Mini 188: Texas Holdem Mafia - GAME OVER!

[Quagmire]

Quagmire:
Did your ability protect you the first night? The way you phrased it, it sounded like it wouldn’t, which is one reason I thought you were lying. (Thok targeted you Night 1.)

I dunno. Probably.

[Thesp]

Thesp:

<snip>I had EmpTyger pegged as townie until the day where he tried to choreograph the killers' choices. Good job up until then. Still won anyways, good job.<snip>

Thank you; I knew that would all but give me away. I actually was sorely tempted to claim scum, and reveal that I held *another* ace! But at that point the SK/second killing group might not be aware of the full situation, and I wanted to keep up the illusion for their sake. And as Aelyn and LML can attest to, historically my humorous attempts at claiming scum backfire...
I was a little suspicious of you Day 2 for pumping MoS for information. I’m not sure whether it was correct to end the day when you did, since we hadn’t gone all-in yet. But you were correct in that if we found the SK, we could win in then and there, so it was probably better to err on the side of haste. (In theory. In practice, all-in rewards and the endgame rule changed the math, and I never bothered to recalculate.)

And for the record, I realized afterwards that my “honestly, I don’t care what you’re ‘beginning to think’ about me” in [250] could be interpreted a lot more harshly than I intended, so I probably deserved your retort in [251]. I was intending to communicate that the game would not affected by whether you thought me protown or antitown; I should have said “…about my alignment” instead of “…about me” to make my meaning clear. I apologize for the disrespectful phrasing; it was entirely unintentional.

Thanks. I didn't mind being a little antagonistic during the claims process, with the mason claim and all. Aelyn set things up beautifully and gave us the best chance we could have. In retrospect, we probably should have all-inned you instead of MoS, because we were almost certain you were scum, but I didn't realize it until the "Game Over" post.

And I took no offense to your words, you were scum anyway.

Well played, flaming scummity scums.

The biggest concern I had with the setup was the

ad hoc

tailoring of mechanics. The drinks/tips thing should have never been introduced unless it was from the beginning design, and the appearance of changing of all-in rules and bonuses midstream felt unusual.

[LoudmouthLee]

I originally added one adhoc rule, but it was going to get out of hand (with the tips, bribing the mod), but abandoned that idea midstream.

[Dranko20]

Lol, well, thing is, I was trying to act as scummy as possible because alot of people would metagame me as "oh, he must be innocent cause he's acting so damn scummy" when I claimed AK i knew someone else would have it, but i was hoping I could convince half the town to lynch that person then are there.

Too bad it was the uber confirmed inncent Aeyln, otherwise I might of had a chance.

[Mastermind of Sin]

thanks for the sympathy, thok. it didn't help that the two pro-town people left completely didn't believe me, and so when I figured out who the mafia was, they were already set against me and wouldn't listen. I probably would've claimed SK if they hadn't all-inned me right away. I'd rather have had the town win that one.

[EmpTyger]

Thesp:

In retrospect, we probably should have all-inned you instead of MoS, because we were almost certain you were scum, but I didn't realize it until the "Game Over" post.

You couldn’t. I had too many chips too be all-ined by 2 people.
If you all-in Thok, though, things would have gotten tricky. I would have to decide who would log on first: Aelyn or Thok. If Thok, then he and I can all-in MoS and win. But if Aelyn arrives before Thok, then *I* have to be the second person to all-in Thok to have any chance at a mafia win, and MoS plays kingmaker.


Dranko:
Ah, okay. The problem was that a vigilante, rajrhcpfreak’s killer, and the actual AK holder all would have known you were lying. It still might have been worth it if you managed to draw out anyone other than Aelyn, because we might have gained enough information to discern the SK in time for the Day 2 all-in. I was worried you were expecting Thok or me to all-in you. [We had discussed this briefly Night 2, but we were hardly optimistic enough to plan for the situation in which 2 confirmed innocents *and* the doctor would be dead in the morning!]


Mod:
Let me first repeat that the game was very fun. But I found that 3 differences made it feel like a different game, something slightly different from mafia.

1) Voting was inferior to all-ining; there was no reason to lynch. So the idea of building a consensus and forming majority was obsolete. This also removed one of the town’s main disadvantages: that they do not know who to trust since they can’t tell who else shares their alignment. While such knowledge would be helpful, it would never be crucial to act - lynching was effectively unilateral. This also contradicted the idea of “informed minority vs. uninformed majority”. (The last day, when all-ining required 2 people, could have conceivably removed this barrier, but it was impossible for anyone to plan for this, since no one had prior knowledge of that rule change. See my third point below.)


2) Balance. Forget about the mafia and town; I honestly can’t see any reasonable way for the SK to win an endgame scenario, although admittedly most of my analysis was without the 2 person endgame all-in rule. (This actually had me thinking that probably had to be a second mafia, maybe a 2 person mafia possibly with 1 shot of unnightkillability was my best guess.) I’m wondering if this was why Maximus left?

Unlike lynching, where there is an equal chance of hitting every alignment, all-ining is more likely to hit antitowns. Even when it misses, it confirms an innocent, so every townsperson doubles as at least a one-shot cop. The alleged counterbalancing (the reward for a successful all-in) actually favors the town even more- the rewards are useless if the mafia have all-ined the SK. (If the SK is alive, then that means that we sacrificed a mafia to prevent a mafia death- no net gain- or sacrificed a mafia for an investigation, and I can’t think of a situation in which that would be worth more than the mafia member’s life.) In any event, the town can at least get just as much use out of it. (Though I’m not sure how the 2 person all-ining would have interacted with the rewards, so the endgame analysis might not be correct.)

Furthermore, the power roles seemed to be more powerful for the town than an average balanced setup. Every role, except for the post-limiter and arguably the doublevoter (and the cop, if he were insane?), was at least as powerful as in a conventional setup. A cop in this case is also a vigilante, since he doesn’t need to convince the town of anything to act on their results. (In fact a successful night 1 investigation would have allowed him to go all-in, win unnightkillability, and repeat.) The hider’s unlynchability isn’t that useful (though it might have swung an endgame), but it didn’t make him less powerful. The hider and the doctor could have mutually protected themselves at night and would never be in danger of being lynched during the day, and obviously couldn’t be all-ined. The masons were theoretically as strong as the mafia- they had knowledge of others’ alignment, and while they could not nightkill their “daykill” was more potent- and they had all of the town’s resources to aid them. Even rajrhcpfreak’s relatively useless doublevoting ability could doom the mafia in an endgame.

I don’t see what advantages scum ever got to make up for these protown effects. If anything, we lost an ability- we couldn’t counterclaim. If 2 contradictory claims occurred, the claimants would just go all-in on each other, and scum would automatically lose that encounter. Meaning there some of the more powerful roles we’d be helpless to do anything about once they came forward, effectively confirming them. (Which luckily never happened.)


3) The race factor. Since all-ining was so valuable and consensus-building unnecessary, Day 3 (and the end of Day 2) turned into a metagame of who could all-in first, hence login first, which the entire game wound up hinging upon. Someone playing an otherwise perfect game could have lost because of real-life constraints, time-zones, or a bad connection. The unexpected rule change requiring 2 people to all-in ruined any strategizing the mafia or masons might have done to work around this- we had no choice but to race to see who would logon first (and second).


(The unpredictability of the rules might be considered a fourth problem, but I’m not going to count it. Arguably it affected balance, since the mafia lost the edge of being relatively more informed than the town was decreased. But any mafia game other than the most basic is going to have some element of “outguessing the mod”; I’m not convinced this game’s setup was different in that regard. I do think there were situations where nonoptimal choices were made optimal by the knowledge available, but off the top of my head, I can’t think of how that’s different from, say, a basic vigilante’s decisions.)


Again, I want to emphasize that I *did* have fun (and not just because I won!). I don’t mean this as complaining (given the outcome, I don’t really have a right to)- I’m just trying to give some feedback about an interesting mafia experience.

[LoudmouthLee]

Night #1-

Mafia targets Quagmire - Unnightkillable
Maximus targets StD
Kristocker protects Thesp
StD checks Iammars - Not Guilty
Bamboomaner limits Iammars to 5 posts.

Night #2-
Mafia targets Kristocker
Maximus/MoS targers Raj
Kristocker protects Iammars BUT....
Iammars buys a beer for MoS (SK).

Night #3-
Mafia / SK targets Quagmire

Thanks everyone for playing!

[Thesp]

(snip)
Again, I want to emphasize that I *did* have fun (and not just because I won!). I don’t mean this as complaining (given the outcome, I don’t really have a right to)- I’m just trying to give some feedback about an interesting mafia experience.

Quoted for truthery.

[MeMe]

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