Kids in the Hall Mafia - Game Over, Daves are Supreme

[elvis_knits]

from the Graveyard

I think she is going to kill me when she finds out what her role is

And wait

How was I recruited to the cult if I was untargetable?????

[shaft.ed]

DGB made the whole thing up to protect a strong town read. You were untargetable on the nights she was still in the game

@UT, I agree with your assessment of the recruiting, it's an unsatisfying way to end the game. It was an oversight missed in the game design process. Sorry.

[shaft.ed]

But if the mafia groups are gay and Dave, and I'm neither of those things, I'm not really understanding how I'm any kind of miller

It was because your role PM should leave you to believe you come up guilty to traditional cop investigations

You are Kevin and nobody likes you. You’re not sure what it is, but people have always looked down on you no matter what you do.

They’ll probably think all this killing is your fault too.

But it’s not.

You win with the town.

[Untrod Tripod]

...so I *was* actually a VT?

[Porochaz]

Yeah, once again Im unsure how Elvis would ever think to use her JOAT powers without some sort of indication to do so?

[shaft.ed]

Yes UT, you were a fancily named VT

@Poro the game was "balanced" with elvis' role as a VT. The role was essentially an Easter Egg in case she actually posted a role action at some point. If I remember reading the early game farside, DGB and possibly one other player posted some sort of action that would have triggered. In anyone else's hands the role would have also stayed a VT.

[Untrod Tripod]

Yes UT, you were a fancily named VT

BOOYA!

I think the easter-egg type roles would have worked a LOT better if you had told us that our role PMs were basically riddles

[shaft.ed]

Yes UT, you were a fancily named VT

BOOYA!

I think the easter-egg type roles would have worked a LOT better if you had told us that our role PMs were basically riddles

That;s correcy, I just didn't think I had too
Like I said in the graveyard, I think role PM's have migrated towards more black and white since I last modded

I was really sad Amrun didn't even realize she had a night action

[shaft.ed]

Oh a few other things I wanted to chat about:

3rd Party Treestumpage

I actually liked how this turned out. In the past I've been unsatisfied with how 3rd party roles just disappear off into the sunset after winning. I think keeping them in the game thread is interesting for the player so they have a reason to keep following the game. Also I have really enjoyed the inclusion of verified non-aligned participants in previous games, and I thought this was also a good way to add such a player in a limited fashion.

Tone of Argument

If anything was disappointing about this game (aside from my modding fuckups) it was the atmosphere. I really expected with this player list a totally fun and stress free game with lots of shits and giggles. The abrasiveness started by Umbrage and carried on by Internet Stranger really saddened me. I will also admit I was not proactive enough in stopping it straight away. That comes from me wanting to be a very handsoff mod that lets players go about the game how they want. But I really didn't expect this to be any sort of problem at games outset. Just curious for feedback of how other players would have handled the situation.

"Strategic" Lurking

I know evilpacman was pissing off a good many players (and possibly moderators) with his inattentiveness. However, I will state firmly that I cannot say with 100% confidence that he wasn't really keeping up with the game. It could have easily been a strategy to survive longer in the game. So it's not my call to make as to whether or not a player is really keeping up with the game, and that's not a judgement call a mod should have to make. That said, my replacement/prodding regime could certainly use updating to todays activity levels. Furthermore, if EP was in fact not reading the game, he really should not have continued to play. In the future if you are in such a situation, please contact the mod. I had at least one private offer to replace you if needed. So don't act as if replacement is not an option. Also is such behavior the result of too much blowback on flakers?

[MrBuddyLee]

Yeah, it was definitely a bastard game, but it was still fun. Thanks, shaft.ed.

My first six cop results were "Kison is straight" (Kison flips town), "Poro is straight", "elvis is unnighttargetable", "Lain is straight", (then Lain flips FLF), "UT is straight", "Gurgi is gay", and Lurconis flipped gay town. By that point, I eventually figured my role was a throwaway role, even though my gut told me early on it was a cop role. There was just no way to reconcile the results with any kind of pattern. I actually breadcrumbed having an investigative role so I'd draw the scum roleblock away from anyone with a useful role, LOL.

I liked the Lain/MB situation a lot. I think the recruitability was overkill.. where does FLF's roles indicate that they can recruit?

Scooby bailed out Umbrage D2 and looked bad doing it.. but then lurked his way to victory. MistBeauty did a good job of confusing FLF with her suspicions. Umbrage was a tool. All in all, I suppose DFSB earned a win, though FLF played well too.

* <3 the stump.

* As to the abrasiveness issue, if you really feel that a player is wrecking the enjoyable tone of your game, penalizing them is probably the way to fix that. Take away their night actions for a night. Not sure how you handle it if they're vanilla.

* It felt like evilpacman was flipping coins to make decisions. As long as there's only one player like that in a game, it's fine, there are ways to deal with them. If everyone was a logical, verbose-style player, games would get boring quickly.

[VP Baltar]

I think the 'tone of argument' part gets into the old Adel strategy of "make the game unfun for town players," which is perfectly legitimate. Of course, you as a mod need to step in anytime things become personal (and there probably should have been something said in thread about personal insults regarding gender, intelligence, etc.). However, I think after the initial few salvos from IS, he really was just focused on "scumhunting" and discrediting DGB + Ek as having a grudge against him, which was a perfectly legit and effective strategy, imo. It's the town's responsibility to stop that if they don't like it, which they should have done by lynching IS since he was the source of it.

As far as strategic lurking, I don't think the mod should replace a player who is lurking but responding to prods. That is too much mod intervention. You can blacklist said player after the game, sure. But, replacing a player who is making prod-dodge posts is crossing the line from impartial modding.

I didn't really care for the third-party treestump. I can understand keeping that player alive for a day or two (which is more standard for a treestump), but allowing a third-party continue to play and influence the game for the rest of the game seems excessive.

[shaft.ed]

I didn't really care for the third-party treestump. I can understand keeping that player alive for a day or two (which is more standard for a treestump), but allowing a third-party continue to play and influence the game for the rest of the game seems excessive.

you could have NK'd her if you wanted to. Thinking back that's not really a treestump though

[scooby]

GG, all.

Thx shafted for the effort.

<3 DGB

[Porochaz]

strategic lurking

I hate strategic lurking as a strategy it ruins the game for other players and I was fully frustrated by it, especially as I had a similar experience in a modded game of mine where someone genuinely couldn't get online so I posted a replacement thingie and I got about 5 high quality players who I knew wouldn't disappear ask to replace in. The player came back just as I was signing on to send the role PM and after a quick PM I decided that the game was so close to the end and his promise to keep playing consistently that it was better to keep him in than replace.

Katsuki in my game also suggested multiple times that he didn't want to replace out as it would cause hassle to me to find a replacement. At that point I had 2 (I think) offers of replacement. Do I tell him I have replacements lined up and would rather have them in a game where than commit to it properly, or Katsuki, the original player, playing half heartedly? And what constitutes as mod meddling?

Its interesting because in all the recent games Ive run, Ive kept a core player base that are always active and up for playing my games, it might be wrong but I make sure they know Im running a game before anyone else (and ironically, its players like Flameaxe and Blackberry - along with definitely more active players like StrangerCoug and xvart and more recently reck), I know these players will keep my game going and will have a high post frequency. Unless, of course, like in the last game, you lynch xvart day 1 and kill BBM/Blackberry Night 1. This strategy has helped me keep "strategic lurking" at bay.

@VPBaltar

- I kept prolonging that day, only in a small part to torture everyone. I had no idea who was scum at that point, everytime I sat in front of the computer it was a new pair. I had decided that I needed to read through and hopefully get through to EPM, I don't think I did, I think he just changed his vote to end the day. Which in all honesty was kinda what I would hope he would do and take the decision off my hands. I was relieved when he finally did it. The main reason I was taking so long was RL issues, I had a job interview and I wanted to give EPM a chance to post because my problem with him was "well, what the fuck has he done all game?", I was genuinely going to read over afterwards and vote pretty fast after I had done that, most likely with the Elvis/IS pairing I had mentioned before, as it was the theory I kept coming back to.

Zeek

- Zeek you pissed me off so much in this game, a lot of your theories combined with your claim made me see you as inherently scummy. I couldn't let that go and I was running through a little bit of "I must go with my gut, it WILL be right" so thats why I went after you so hard. I know it was years ago, but you won my first game by essentially sitting in the background and I was determined not to let you do the same thing to me 4 years on.

DeadQT

I struggle to know why you think I was so scummy, I mean a lot of what was driving me for the majority was "Elvis/IS were town" and trying my best to come up with theories around that. Hence what looked like "IS is scum" "HERE LOOK, SOMETHING SHINY" strategy. Is that what made me look scummy? I don't know? I mean apart from Zeek, I wasn't really a major suspicion throughout the game, so it surprises me that you guys thought that.

Tone of Argument

- At the time Umbrage's outburst really surprised me and eventually I went from "he's scum" to "I don't give a flying fuck if he's scum, I just want him out". It's not the way to play any role and it showed. It showed a lack of respect and as a mod I've come down on players for less than that, I don't like getting to hands on as a mod with players still in the game but at the same time, I do feel that as the fundamental rule is "Have fun", a lack of respect directly flies in the face of that.

I have played with IS recently before so I knew what to expect from him, a lot of the early stuff between him, DGB and Elvis seemed to be exacerbated by his "rudeness", it initially bored me and I didn't feel there was a departure from the norm. I did feel sorry for Elvis as I am fond of her as some drunken PM's between her, me, the mod and Oman will attest to (!) but I wanted to make sure the game didn't get caught up in that, especially after the Umbrage lynch. I failed miserably, in that my "shiny things" strategy didn't actually produce any treasure.

I guess to answer that, I would have sent a number of PM's telling people to tone it down and said in thread that I had done so, a lot sooner than you did. Problem is, as you say, how this affects gameplay. IS's play is to grate people and get them riled up. I don't know how you combat a playstyle like that.

Tree stumping

I think you were lucky that you had DGB as your third party, I could see others just waning away. She certainly added an interesting dynamic. However at the same time, Im pretty confident if you had accepted her request to go into the dead QT or didn't do the tree stumping at all, she would have followed the game anyway.

[VP Baltar]

@Porochaz - No worries about delaying things. You were town and it totally makes sense that you would be trying hard to figure things out there. At the time i made that comment in the dead QT, I was under the impression you were scum since you had miraculously survived two of our scum kills. I figured the odds of us getting blocked on two separate nights when we tried to kill you were pretty much nill (which was true), so I had to assume you were scum with some kind of bulletproof going on.

@ shaft.ed - I know this was kind of bastardish for a game, but there was A LOT of hidden information it seems. I'll probably need some time to think about if that info balances out at all, but there was just a lot behind the curtain and I don't know if anyone could have guessed at all this.

[shaft.ed]

you weren't supposed to guess all this
town was supposed to lynch scummy players and scum were supposed to not get lynched

[Regfan]

I only watched the second half of this game, but I actually really enjoyed the concept of a third party remaining in the game as a treestump, it added a new and interesting element to the game. I do think that the recruitment mechanic at the end and some of the players not knowing their exact roles like hidden JOAT was overly bastard though but overall I think that DFSBs did deserve their win.

In regards to the tone or argument I was reading a lot of IS's comments as crossing the line and moving into unneeded and unwarranted personal attacks and made parts of the game cringe-worthy to follow. I don't think there's anything mod-wise that could have been done about it though, modkill and force replace would have been too extreme and a warning would likely have done minimal as he'd have claimed he's just following his usual playstyle.

[Mist Beauty]

Aside from a few mentions, no one ever suspected scooby. He played extremely well given two deaths from not the best scumpartners, fooling everyone. Amazing job, scooby.

I played quite poorly in game, but well in the QTs. Being a troll in our neighbor QT was pretty fun, but I'm not sure what would have happened if I decided to send in the Lurconis kill. I can't believe ranting about silly, hysterical women EK and DGB worked for so long.

This was an awesome game shaft.ed, and I prefer role PMs like this far more than role PMs which detail EXACTLY what happens. This added many interesting elements to the game. I'm slightly annoyed that DFSB was so obvious compared to FLF, but it doesn't really matter. I'm curious about EK being converted. Wasn't she permanently jailkept? How did scooby target her?

[ZeekLTK]

IS I wish you had recruited me. I seemed to get along with you and VP the most during this game haha. That would have been sweet if I had joined your team.

I wish you guys had listened to me on, what Day 5 when I said we HAD to kill elvis OR IS and NOT LG.

If we had, town would have won (or at least gone into LyLo with Poro/pacman/scooby instead of being end gamed).


More thoughts later since I just skimmed for now.

[ZeekLTK]

@Regfan: I called scooby scum early on. Vanilla claim was obvscum to me, but no one listened.

And, oh hey, every person who claimed vanilla... 3 turned out to be scum, one was a miller. lol

[ZeekLTK]

lol I just read FLF QT! Damn, I was so close to being recruited haha!

[Kison]

ELVIS HOW COULD YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the game, Shaft.ed!

[Untrod Tripod]

Aside from a few mentions, no one ever suspected scooby. He played extremely well given two deaths from not the best scumpartners, fooling everyone. Amazing job, scooby.

both DGB and I nailed him the day I got lynched

[Untrod Tripod]

granted we didn't follow up on it, but still

[DrippingGoofball]

You didn't make me cry... I hope I didn't offend you, I had very little doubt that you were lying about your opinions that you wanted town to win, however I was aware of your loyalty to elvis and your hatred of IS, whilst I did respected your opinion, (although tried not to show it) you really had no reason to lie once you had won , my own opinion trumped it.

I'm not loyal to elvis if she's scum... and I don't hate IS. He was obv-scum from his first post, that's all. His behavior was in furtherance of his wincon.