Micro 885: Crown on the Ground (Game Over)

[Oversoul]

Note to self: have Dunnstral and Pops review more games.

[Oversoul]

To absolve Micc, I did not run that Alphabetical rule by him.

[Doctor Drew]

I could never really get my mind around this game, I was even trying to force reads to see where they would go just to create some heat on myself..... obviously that backfired.

This game was not my proudest mafia moment.

And correspondence, I came to really love your posting style.

Can you at least say if I have played with a head?

[popsofctown]

This setup was indeed batshit scumsided. I played based on the assumption that the scum crown abilities were either "You are a multivoter", "You may perform an additional kill at night", or "If your partner is crowned this game too, immediately win the game". All of those would have left the game

still

abjectly townsided, actually, but I was trying to give Micc and Oversoul the benefit of the doubt.

All setups can and should punish D1 massclaim. This one does punish day 1 massclaim, the town is even more greatly ridiculously advantaged if the claims are delayed and the mafia shoot unconfirmable town, such as my own slot when I was crowned. I don't agree with Dunnstral that town benefitted from the massclaim, it was kind of impervious to the massclaim because of how townsided this setup was to begin with, but if we had say mislynched Correspondence day 1 and kept all the PRs, an unconfirmable player could get NKed night one. There's actually so many confirmable town in the game that spending

any

nightkills on an unconfirmable player guarantees that an additional Innocent Child will participate in LyLo. That's absurd.

Alphabet rule was indeed dumb.

I didn't notice that crown votes were listed in the order they were placed. I try to watch out for modslips like that when I mod. It can be particularly bad if you cause information a player didn't know would be public to become public.


I don't know Micc or his review record super well. I don't really see any reason the listmod and the go-to reviewer for a queue need to be the same person though. The desirable qualities are indeed different. As far as I have noticed Micc has done an excellent job executing all of his listmod duties, aside from "completing review of Crown on the Ground" and in that case only if that is truly a function of being a listmod.

I forgot/overlooked loss of NK control, and acknowledging that I'm not sure I can stick with, town would have won even if the setup was balanced. The players alive in the second and third day phases would have gotten their two lynches even without the 1-2 clears that should not have been in the setup, but I should consider that if the mafia can choose to have a different set of players alive days 2 and 3 things can go differently to an even greater extent than a full clear.

[Oversoul]

This setup was indeed batshit

scumsided

.

Did you mean townsided?

[Oversoul]

There's so many things wrong with this statement it's shocking. I will go over all of them.

First of all, I'll point out that one of the mafia crown powers is a role cop. What's the point of that if town massclaims on day 1? It becomes a useless role, so if you balanced around that you really shouldn't have.
Second, mafia didn't really get to choose anything - either they kill both of the masons (and the bodyguard by extension), or they automatically lose the game. If there was an actual choice where a townie had a real crown power... why should mafia be driven into a corner by towns bad play?

Town mass claiming all of their roles on day 1 should put them in a position worse off than where they started. Instead, the opposite happened, and even though the entire town was outted with their roles, AND we lynched town, AND the crown power was very tame (neighborizor), AND we knew what the crown power was because it targetted mafia.... it still felt like we were the ones being cornered - and we were - because the setup was straight up broken.

Mafia had absolutely no answer to the entire town massclaiming on day 1 - that's a design FLAW, not a feature. That's not how setups are designed on this site generally, and yes mass claiming day 1 is, and really should be, bad play. I'd go as far as to say that a mass claim from town on day 1 should almost always result in a loss, so the fact that town wasn't hampered in the slightest, and instead seemed to have benefited from this is pretty bad and goes against a lot of the design principles I've seen on this site.

And you don't deserve to say that this is how you balance your games, from now on if you want to continue to design setups like this please say it's how you "make" your games - a small distinction, but you're not implying that you're looking out for balance, it's just how it is.

I want to address this when I have time, which is not right now. I think I should put the clarification that massclaim occurs very easily in minis/micros. You were a part of two micros where this occurred. This game and Ircher's micro normal where you were friendly neighbor. I think that is an inherent problem in micros though.

[popsofctown]

yeah townsided, brain.

[RCEnigma]

What I failed to mention, but definitely noticed, was that the crown votes at the end seemed to be ordered in the same order that they were made. I'm not sure if that's the case or if it was just a coincidence, but you'll notice that I was the last person to vote for Pops - if I was town I would have absolutely pointed to that as mafia who was deciding where to vote in their pt vs town who knew what they were picking going into twilight. I'm not certain if it was clear that this information would have been public or not, or if it's just extra stuff that was added. It does mention that the vote result would be revealed so... I guess it was implied, though some additional clarity in the rules would have been nice. Actually, it shouldn't be showing that information at all in my opinion, but as long as it's clear what is happening the specifics don't matter as much. Nobody else seems to have caught onto that this game, but it is the kind of thing that mods really need to be keeping in mind instead of kind of just doing things.
With that said, there were townies who didn't even realize that the crown vote was made public, or who didn't think it mattered (which is bad play and should contribute to your faction losing IMO).

This feels like a scum observation that town can't really base anything on. Like sure I get what you're saying but we can't know if it's randomized or not and that uncertainty makes it weak to begin with. I guess it depends how allegations are responded to but that's another thing.

[popsofctown]

Every little bit counts.

[Menalque]

Looking forward to reading this once I have some time

Sad I couldn’t replace in, although I would have struggled due to general overgamedness so maybe it was for the best I was only 3rd in line

Congrats to town

[Oversoul]

There's so many things wrong with this statement it's shocking. I will go over all of them.

First of all, I'll point out that one of the mafia crown powers is a role cop. What's the point of that if town massclaims on day 1? It becomes a useless role, so if you balanced around that you really shouldn't have.

Role Cop can also see people's roles after Crowning. You are incorrect that it is useless, just less useful in the event of a massclaim.

Second, mafia didn't really get to choose anything - either they kill both of the masons (and the bodyguard by extension), or they automatically lose the game. If there was an actual choice where a townie had a real crown power... why should mafia be driven into a corner by towns bad play?

I acknowledge that the masons undercut many of the play elements that I wanted to incorporate. I do think that it was an issue to have mafia need to successfully lynch 3 out of the 4 VTs. That said, I do think that RCEnigma could have gotten killed if the scumteam pushed that way when he claimed.

Town mass claiming all of their roles on day 1 should put them in a position worse off than where they started. Instead, the opposite happened, and even though the entire town was outted with their roles, AND we lynched town, AND the crown power was very tame (neighborizor), AND we knew what the crown power was because it targetted mafia.... it still felt like we were the ones being cornered - and we were - because the setup was straight up broken.

Why should mass claim necessarily harm town? In my opinion, power roles are not meant to catch scum. They are meant to prevent mislynches.

Mafia had absolutely no answer to the entire town massclaiming on day 1 - that's a design FLAW, not a feature. That's not how setups are designed on this site generally, and yes mass claiming day 1 is, and really should be, bad play. I'd go as far as to say that a mass claim from town on day 1 should almost always result in a loss, so the fact that town wasn't hampered in the slightest, and instead seemed to have benefited from this is pretty bad and goes against a lot of the design principles I've seen on this site.

I would argue that town were harmed in this game because a mason died the first night. As I noted in the dead thread, scum would have been better off if the bodyguard was 1-shot or if they had a 1-shot roleblocker of their own.

And you don't deserve to say that this is how you balance your games, from now on if you want to continue to design setups like this please say it's how you "make" your games - a small distinction, but you're not implying that you're looking out for balance, it's just how it is.

I am sorry you seem so personally offended by this game. I apologize that you did not have fun. I do think it is only fair to point out that scum's own actions could have lead to a different result. You by your very nature have a lowkey, lurking style of play. That works in large games, but I do not think it works in smaller games, especially micros. It is unfortunate that your style of play in particular was punished this game.

That said, I think this game was doomed from the start. Even though EV states two ICs in 9p is scumfavored, I do not think this is true in practice. The type of mechanic I wanted to explore greatly benefits from a larger game mode and allows for different power roles to be used on both sides of the ball. It also makes the mechanic itself more interesting as choosing the IC to crown was essentially a waste of time for everyone involved.

I want to again say I apologize to the players in this game who expected better balance. In particular, I apologize to Chemist, Dunnstral, and Egduf. The game was ultimately not fair to your faction.

Since this game turned out super townsided, I guess that means I have to make my next game super scumsided.

I promise for my next game I will be more diligent in examining the balance. I will probably not be running a game until Christmas time.

Thank you all for playing!

[Correspondence]

Open 767: Nomination Mafia

Moderator:

chennisden

Backup Mod:

Nancy Drew 39

Players

1. Arcfield
2. Titus
3. Joey_
4. mutantdevle
5. NorwegianboyEE
6. Correspondence
7. Kokichi Oma
8. Dongempire
9.
10.
11.

Dear friends,

We wish to cordially invite you to consider undertaking the enclosed adventure with us. We feel your companionship on this endeavor would be mutually enjoyable. Please consider our request, and RSVP with Lord Chennisden.

Fond regards,
Correspondence

[Micc]