Mini Normal 2002: The Thaw OVERRRRRRRRR

[Gamma Emerald]

So why was Mark lynched...?

[Scummies]

Congratulations to the victors!

The game has drawn to a close, the jig is up! Some of you have lost, but others have won!

Take a few days, think about the game. Recognize what was best in your teammates and opponents, and consider nominating them for a Scummy! Players and mods in this game may be eligible for one of the following awards:

BODY OF WORK AWARDS

Best Mafia Catcher

: Also known as the Paragon of Mafia Hunters, this award is given to the single town player who, across all of their games for the year, exhibited the best ability for nailing those dirty scumbags and bringing the bad guys to justice while playing as a pro-town role.

Rising Star

: This award is given to the player that is a rising star in the game of mafia, showing great promise to join the elite echelon of mafia players. This award replaces both the Best Newbie award and Most Improved Player awards, and judges may consider elements of both those previous awards in deciding this award.

Excellent Moderation

: Also known as the “The Modfather” Award. This award is given to the moderator who, over the course of the past year, exemplifies the best qualities of a moderator in the operation of the game, including but not limited to quality and frequency of vote counts, organization of the game, dealing with issues that arise, keeping players active, and so forth. Judges may consider how challenging the games a moderator ran were, but they shall not penalize a moderator for only running more basic games. A mod must run at least 3 games to completion in the calendar year to be considered for this award.

SINGLE GAME - PLAYER

Most Cunning Manipulator

: Also known as the “Don Corleone” Award. Awarded to the player who has the strongest single game performance as mafia. In rare cases, where a player feels an entire scumteam gelled to create a strong cohesive scum performance, multiple members of a team may be nominated.

Best Performance Third Party

: Also known as the “Hannibal Lecter” Award. Awarded to the player or players that performed the most impressively in winning their game as a third party.

Most Memorable Event

: Also known as the “Kodak Moment” Award. Awarded to the player or players who were involved in the most memorable event in a game of mafia. Fake claims, funny claims, awesome exchanges, etc. may all be considered for this award

SINGLE GAME - MODERATOR

Best Setup

: Also known as the “Rube Goldberg” Award. Given to the moderator who designed the best setup. Judges may consider the roles involved in a game, how those roles interacted, how balanced a setup was, whether it furthered any particular theme, how the setup interacts with a mechanic, or any other factors the judges deem relevant. This award is distinct, however, from the “Best Mechanic” award in that it does not consider how good or bad any change to the basic way a Mafia game is played.

Best Flavor Text

: Also known as the “Paperback Writer” Award. Given to the moderator who wrote the most compelling flavor text. Judges should consider the flavor text of all parts of the game, including Role PMs and Day/Night scenes. Where appropriate, Judges may consider how well the flavor works with the announced theme.

Best Mechanic/Mutation

: Also known as the "Mad Scientist” Award. Given to the moderator who figured out the most compelling way to change the basic mechanics of the game of mafia, and/or created the most compelling new role or adaptation to increase player enjoyment. Judges shall consider both the basic idea behind the game as well as how well it was executed, and the uniqueness and quality of the role/adaptation.

SITE AWARDS

Game of the Year

: Also known as the “Player’s Choice” Award. This award is given to the moderator of a game. It is given in recognition of the overall excellence of a game. The Game of the Year award is a "catch all" award for the best overall game throughout the entire year, considering all aspects of the game from moderator quality, to the excellent design and composition of the game, to the performance and cohesion of the playerlist. A Game of the Year is meant to be the game that we can all point to later and say "This game was the best game the site could offer that year in terms of Design, Playerlist, and moderating capability." This is a PUBLIC VOTE. [/color]

The

2018 Scummies thread

is located here.
You may nominate a player or moderator for an award using this form.

[Hiraki]

I think we all have some salt one way or another after this game but from the above, I'm gonna give Nexus a shoutout for going above and beyond as mod for the Excellent Moderation award. Not sure if it's "appropriate" but it's not like that's stopped me before. I usually don't care about these sort of things but it popped up in the thread and I read it so I guess I'm sort of obligated now.

[Hoopla]

Oh hey, looks like this finished! Totally peaced out once we got that slew of replacements on D3 and didn't really end up following the rest of the game. Regardless, well played scumbags

I enjoyed dipping my toes back in the water again, but faced motivation issues on D2 -- although it seemed like I wasn't the only one, which led to the game fizzling out for a while. Nice playing with you all, I had fun

[Prism]

Any chance PTs can be released?

[Nexus]

Mason

Scum

[StefanB]

Who blocked MoI night 3? Grey dinies it, scum hasn't got a blocker?

[Nexus]

I think I put 'no result' which I meant "he went nowhere" rather than "you were blocked."

I think that is my bad.

[Gamma Emerald]

I think I put 'no result' which I meant "he went nowhere" rather than "you were blocked."

I think that is my bad.

This reinforces my belief:

We need standardization of the difference between no result and no visit!

I've had to pull teeth on this point so many time across several games! It needs to be done!

[Nexus]

Correct.

I made a mistake. I hold my hands up to that. I apologise.

[Gamma Emerald]

I forgive you. As it is, I believe it shall be the catalyst for greater change!

[northsidegal]

I think I put 'no result' which I meant "he went nowhere" rather than "you were blocked."

I think that is my bad.

This reinforces my belief:

We need standardization of the difference between no result and no visit!

I've had to pull teeth on this point so many time across several games! It needs to be done!

I believe this is already standardized, as mentioned on the Normal Game page. (Under "mechanics which are explicitly non-normal")

[Nexus]

Yeah I just fucked up. Yet another thing for you guys to add to the list of why I'm shit!

[Gamma Emerald]

Okay, but it should be standardized in themes as well imo

[StefanB]

Nexus you are definitly not shit. It was a mistake but it is a game.

[northsidegal]

Yeah I just fucked up. Yet another thing for you guys to add to the list of why I'm shit!

I was just responding to gamma. Mistakes happen.

Okay, but it should be standardized in themes as well imo

Isn't the whole point of theme games that they're not standardized and the mod can design them however they'd like?

[Gamma Emerald]

Sure but there are some things that need policing, that is one imo
I think I know what angle I'm going to pursue in the future on this issue though

[Prism]

Finally have time to give some thoughts:

Spoiler: Commentary on my own play and general scum strategy, spoilered because who cares

From the scum point of view, I think this game was pretty straightforward. There were really only two people me/Implosion wound up being concerned about in Cheetory and Hoopla. Cheet was unlikely to ever be lynched, and his townreads mostly right. I felt I could get a townread from him if I tried Day 2 but in the end I wasn't that confident, felt he was more unpredictable than Hoopla, and in particular had the chance of spurring town to action. I was a lot less concerned that he might scumread me/Implosion but rather that he'd get a solid townblock. Hoopla's disconnection I felt was indicative of being a PR; it had a feel of "I can handle this later" that I think comes more readily from power roles. With her VT flip, I don't think it was the best kill but still think it was solid. I think me/Implosion could have skirted by her another day or two but she wasn't ever getting lynched, just like Cheet, and at the end of the day that's what I most look for in my kills.

On a more immediate tactical view of the game, this was a fun one. Someone-I believe either Hiraki or Piplup-picked up my appeal to CoA to replaceout as a scum to scum appeal. I said it in the scum PT, but this was a hard bet on her worming out of the lynch and for my slot to flip before hers. (I generally heavily prefer being the first scum lynch). It made me happy to have been noticed-I think had I flipped Encryptor, it would have been read how I expected. In the end, I don't regret making that bet on CoA even though I knew the entire time that it wasn't the best move as far as chances of winning went. I really wanted a fun, engaged team win rather than the surgical snoozefests I normally put up. People put a lot of stock in my hard defense of her even after the lynch, and (obviously) I think that was a big mistake. It's not a common tactic, but the entire point is to mix it up, and this was a pretty standard one. Most of the actual nuance in my play was as previously mentioned focused on

expecting me to flip first

, so the fact that it still worked so smoothly was a bit of a surprise.

Personality management and the balancing act was probably the most fun part of this game. My battleplan for survival was basically to get hard townread by Grey and Gamma, who are both relatively familiar with my style. This basically required a flipping of my usual play, and a lot of that meant doing away with my traits that are more generally effective at getting townread. I pretty carefully built a up a huge town meta over the course of the last year or so (intensity of play, hard defense of last-minute lynches, some tonal difference with how I pushed lynches, choices of who I would push with openings posts, in this case a reversion to the same opening tactic I previously played against Imp/Gamma in my first game here, list really just goes on) so that part was cut-out for me and didn't require that much backtracking. This actually was a lot riskier than I initially expected-I anticipated getting scumread by most of the players unfamiliar with me, but I was counting on

some

townreading me anyway. This didn't happen; all of Magna/Cheet/Hoopla/Hiraki scumread me. Fortunately, the other side went a lot

better

than expected to kind of counteract-ex. Math replacing in and immediately picking up on the difference I think was a huge boon, and Stefan had actually read more of my last towngame than I expected him to too. I originally put a 50/50 at me winning the 3 way if it went that far but was a lot more confident in the slot winning out after the OnTheMark lynch. I think a big part of it was luck with the night results/what+who the last PRs were (ie. Didn't confirm a scum or close off many options)

I think the bulk of my mistakes came from lack of time: I didn't follow up on either of the Gamma or Flavor reads until it was far too late. That was suspect, because even if I didn't have time to dig through their meta as town I would have certainly tried to find a way

around

that using just the content in game.

Rest is probably in the scum PT. It wasn't the final game I wanted, but it's OK. I'm going to learn to be happy with it in any case.

That's about it for my play. I guess I'll comment a bit on Implosion-I dunno, I had a lot of fun with Implosion and he didn't play

badly

, and in many ways was an ideal partner. In the end though I was a bit disappointed, and I think it was mainly for attitude. It felt like he was playing not to lose rather than to win. You can be good and win games like that, but I really think you have to have a passion and drive in order to be great, and more importantly to have fun. As far as the town play goes:

I feel like a lot of people generally just blamed the town loss on "Eh just dead game Day 1/2"

shrug shoulders no big deal

. This is true to some extent but it's worth noting the timing; Day 2 everyone took to it with the approach of "Oh I'll kick into gear later." This basically let us select out those who had a chance of being on the right track early without even letting them start. I'm a big fan of the 1 day mentality-when you're town you should be playing like you have

one fucking day

to make your impact and get the game on lock. That doesn't mean to really expect to magically go 3/3 and gather the votes to do it. You have to have that fire and that goal though, or else you're basically just handing scum the reigns. I feel like Grey/Magna and maybe Cheet were the only ones playing with any real fire early on; two of those we had under control enough that we shot a VT over them despite being claimed PRs and the other was gone by N1. By the time everyone else kicked into gear, it was already too late and we were exactly where we wanted to be.

The only town player I'll comment on specifically is Flavor, who needs to learn to adapt his townplay to other people instead of trying to force them to adapt to him. I don't really know what else needs to be said here. You have to head into games with the mindset that every loss and every mislynch is entirely your fault. I do think it's more his fault than towns, but the point is that

it really doesn't matter who is more to blame

. If you think you're leading the horse to water, great, but lead the horse to water and get it to drink, then you'll really be the shit.

The No Result track is pretty unfortunate; one of those things you'll never know what the result would have been had it gone through. I don't really blame Nexus, he went above and beyond this game and like others have said, it happened.

[StefanB]

I can confirm that I found really nothing on anyones ISO (Execpt Cheets) that make me think, yeah that person suspects Prism, so kudos that was a great scumgame of yours.
If It had been riku alone, the lynch would have been easier, should have not let the Hirakilynch go through in the second to last day.
I always try to have the fire day 1 but not allways have it. (And here I was hiding a bit behind Grey, MoI, Hoopla and Cheet)
Cheet was great to play with btw.

[implosion]

If you want to nominate this game or any people in it (moderator or players) for a scummy, please do!