When I asked her if she was going to showcase my messages or if I should do it myself, I was encouraged to go ahead so she'd have less to do. So if you or Tekora or someone else wants to share, please do so! I'd be interested, in the very least!
Yeah, I certainly won't be putting the death or mafia chat up anytime soon. Gonna take a lot of editing and I'm honestly a bit drained. If someone else wants to do it, feel free.
As for Vivet's role. I honestly don't think that the ability to send out messages freely is inherently broken. The power is very variable, but I've asked a couple others to take a look at the game, both before and during the game, and Vivet and/or Ieptix was identified as scum by those friends.
I could certainly reduce it though. Perhaps tie the use of those messages into a cost of some sort, such as losing a message if janitor is used. That makes it a nice balancing act.
Ultimately though, Ratatoskr needed a powerful ability to make up for having the most difficult win condition in the game, but also no kill to use to claim that victory. Investigation alone wouldn't cut it either because that would make her a huge target for scum. It's something I'll look further into if I include a similar role in the future. (Next time Ratatoskr shows up, he'll be different)
Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
Throwing out too many lies/nonesense is inherently dangerous because it becomes that much easier for you yourself to forget what has and hasn't happened. Case in point - I bet anyone reading straight through the thread would probably catch the issue of my fake claim for Ieptix since they'd remember he was roleblocked on night 1. They'd also notice that's one of the few nights no one disappeared. Since so much real time had passed since then, pretty much everyone, including myself, had forgotten this detail! If anyone had stumbled upon it, it would have basically been game over for us.
Pardon the longish post. I wanted to offer my thoughts on the game setup. It's not meant to be an attack on the creator or players in any way, just a critical observation intended to highlight a big issue I had with the setup.
I feel that this setup lacked the focus necessary for a Mafia game to really succeed (note: I consider "success" to mean that the game is enjoyable for everyone playing, and everyone has a fair shot at winning.) In a typical game, it's town vs. the baddies, and maybe there might be a couple third party players hiding in there. Mostly you know what blanks you're trying to fill in, and you can fill them in pretty reliably by paying attention to posts and powers, plus a little luck.
In this setup, third parties were guaranteed and of an unknown number, with unknown win conditions. Town was thus at a pretty big disadvantage from the get-go; the setup makes it so players have a greatly reduced ability to determine if someone is a threat to them based on logic alone.
As an analogy, think of Mafia as a game of Hangman: you see how many letters are in the word and have only so many tries to figure out the answer, first by guessing, and then by logic and process of elimination as things are narrowed down. This particular setup would be like Hangman if you didn't get to see how long the word is while you play. You'd never quite get fully out of the "random guess" portion of the game, even as the pool of options you have to choose from grows smaller.
The information gained from investigations and player death becomes an even more vital bit of clarity than it normally is, leaving people hesitant to act without it. Toss in the part where more than one player had an investigation-confusing facet to their role, and a janitor on top of that, and it becomes considerably more difficult for town to proceed with any amount of conviction.
Othero stated that he began his manipulation of the game with the lie about his role because no one was doing anything else to move it forward. How readily everyone bought into it and latched onto it should be a clear enough sign that town's inaction was more due to lack of direction, not a lack of desire to act. Town was desperate for leads to follow, and it's hard to really blame them.
Just my two cents. It was an interesting idea for a setup, but ultimately, I think it was too ambitious from a game design perspective.
The more non-standard the setup, the more difficult it can be to really strike a solid balance. I'd also argue that mafia is a lot more about psychology than logic - the logic you use to make your judgments depends heavily on how you are expecting the mafia to play, how well you understand the players behind them, etc.
I can sympathise with the realisation that not everyone would have the same amount of fun with this game, though, based on their personal playstyle or role received. To that end, even though it seemed @Othero hated his role, I thought he did really, really well with it. He really scared me.
I feel like the biggest What If with this game hinges on how things would have changed if the other third parties were more bold and forward. In a normal game, Othero coming out on day one and saying he wins by being the final vote on three people would raise eyebrows in a standard game, but we knew going in that this game was going to be different. Synkarin could have immediately lie-tested him, people with other win-condition oddities would have found it believable. What if Chang'e had ever mentioned what she was looking to acquire? There was a possibility for these third parties to try to bargain with the town - or even the mafia - to get what they wanted, but everyone seemed to focus more on blending in than mixing it up. Heck, Silvanus basically survived all the way to the end because he didn't hold back from town in the slightest!
We were told we were going to get something different going in, but I think there was a lot of hesitance to do what was needed to carry into these non-standard win conditions. Maybe this game will prepare us for something equally unorthodox in the future - or perhaps we need a more standard game to settle back into. Either way, I'm up to play!
I'm not experienced enough with the game to comment on the balance of this particular design, but I do want to take my hat off to @Kiradawea for the brilliant execution. That was hugely entertaining; I read every post and every page, haha.
Also, as far as pacing goes, keep in mind that at least three of the players (Aerdureth, Yavina, and myself) had never played mafia before and, at least from my perspective, had very little idea how to proceed at times. Despite that, I had a lot of fun and I thank @Kiradawea for hosting this really interesting concept!
(I see why so many of you obsess over this game now)
I liked @Yavina a lot too! They got put in a tough spot with Shaddus dying so early, but the idea that Empusa wasn't even in the game wouldn't have occurred to me if they hadn't said it! Othero got me with that one as well as everyone else (and still had me second-guessing it until the reveal).
The first garbled message made me worry about a second faction because obviously it didn't come from our night chat. I actually thought for a while that it might be the angels that were the 'other' group.
I felt I didn't really get to flex much of anything. I had the roleblocker to fall back on as my claim but died before I even felt I needed to speak up about my role. I think the mafia got unlucky with getting picked out/off early. The janitor cleaning of my role was kinda nifty, and I will admit to laughing to myself (I didn't reveal in the dead chat anything except I was the roleblocker) when Tekora took our information and somehow made 2 and 2 = 12 with her knowledge of who was definitely in cahoots with who and the whole second faction.
Also damn you @Silvanus you're not supposed to tell when I'm being scummy when I haven't even acted scummy yet. Nerf.
I enjoyed the flavour of the game but will admit to being unsure of how to push in any direction because there were so many unknowns as to win conditions and who was actually someone who needed to die and who wasn't.
Holy crap, Vivet's entire role was a stroke of genius. I dunno anything about how balanced it was, but definite kudos to @Kiradawea for that way interesting and creative setup. I'd been so very upset there hadn't seemed to be a role from Norse myth, so when I read the end-game reveal and saw her name I squealed aloud. Also glad I didn't end up with it, because I would have been terrible at it. >.>
Reading through Vivet's write-up really explains a lot of what happened in the game; her message to Shaddus and (lucky!) investigations of both me and Tekora set the tone of a lot of the game, at least from my perspective, though I'd had no idea what had went into it until just now.
As soon as Vivet sent me that first message, I knew there was no way in Hel (see what I did there oh ho ho) she was town, because you don't just find a serial killer and try to be buddies with them if you're town. But I was also very suspicious because, well, she found a serial killer and was trying to be all buddy-buddy with me, and I had no direct way to contact her aside from the global day-chat, which would have been an obviously bad idea. So I was wary overall, but working with her at least for the time being seemed the best course of action.
I never really got a chance to use my night kill immunity which was fine, though at one point I was so close to being able to use it. Whatever day it was that Krackenor got lynched, we were originally going after Othero and had built up a train. I voted for him, having had gone through and seeing that I'd be able to get the last vote. Then I'd have kill immunity for the night, and I was going to kill off Krackenor while I had bomb immunity (since I didn't think there'd be much chance of getting rid of him otherwise). Then I re-read through the day and realised I'd missed Vivet's (I think) unvote and crapcrappaniccrap I need to unvote so I can make sure I get the last vote so I can safely get rid of Krackenor and it'll be super suspicious of me to vote and then immediately unvote but well I've been railing against Cyndaquil the past day anyway so hopefully it isn't too sketch if I switch to her. And then Othero ended up lynching Krackenor anyway so it worked out well and I got to take out someone else, which in the end was better for me all around because, I mean, people needed to diiiiieeeeeee.
At this point I was also incredibly suspicious of Vivet, because she'd given basically no information at all and I figured she had to be using me and eventually would end up stabbing me in the back, so I'd get rid of her before she'd had the chance. I also figured I'd have to eliminate her eventually to get a win, since I didn't know our win conditions were compatible, since I didn't know anything about her, well, anything. Knowing what I know now, that was very much the wrong move and if I hadn't done so, we'd have won the next night instead of having to go through another day. But I didn't know that, and with the game getting so small, it seemed a reasonable time to deal with the potential threat. But that didn't work, which was for the best anyway. Am curious though @Vivet, did you know after you investigated me that you'd get an immunity to my kill and that our win conditions were compatible, or were you just running on a gamble hoping that someone would manage to off me eventually so you could get your win?
And then Vivet "revealed" my power and I immediately panicked because I knew I'd been roleblocked one of the nights one of the fake messages came up. So I just kind of confirmed that I was Anubis and immediately proceeded to pretend the rest of the conversation never happened, hoping that the apparent townieness of Vivet and myself would be enough to get people to just go along with it. And it was, luckily. I'd had a different power cooked up that I was ready to reveal if pressured, but I wanted to avoid discussion of my powers at all if possible because there was just too much chance to get caught up in a lie. My fake power claim was going to be that I chose a target at night, and if that person died I'd do the whole scale/feather/heart thing, and if the person was (investigatable as) a god, they'd be protected, and if they were (investigatable as) a monster, it'd make the kill bypass any protections for the night. I feel like this would have been reasonably believable since it was pretty clear we had no trackers/watchers (which surprised me!), there wasn't really any way it could be falsified, and because it basically fit with my mythological role, but I still was very averse to bringing it up at all.
Incidentally, that last bit is why I railed so heavily on the Celina/Medusa/town thing not matching with actual mythology. I mean, aside from legitimately thinking that Celina was mafia at that point, I wanted to loudly establish that as a viable defense in case I came under fire, especially since it seemed like there was no momentum to be gained to lynch Celina that could have ruined that defense. I'd be able to say, "dudes, Anubis doesn't kill people, he just cleans up their soul mess". But then Vivet announced that she was actually town, and that whole thing kind of fell apart between Cyndarin and Ssaliss, so I was glad the attention never turned on me because that defense was kind of falling apart. But anyway, yea, that's why I was pressing Celina so hard about that earlier in the game.
Then the last night, I knew Yavina had to go because she had protector powers, and I was gambling pretty hard on her not (being able to?) defend herself that night. Especially since Vivet apparently told her to protect herself that night, if I'm reading the message chronology right. Managed to pull that off though. Yay.
Remembering this made me laugh when Lavinya was killed off and I figured out she'd been the roleblocker.
Othero I thought was doing really good through the game, despite seeming to dislike the role. He had us going on the Empusa thing and came damn near close to pulling off a win, which would have rendered Vivet's win impossible. I was actually surprised no one else managed to pull off a win of some sort through the whole game. Would Vivet have died/been removed from the game if someone else had gotten a win, or would she have just been stuck in the game unable to win?
Also, with the elixir thing, how would the person who got the elixir have been decided? Random choice by Kira, or something the players had to do to get it?
I think there were a couple other comments/questions I had but this is a long post and I've forgotten then. Reiterating how much I liked the concept behind Vivet's role, though; that was ace (if so confusing at the time!).
Yes, when I investigated you Kiradawea informed me that you were the only person I could allow to win, and since I now knew who you were I essentially had a "read" on you and had that one-time immunity to your kill. So that made it pretty easy for me to go for it.
I also did purposely keep you in the dark about exactly who I was for two reasons. One, because I figured you'd do more to avoid looking like you were working with me in any way, and would function more "naturally" in your quest to eliminate scum alongside town if you didn't know whether they were all gone or not, and two, so you had very little to offer in the event you might decide to try to rat me out during the day.
And yes! If anyone won at any time, I would have been removed from the game as well. This is how three people could have left the game when we got into our situation with Othero - if we'd lynched, say, Celina, then she'd be removed because she was dead, Othero would be removed because he'd met his win condition, and I'd be gone because my win condition would be impossible.
So, theoretically, I could have lost unavoidably as early as Day 1! If we all had lynched Luce with Silvanus (knowingly or not) being on the lynch train, then Day 1 would have seen all three of us leave the game all at once! And it would have been such a very, very different game too.
There were so many times and places where I could have lost. If you ate Yavina instead of Ellowyn that one night, Ellowyn would have won, and I would have been gone! Checking back for each of these instances might help you appreciate just how much happenstance and luck contributed to my win (or any Ratatoskr win ever, really).
I was so disappointed with the loss of Luce after getting hyped up for it that I lost all faith in the game afterwards. I figured my best bet was just to be a useless nobody and hopefully ride the coat tails of someone to victory.
Also, I just know you too well Lavinya I suppose.
I really stopped paying attention but I think I mentioned I doubted Vivet pretty early, and decided to side with Ieptix. He seemed pretty normal to me, mostly because I really sucked this game. When Ieptix and Vivet started sort of working together, I figured that was the town based on my believing of Ieptix.
Last time I do that.
Editted: Though my strategy was to be useless but show some sensibility in dayblocking Aerudeth.
2014/04/19 01:38:01 - Leolamins drained 2000000 power to raise Silvanus as a Vernal Ascendant.
2014/07/23 05:01:29 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Munsia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:07 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Arimisia as a Vernal Ascendant.
2015/05/24 06:03:58 - Silvanus drained 2000000 power to raise Lavinya as a Vernal Ascendant.
Yea, losing your opposition right out the gate was a sucky position; it reminded me of Luce (was it Luce again, I can't quite remember, poor guy) who got offed on night 1 or 2 in your Los Alamos mafia and I was his frenemy, only my win condition there wasn't hinged on him sticking around so the game was still worthwhile.
EDIT: Also, I am always trustworthy. If everyone just followed my lead all the time everything would be just perfect.
Next time I run a mafia, I'll drop random role assignment for Luce and just plain give the poor guy whatever role has night kill immunity. )
Anyway, one thing I really wanted going in with this set-up was to shift the game focus a bit from discerning lies and psychology profile over towards negotiation. I especially looked forward to all the negotiation Luce and Silvanus would have to do in order to reach their win condition. Which didn't happen for obvious reasons. The first post mentioned that many would be here with their own motivation so that player base could be able to trust someone when they came out and stated that they had a different win condition. And this would've helped town because if you have a tertiary win condition, you're not scum. I figured some roles would also have it really easy, like Buddha and Kerberos. But they pretty much got Ratatoskr'd. Evil skwerl is evil.
That said, @Krackenor has a point when he mentions that several players haven't played mafia before. On one hand, I'm always happy to have new players join in. On the other hand, the setup of the game is inherently more difficult than most usual setups. It would probably have been better for all the newcomers if I'd run a more standard game like the Steven Universe one. Glad to hear you had fun though and I hope to see you in future games.
Scum was also really unlucky in this game. They discovered the oracle pretty early, but they tried to kill him the night after the day he'd been the most active, which led to Yavina protecting him. Then Yavina ID'd Falmiis as scum, with Vivet "fake-revealing" Falmiis as scum to Dylara, and what do you know. Falmiis was scum. Then the following night, Lavinya gets ate while Yavina does nothing and Aerdureth fails to get in a night action. Things could've been very different if Aerdureth made a kill or Yavina had protected Lavinya that night.
@Ieptix The elixir would've been given to someone by majority vote. Remember how I originally stated that I intended to include some "Reality show" elements to the game? Originally, the Elixir, as well as Ereshkigal's resurrection would've been determined by viewer votes. Then I realised that was a bad idea, so I stopped developing viewer vote powers and just repurposed them to hidden parts of abilities.
Also, while I can understand being suspicious of Vivet, allowing Ratatoskr to win with Anubis was actually an effort to help out Anubis more than Ratatoskr. Ratatoskr would have a natural desire to keep Anubis in the game because he lacks a kill method of his own, but that would also mean that Ratatoskr could just bus Anubis at the end of the game. Anubis was supposed to be immune to investigations. So he gained "immunity" to Ratatoskr's investigation by Ratatoskr getting a one-shot night-kill immunity from him, as well as letting him know that Anubis could win with lil Drilltooth. Now, if Vivet hadn't investigated Ieptix earlier, the game would've still continued in a 4 player game, since neither of them would know that they actually could win with one another. But if there was a 3 player game and both were still alive, they would both still win.
Anyway, glad to hear that so many people had fun. I certainly had fun building the game.
Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
If he hadn't of been super quiet I wouldn't have gone for him.
Avurekhos says, "Dylara's a PvP menace in my eyes, totes rekting face."
The eye of Dylara materialises in your hands and flings itself around your neck, tightening incomprehensibly until it is irremovable. Perfectly clean, this eyeball has been wrenched from the socket of Dylara. It has been animated by some unusual force, constantly looking around itself as if in shock or fear. It is bathed in a light covering of white flames that roll endlessly over its surface. A single chain of empyreal metal pierces either side of the eye, allowing it to be worn around the neck.
Thank you all very much for the game and especially @Kiradawea for hosting it. It has been lots of fun and I hopefully learned something about how to play mafia on a forum. Also, sorry for being a quite boring godmother. I'd have loved to use my vote-changing power once but since I am such a bad liar (and failed to notice one of my night actions), I missed that chance. But maybe next time
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
"Oh yeah, you're a naughty mayor, aren't you? Misfile that Form MA631-D. Comptroller Shevat's got a nice gemstone disc for you, but yer gonna have to beg for it."
I can't win for nothin' :P Get ganked for roleplaying, then next game get ganked for NOT roleplaying.
FWIW, I was being quiet because of both work picking up and because if I revealed too much I was going to be tanuki bait. My original plan for the most part had been to fly under the radar and treat myself as a survivor friendly to town from day 1. Night 1 I decided not to use my switcheroo power because I had no idea who Danzaburou was, and wanted to save it for if he tried anything sneaky. Little did I know...
Clearly my presence in the games immediately triggers the passive bullet-magnet power, like Dwight from Haven, with less kevlar :P
Comments
As for Vivet's role. I honestly don't think that the ability to send out messages freely is inherently broken. The power is very variable, but I've asked a couple others to take a look at the game, both before and during the game, and Vivet and/or Ieptix was identified as scum by those friends.
I could certainly reduce it though. Perhaps tie the use of those messages into a cost of some sort, such as losing a message if janitor is used. That makes it a nice balancing act.
Ultimately though, Ratatoskr needed a powerful ability to make up for having the most difficult win condition in the game, but also no kill to use to claim that victory. Investigation alone wouldn't cut it either because that would make her a huge target for scum. It's something I'll look further into if I include a similar role in the future. (Next time Ratatoskr shows up, he'll be different)
Anyway, one thing I really wanted going in with this set-up was to shift the game focus a bit from discerning lies and psychology profile over towards negotiation. I especially looked forward to all the negotiation Luce and Silvanus would have to do in order to reach their win condition. Which didn't happen for obvious reasons. The first post mentioned that many would be here with their own motivation so that player base could be able to trust someone when they came out and stated that they had a different win condition. And this would've helped town because if you have a tertiary win condition, you're not scum. I figured some roles would also have it really easy, like Buddha and Kerberos. But they pretty much got Ratatoskr'd. Evil skwerl is evil.
That said, @Krackenor has a point when he mentions that several players haven't played mafia before. On one hand, I'm always happy to have new players join in. On the other hand, the setup of the game is inherently more difficult than most usual setups. It would probably have been better for all the newcomers if I'd run a more standard game like the Steven Universe one. Glad to hear you had fun though and I hope to see you in future games.
Scum was also really unlucky in this game. They discovered the oracle pretty early, but they tried to kill him the night after the day he'd been the most active, which led to Yavina protecting him. Then Yavina ID'd Falmiis as scum, with Vivet "fake-revealing" Falmiis as scum to Dylara, and what do you know. Falmiis was scum. Then the following night, Lavinya gets ate while Yavina does nothing and Aerdureth fails to get in a night action. Things could've been very different if Aerdureth made a kill or Yavina had protected Lavinya that night.
@Ieptix The elixir would've been given to someone by majority vote. Remember how I originally stated that I intended to include some "Reality show" elements to the game? Originally, the Elixir, as well as Ereshkigal's resurrection would've been determined by viewer votes. Then I realised that was a bad idea, so I stopped developing viewer vote powers and just repurposed them to hidden parts of abilities.
Also, while I can understand being suspicious of Vivet, allowing Ratatoskr to win with Anubis was actually an effort to help out Anubis more than Ratatoskr. Ratatoskr would have a natural desire to keep Anubis in the game because he lacks a kill method of his own, but that would also mean that Ratatoskr could just bus Anubis at the end of the game. Anubis was supposed to be immune to investigations. So he gained "immunity" to Ratatoskr's investigation by Ratatoskr getting a one-shot night-kill immunity from him, as well as letting him know that Anubis could win with lil Drilltooth. Now, if Vivet hadn't investigated Ieptix earlier, the game would've still continued in a 4 player game, since neither of them would know that they actually could win with one another. But if there was a 3 player game and both were still alive, they would both still win.
Anyway, glad to hear that so many people had fun. I certainly had fun building the game.
The eye of Dylara materialises in your hands and flings itself around your neck, tightening incomprehensibly until it is irremovable.
Perfectly clean, this eyeball has been wrenched from the socket of Dylara. It has been animated by some unusual force, constantly looking around itself as if in shock or fear. It is bathed in a light covering of white flames that roll endlessly over its surface. A single chain of empyreal metal pierces either side of the eye, allowing it to be worn around the neck.
Carnivorous herbivores.
FWIW, I was being quiet because of both work picking up and because if I revealed too much I was going to be tanuki bait. My original plan for the most part had been to fly under the radar and treat myself as a survivor friendly to town from day 1. Night 1 I decided not to use my switcheroo power because I had no idea who Danzaburou was, and wanted to save it for if he tried anything sneaky. Little did I know...
Clearly my presence in the games immediately triggers the passive bullet-magnet power, like Dwight from Haven, with less kevlar :P