aka Toad, a Scum Spy, has been lynched.
As Pollux Oil breathed his last, the cloaking faded on the remaining mutants as well. The first revealed was peekercpa, who was truly Archangel, Pro-Town Doctor, his bladed wings still bloody from his attack on Pollux Oil.
One by one, the others were uncloaked: FCOD, aka Longshot, Pro-Town Special, Chucara, aka Shadowcat, Pro-Town Watcher and misterblockey, aka Magik, Mason Communicator glance around warily for a few moments before they realize that they have finally eliminated the last of the Horseman, and apparently shorted out the Skrull cloaking device as well.
The four smile at each other and begin walking over to Sinister's former residence to search for the means of transporting back to Earth.Town wins!Spoiler board: katmafia.proboards104.comMason board: katmason.proboards104.comScum board: horsemenathome.proboards.com
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Chucara
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Post by Chucara on Nov 18, 2008 2:07:25 GMT -5
Damn spiffy! Yay town!
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Post by Almost Human on Nov 18, 2008 2:13:27 GMT -5
Oi get out of my house! Well played guys
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Post by bufftabby on Nov 18, 2008 2:22:04 GMT -5
Woohoo! Good work, guys.
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Post by Mister Blockey on Nov 18, 2008 3:00:45 GMT -5
Ahem.... woot.
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Merestil Haye
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Post by Merestil Haye on Nov 18, 2008 5:34:51 GMT -5
So hands up who'd have thought this when we lynched Zeriel?
(Kat, I can't read the Mafia boards without signing up, still. Is that an intentional thing?)
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Post by Idle Thoughts on Nov 18, 2008 6:11:02 GMT -5
Okay, well, since ST's game ended today (Tuesday), that means sign ups for my game will last until tomorrow (Wednesday) and then...hmm...would start Friday. But that's no good since the weekend will be looming.
Tell you what.
The game will start on MONDAY, November 24th. Of course, November 27th is American Thanksgiving, so I'm thinking I'll let Day One last for a very long time (like, say, from Monday the 24th to maybe the next Monday (or Tuesday) the 1st (or 2nd).
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Chucara
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Post by Chucara on Nov 18, 2008 6:15:40 GMT -5
Thanks for game Kat and storyteller! It was a very interesting and fun introduction to the world of mafia. Can't wait for the next one, and to top it off, it looks like it'll start on my birthday!
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Post by Høøpy Frøød on Nov 18, 2008 7:26:40 GMT -5
Yay!
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Gir!
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Post by Gir! on Nov 18, 2008 8:15:26 GMT -5
(Kat, I can't read the Mafia boards without signing up, still. Is that an intentional thing?) The Spoilers board and the Mason board should be open for everyone. The scum board is story's and I don't have admin privileges there, so you need to wait until he opens it up.
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Merestil Haye
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Post by Merestil Haye on Nov 18, 2008 8:30:56 GMT -5
Ah, thanks. I read the Mason board just fine. I'll wait until Storyteller gets around to opening the scumboard.
ETA : Which has happened.
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Post by Zeriel on Nov 18, 2008 8:36:05 GMT -5
Good stuff, town.
I actually thought lynching me seemed to be a turning point for the game--everyone seemed to get more on-the-ball after the quicklynch.
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Post by storyteller0910 on Nov 18, 2008 8:56:22 GMT -5
Wow, you go to sleep, then you wake up, and it's all over but the postmortem.
First, thanks to all players for an interesting game. I think the Scum were ultimately done in by four things, two outside of their control and two inside of their control:
1. NAF's decision to play Pro-Town on his way out was, I think, the biggest blow. Those lists he provided basically served as a blueprint for two lynches of Scum.
2. The early death of Rogue really hurt the Scum, because her power would have hurt the Town much more than the Scum. The Town relied heavily on power analysis in this game; imagine an endgame where half the players were depowered and the Scum could pretend to be.
But I also think the Scum made two very fundamental mistakes.
3. They incorrectly calculated that they could get peekercpa lynched. Because they were waiting on the Town to kill him every Day, they both held off on killing him themselves and held off on using the Legacy virus until it was easier to control. The virus would have been much more valuable in the early game, particularly with Santo around redirecting peeker's power and reducing its value and with Darth able to prevent any reactive featherings.
And, most interestingly:
4. The Scum uniformly used their powers in as anti-Town a fashion as possible, which ultimately made it impossible for them to hide. The Scum powers were designed that way - they could be used either as they were used in fact - to make the lives of the Townies miserable - or in a different way: to enable their possessors to pose more effectively as Town.
Look at Almost Human. She used her power to bring back CatinaSuit, in an effort to get him an extra kill, but that effort was doomed from the start because when he stumbled back into Town, it was easy for the Town to use their powers to neutralize him as a known threat. And then, once pressure built on AH, she had to claim a nonexistent power.
Frankly, it never even occurred to me that Sinister would use his power to bring back Scum - he needed all the Scum dead anyway! I figured AH would bring back someone like Pleonast. With control over Pleo's investigation, the threat of exposure was limited. Pleo'd die again in a Day and a half. And Almost Human could have claimed Forge: Pro-Town Resurrector. It would have been much more difficult for the Town to consider lynching someone who had claimed to be able to perform a resurrection, then done it, and brought back a Pro-Town Investigator in the bargain.
Similarly, Darth could have earned huge Townie cred by using his "cancel-all-Night-actions" one-shot instead of his "cancel the lynch" one-shot.
All in all, an interesting game, and fun to watch.
(For most of the game. Can someone tell me if there's a way that, in the design stage, we could guard against the way these games seem to die off in the endgame? The last Day or so was desultory at best).
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Post by The Real FCOD on Nov 18, 2008 9:21:18 GMT -5
WAHOO! Go town! Great game, everyone! I immensely enjoyed this one! Maybe because I survived to endgame, and won Story, I think the drop-off at endgame is due to there being fewer players and having a lack of new information. I don't think anything really can be done, but I also don't think anything needs to be done. Having a countdown helps keep the game from dragging. It seems to me that if there is nothing to discuss the vote is likely to be unanimous, so the countdown should prevent a lot of waiting. Thanks to story and kat for running this game; I thought it was very well designed and executed! --FCOD
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Post by CatInASuit on Nov 18, 2008 9:51:09 GMT -5
Oh well, maybe next time. Thanks for the game, storyteller and kat. At the end game, the only way it looks to keep it interesting is to shorten the time scale down. Otherwise by that point most people have made up their minds and the game does meander. The biggest blow for the scum was definitely NAF1138, effectively pointing out where two of the scum were which could be done by process of elimination. Up until Day 4, the scum had removed a doc, a detective and a mason and it kind of went downhill from there as their early votes to charge me up forced who the scum had to Night kill instead of being able to possbily make a better choice.
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Chucara
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Post by Chucara on Nov 18, 2008 10:01:58 GMT -5
I think the end-game weardown was caused by two things:
- Pollux didn't participate much, and everyone was kinda expecting him to close the game. - At the end, we basically had it down to Pollux or FCOD, and we didn't think the last PFK/scum would win in two more nights.
Personally, I was as interested in the game in the end as ever, so I suppose you'll have to ask those that didn't post as much as they did earlier.. Perhaps it was just a question of there being little more to analyze and only 5 players left, with one being awfully quiet.
Btw. how do we access the scum PM board on the spoiler board?
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Post by Hawkmod on Nov 18, 2008 10:46:19 GMT -5
First, thanks to all players for an interesting game. I think the Scum were ultimately done in by four things, two outside of their control and two inside of their control: Thanks for having us. One thing I wanted to point out about this game that I enjoyed was that there was a good balance between town power and confirmability. The more powerful the town role was, the less confirmable it was. It left the scum with some interesting choices. Unfortunately most of our decisions had to be defensive against certain powers, and we left too many confirmables at the end. I don't quite agree with your list as to why we lost though. Certainly this was a major factor. Mods need to be very careful balancing PFKs. PFKS have significant motivation to help town. Even if they don't, most people seem to want town to win (I don't quite understand this, all else equal I'm rooting for scum). Thus, people with powers like NAF here or Hal in Batman, if they are balanced as neutral, can put the scum at a serious disadvantage. Towards the end of the game it was more a record of actions then the actual actions themselves. None of the town members proved themselves via actions at end. I don't think less powers would have accomplished much. As an aside, I agree that all power role games favor scum. This is why I was never suspicious of there being 6 scum. You have to remember that we couldn't get Peek lynched, because Pollux confirmed him. Otherwise I think we eventually could have pulled it off. In the meantime he was enough of a distraction to be worth letting him live. My power wasn't so great that I was really concerned about using it. Thus, the problem here was less letting Peek live, and more a major communication gap between Pollux and the rest of us. We wanted the near term win. Pollux wanted to win at the end game. We did opposite things and screwed each other up. This is one area that I absolutely would NOT have changed our behavior. All power role games present three major problems to scum. One is that there tend to be a lot of detectives around that determine that you are lying. It doesn't matter how townie you appear, there are people who can flat out determine that you are lying. Secondly, there are a bunch of town roles that almost have to be pro-town. No amount of acting townie will make scum more confirmable then a mason, Peeker after my death, Nanook if he was confirmed by masons, or even Chucara. Thirdly, being confirmed as pro-town doesn't mean PFKs won't target you. What good is throwing your powers away just to be taken out by a third party. There are way too many unknowns to throw away powers for the sake of appearing to be pro-town. Being more townie wouldn't have prevented us from being outed by NAF. Outing a scum didn't help Pollux in the end game. Town expects scum to try to be as townie as possible, so such actions don't really help you that much. So we are giving the town a free confirmation of a townie (or scum), just to buy Almost a little town cred? I wouldn't take that trade-off (Almost played as regular scum, so I'm not considering this from her win condition standpoint). Almost still would have a PFK possibility. Almost still would have been one of the more likely places for Sinister. Almost still would not have survived the end game. The possible extra kill was more valuable. Until it was determined that he had to be a horseman. We would have lost a night kill in order to maybe slightly delay Darth's lynch. Perhaps not even that, scum certainly would expect scum to try to use their powers to appear pro-town. My four reasons for our lost. 1: NAF deciding that he would give town a second chance. 2: Darth returning 20 minutes too late to switch his vote to NAF. Nanook then would likely have switched his vote. We wouldn't have had to waste a kill on Nanook, and we wouldn't have had to waste a block on NAF. (We still didn't, but we didn't know that.) We could have instead started taking out the masons earlier. 3: The conflicting strategies of Pollux and the rest of scum. 4: Our careless votes for CIAS early that we spend a good deal of the game fixing.
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Post by CatInASuit on Nov 18, 2008 11:13:47 GMT -5
Just out of curiousity, Greedy Smurf, were you going to mention it in a message to Nanook about my vote charging power ?
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Merestil Haye
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Post by Merestil Haye on Nov 18, 2008 11:59:18 GMT -5
It was a fun game. Thanks you two.
I think the turning point in the game was NAF's lists. Up to then we'd floundered; with the data from the lists we identified all three remaining Horsemen and lynched them in three Days. That's a huge turnaround.
A big part of the confirmation, though, was the Modkill. Sure, the lists pointed straight at KidV on Day 5, but without the additional confirmation of NAF's rolename and alignment when he left the game, the argument over whether to trust the rest would not have been nearly as clear as it was.
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Post by NAF1138 on Nov 18, 2008 11:59:38 GMT -5
Hawk may be right about PFK's but in this case I think that my role did exactly what it was supposed to. Yes it delt a blow to the scum, but when I went out all I did was pull the game back into ballance. Scum could have tipped it back in their favor again, but they didn't.
I wish I hadn't had to drop out of the game, I think things would have been interesting if I had stayed in.
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Post by KidVermicious on Nov 18, 2008 12:04:25 GMT -5
We could have done things better at certain points, but NAFs reveal and my subsequent lynch was the first nail in the coffin. If I'd survived that Day, I probably would have done my best to talk the scum into raising CIAS right then. With one kill that Night, a lynchstop and somebody for Pollux to investigate, two kills the next Night, we would have had Town on the edge of lylo. This isn't factoring in Mhaye and Diggit, though, cuz we didn't know about them at the time.
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Post by NAF1138 on Nov 18, 2008 12:35:31 GMT -5
We could have done things better at certain points, but NAFs reveal and my subsequent lynch was the first nail in the coffin. If I'd survived that Day, I probably would have done my best to talk the scum into raising CIAS right then. With one kill that Night, a lynchstop and somebody for Pollux to investigate, two kills the next Night, we would have had Town on the edge of lylo. This isn't factoring in Mhaye and Diggit, though, cuz we didn't know about them at the time. I think the two biggest mistakes were you guys raising CIAS and Pollux claiming to have perfect knowledge about his investigations and being able to confirm Peeker as town. Had he not claimed that I think Peeker would have been lynched and he would have had a lot more wiggle room. As it was he almost didn't get lynched toDay, but if he had done that and AH had been able to "confirm" herself in such a way that she held off her death for another Day or two I think town would have been toast.
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Post by Hawkmod on Nov 18, 2008 12:48:24 GMT -5
Hawk may be right about PFK's but in this case I think that my role did exactly what it was supposed to. Yes it delt a blow to the scum, but when I went out all I did was pull the game back into ballance. Scum could have tipped it back in their favor again, but they didn't. I wish I hadn't had to drop out of the game, I think things would have been interesting if I had stayed in. Well, I can't really speak for what the role was supposed to do, but I don't think the Mods envisioned you would be a Mario Kart style cheat to keep the game close. From what I've read it sounds like you were supposed to be pro-scum. The larger issue is that you couldn't have screwed town anywhere near as much as you screwed scum. At the very worst you could have caused one mislynch, which is much less damaging then even losing one scum. This is a major problem with with games with more than two sides. Anyone can team up with town to keep a third side in check fairly easily. However, no one can keep the town in check if they get off to an early lead.
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Santo Rugger
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Post by Santo Rugger on Nov 18, 2008 13:00:15 GMT -5
Anyone can team up with town to keep a third side in check fairly easily. However, no one can keep the town in check if they get off to an early lead. This isn't exactly true. See Conspiracy 1, where the Werewolves and the Undead teamed up. For some reason, a lot of players have expressed that it is unsportsmanlike to take on the attitude that if your team can't win, the town shouldn't either. I've seen the exact opposite sentiment of the one you're expressing at the end of other games.
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Post by NAF1138 on Nov 18, 2008 13:07:04 GMT -5
Hawk may be right about PFK's but in this case I think that my role did exactly what it was supposed to. Yes it delt a blow to the scum, but when I went out all I did was pull the game back into ballance. Scum could have tipped it back in their favor again, but they didn't. I wish I hadn't had to drop out of the game, I think things would have been interesting if I had stayed in. Well, I can't really speak for what the role was supposed to do, but I don't think the Mods envisioned you would be a Mario Kart style cheat to keep the game close. From what I've read it sounds like you were supposed to be pro-scum. The larger issue is that you couldn't have screwed town anywhere near as much as you screwed scum. At the very worst you could have caused one mislynch, which is much less damaging then even losing one scum. This is a major problem with with games with more than two sides. Anyone can team up with town to keep a third side in check fairly easily. However, no one can keep the town in check if they get off to an early lead. I don't know. I don't think that story and kat envisoned me using the lists the way I did. I think thier thought was that my Night actions (which were mostly pro scum, though not entierly) would be my big game. Had they given me a more viable cover role (and I understand why they didn't) and had Pollux not outed me as PFK things would have been VERY different. But you can't know that going into these things. Had I not had work knock me off line for 2 weeks unexpectedly things would have been very different. I don't think they could have anticipated me dropping out of the game midway through. You can't really control that sort of thing. I agree that there needs to be a better check on the town, and that town has more than once battled back from certain loss due to pure luck, but I don't think that this particular game is a good example of that.
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Post by Hawkmod on Nov 18, 2008 13:28:03 GMT -5
This isn't exactly true. See Conspiracy 1, where the Werewolves and the Undead teamed up. For some reason, a lot of players have expressed that it is unsportsmanlike to take on the attitude that if your team can't win, the town shouldn't either. I've seen the exact opposite sentiment of the one you're expressing at the end of other games. Conspiracy was a last ditch effort, because you side had already lost, and didn't really disrupt town all that much. I don't think there has been a game where the town was winning, and then lost to scum due to the actions of a third party. Conspiracy 2 was a good example of a game in which the town jumped out to an early lead, and the various scum sects couldn't work together.
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Post by CatInASuit on Nov 18, 2008 14:02:05 GMT -5
Conspiracy was a last ditch effort, because you side had already lost, and didn't really disrupt town all that much. I don't think there has been a game where the town was winning, and then lost to scum due to the actions of a third party. Conspiracy 2 was a good example of a game in which the town jumped out to an early lead, and the various scum sects couldn't work together. I beg to differ, as the outed scum in that game. That's twice now and its getting as common as me being a bomb. The town was in the lead in that game for a variety of reasons. However, it was not a last ditch effort on my part to try and get a scum win out of the game. And yes, I would have preferred anything over than a town win at that point. However, the town won despite my efforts because the town played very well in that game by working together and pooling their powers well.
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Post by peekercpa on Nov 18, 2008 16:05:19 GMT -5
A big THANKS to story and Kat for a great game.
Way to go town.
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Post by Idle Thoughts on Nov 19, 2008 0:00:35 GMT -5
Thanks for game Kat and storyteller! It was a very interesting and fun introduction to the world of mafia. Can't wait for the next one, and to top it off, it looks like it'll start on my birthday! Not a bad time to be born. (22nd of November for me)
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Post by Pollux Oil on Nov 19, 2008 1:13:41 GMT -5
Hey-o, it's the lame-o showing up. First off, I want to apologize to storyteller and Kat, as well as my scum buddies, for being a huge pile of suck for most of this game. I just got too busy and tired, and that plus having a slight case of mafia fatigue after being an anti-town element in four of my last five games, two of which I basically had to work by myself the entire game, well...nyeh. Anyway, I wish I had had more time to put into this game as I enjoyed it but time just wasn't in the cards for me. I haven't been to the spoiler board yet, but I'm really wondering how my role was thought to put into the balance, because honestly I think I did more harm than good. It was me that fucked up everything, from exposing NAF which gave the town a hitlist and map to basically every scum remaining to screwing up the plan with Darth roleblocking..meh. In retrospect, I think I should have tried to put off revealing my role for another Day. If I hadn't revealed anything on Day 5, it looked like the town may have headed towards an Mhaye lynch because of his stubbornness on his role reveal. If that had happened then, I probably would have investigated KidV or Darth that Night, and if I had a scum to reveal with my role reveal, I wouldn't have given up NAF as I would have waited until I joined up with my scum buddies to let them know NAF was third-party so we could have killed him in his sleep. But if NAF was planning on revealing his stuff anyway it probably would have been more damning with an extra Day of lists. As for giving away peeker as town, I think everybody was moving away towards lynching peeker by Day 5. If he was going to be lynched, it was going to be in the first few Days. After that, the momentum seemed to drift away and more people were believing he was town. One question I have is, is there a way to really balance a game where everybody has a role? Aside from the Gastard mafia game which is an outlying piece of data itself, the town has won every single game where every person has a role. Now in Conspiracy, the town played fantastically well so there's that. But in Batman, there was a mass name claim on Day...what, 3? And from then until the end of the game, the town never lynched town. There's still arguments on whether lynching a PFK is a mislynch or not, but the point is every lynch was a non-town element. In Conspiracy 2, after the mass claim the game was pretty much the town's to lose (especially with all the crossfire). And in this one, I think NAF's list being publicized pretty much sealed the win for the town. I think the problem with everybody having a role is that the one thing scum can't do is fake powers. In games like Conspiracy where all the roles are known, the doubled-up roles will be exposed and whoever doesn't actually have the power is kind of up crap creek without a paddle. I believe that's basically how T2 on the Dope was won as well. And in games like this one, you can claim to have a power, but it will most likely double up with somebody else. KidV and Pleonast both having the same type investigative role is the first thing that comes to mind. I mean, I guess it fits in with the whole "scum have to lie" motif but there's only so much you can do in the face of overwhelming evidence. So yeah, I definitely agree if Rogue had lasted longer the scum would have had a better shot. This is something I'm hoping to flesh out because I'm designing a no-vanilla game and I want it to be fun and not be broken if a mass claim rolls around. But I'm probably too late to the party anyway and people already have their Mario hats on. Anyway, I'm going to go take my walk of shame after my abysmal performance here and go on a mafia hiatus for a bit. When I come back, I'll bring pie and hopefully enough time to actually play.
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