Micro 242: Les Miserables Mafia (Game Over)

[penguin_alien]

Come with me, where chains will never bind you
All your schemes, at last, at last, behind you.
Mod and players, you’ve finished up with this game.
Forgive me all my vote miscounts, and read this one last mod post:

Check it out, I’ll show you all the Role PMs
Here are thanks, to players and reviewers.
And remember, the truth that I believe in:
To play the game ‘Mafia’ is to see the face of God!

Well, not really. But the dead thread’s above, and the scum QT is in the role PMs. The neighborizer QT wasn’t available until Night Two, so I didn’t link it.

Spoiler: Role PMs in full

Town

Welcome, Maemuki/Ghostlin!

“You can take, you can give. Let him be, let him live. If I die, let me die.”

You are Jean Valjean,

Town Bodyguard,

a noble ex-con. You are aligned with the Town and are out to foil those who would see you become even more miserable.

Powers:

You have your (singing) voice and your vote. Each day you may post in the game thread here and vote for whomever you want lynched.

During the night you may PM me the name of another player to target. If that player is targeted to die at night, you will die in their place.

You win when all non-town-aligned players are dead and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Please confirm that you received and understand your role via PMing me your role name.

Welcome, shos!

“Lord, let me find him, that I may see him safe behind bars. I will never rest till then!”

You are Javert,

Town Obsessive Tracker

, a single-minded police inspector. You are aligned with the Town and are out to foil those who would see you become even more miserable.

Powers:

You have your (singing) voice and your vote. Each day you may post in the game thread here and vote for whomever you want lynched.

During the night you may PM me the name of another player to target: you will be told who that person visited at night. Because you are Obsessive, once you have targeted a player, you may not target anyone else until that player is dead. You may continue to target them each night, but you may not change targets.

You win when all non-town-aligned players are dead and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Please confirm that you received and understand your role via PMing me your role name.

Welcome, Malakittens!

“For God’s sake, please stay till I am sleeping. And tell Cosette I love her, and I’ll see her when I wake!”

You are Fantine,

Town Restless Spirit

, a self-sacrificing mother. You are aligned with the Town and are out to foil those who would see you become even more miserable.

Powers:

You have your (singing) voice and your vote. Each day you may post in the game thread here and vote for whomever you want lynched.

If you are killed, you may no longer post in the thread as normal. However, you will retain your vote until the end of the next day phase. You may change your vote as often as you like, but you must cast your vote by PMing the mod rather than by posting in the thread.

You win when all non-town-aligned players are dead and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Please confirm that you received and understand your role via PMing me your role name.

Welcome, Lord Mhork!

“Took the letter, like you said. I met her father at the door. He said he would give it—don’t think I can stand any more.”

You are Eponine,

Town Mailman

, a lonely and lovelorn street girl. You are aligned with the Town and are out to foil those who would see you become even more miserable.

Powers:

You have your (singing) voice and your vote. Each day you may post in the game thread here and vote for whomever you want lynched.

During the night you may write a note of no more than fifty words to be delivered by the mod to the player of your choosing. NOTE: you may not send this directly to the target; it must be PM’d to me before the end of the night phase. Violating this will get you mod-killed.

You win when all non-town-aligned players are dead and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Please confirm that you received and understand your role via PMing me your role name.

Welcome, elleheathen!

“Give me brandy on my breath, and I’ll breathe them all to death!”

You are Grantaire,

Town Daytime Drink Vendor

, a very reluctant and frequently drunk revolutionary. You are aligned with the Town and are out to foil those who would see you become even more miserable.

Powers:

You have your (singing) voice and your vote. Each day you may post in the game thread here and vote for whomever you want lynched.

Once during each day you may PM me the name of any living player. They will be told that they have been sent a drink. This must be done before a lynch has been reached for the day and before the end of the day phase.

You win when all non-town-aligned players are dead and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Please confirm that you received and understand your role via PMing me your role name.

Welcome, bv310!

“Let others rise to take our place until the earth is free!”

You are Enjolras,

Town 1-Shot Neighborizer

, a charismatic student revolutionary. You are aligned with the Town and are out to foil those who would see you become even more miserable.

Powers:

You have your (singing) voice and your vote. Each day you may post in the game thread here and vote for whomever you want lynched.

During the night once per game you may PM me the name of another living player. You and that player will receive a private QT that may be used to communicate at night. Neither of you will be told the other’s alignment. If your shot is unsuccessful, you retain it.

You win when all non-town-aligned players are dead and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Please confirm that you received and understand your role via PMing me your role name.

Welcome, Grimgroove!

“Good evening, dear Inspector, lovely evening, my dear. I know this man, my friends, his name’s Inspector Javert!”

You are Gavroche,

Town Follower

, a plucky street urchin. You are aligned with the Town and are out to foil those who would see you become even more miserable.

Powers:

You have your (singing) voice and your vote. Each day you may post in the game thread here and vote for whomever you want lynched.

During the night you may PM me the name of another player to target: you will be told what type of action that player took at night. You will not know who they targeted.

You win when all non-town-aligned players are dead and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Please confirm that you received and understand your role via PMing me your role name.

Mafia:

Welcome, funkybike1!

“Master of the ‘ouse, keeper of the zoo, ready to relieve ‘em of a sou or two!”

You are M. Thenardier,

Mafia Redirector

, a vile innkeeper-con artist-thief. You and your Mafia partner in crime, Kazekirimaru/mastin2, Mme. Thenardier (

Mafia Jailkeeper

) are out to swindle, rob, and demoralize everyone else in the show.

Powers:

You have your (singing) voice and your vote. Each day you may post in the game thread here and vote for whomever you want lynched.

You and Y may communicate at any time here

During the night you may:

Designate any living Mafia member to shoot another player.

Choose a player to target each night to redirect their action to another player of your choosing.

You win when your faction members are the only living players or nothing can prevent that outcome.

You know that Cosette, Marius, and the Bishop are not in the game. You may request a role PM for any of these characters at any time.

Please confirm that you received and understand your role via PMing me your role name.

Welcome, Kazekirimaru/mastin2!

“Enough of that, or I’ll forget to be nice. You ‘eard me ask for something, and I never ask twice!”

You are Mme. Thenardier,

Mafia Jailkeeper

, a ruthless innkeeper-con artist-thief. You and your Mafia partner in crime, funkybike1, M. Thenardier (

Mafia Redirector

) are out to swindle, rob, and demoralize everyone else in the show.

Powers:

You have your (singing) voice and your vote. Each day you may post in the game thread here and vote for whomever you want lynched.

You and Y may communicate at any time here

During the night you may:

Designate any living Mafia member to shoot another player.

Choose a player to target each night. Their action will be blocked and they will be rendered immune to night kills for that night.

You win when your faction members are the only living players or nothing can prevent that outcome.

You know that Cosette, Marius, and the Bishop are not in the game. You may request a role PM for any of these characters at any time.

Please confirm that you received and understand your role via PMing me your role name.

Fakeclaims (to be sent out upon request):

Welcome, X!

“Oh Papa, dear Papa, in your eyes I am just like a child who is lost in the woods!”

You are Cosette,

Town (?)

, a naïve and sheltered young orphan. You are aligned with the Town and are out to foil those who would see you become even more miserable.

Powers:

You have your (singing) voice and your vote. Each day you may post in the game thread here and vote for whomever you want lynched.

During the day/night, you may…?

You win when all non-town-aligned players are dead and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Please confirm that you received and understand your role via PMing me your role name.

Welcome, X!


“I did not live until today. How can I live if we are parted?”

You are Marius,

Town (?)

, a passionate student revolutionary. You are aligned with the Town and are out to foil those who would see you become even more miserable.

Powers:

You have your (singing) voice and your vote. Each day you may post in the game thread here and vote for whomever you want lynched.

During the day/night you may…?

You win when all non-town-aligned players are dead and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Please confirm that you received and understand your role via PMing me your role name.

Welcome, X!

“But remember this, my brother. See in this some higher plan. You must use this precious silver to become an honest man.”

You are the Bishop,

Town (?)

, a moral and charitable man of the cloth. You are aligned with the Town and are out to foil those who would see you become even more miserable.

Powers:

You have your (singing) voice and your vote. Each day you may post in the game thread here and vote for whomever you want lynched.

During the day/night you may…?

You win when all non-town-aligned players are dead and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Please confirm that you received and understand your role via PMing me your role name.

Game Actions:
Day 1: elleheathen sends Malakittens a drink (successful)

Night 1: Ghostlin protects mastin2 (successful)
shos tracks Malakittens (successful, locks in Malakittens as his target until death)
Lork Mhork sends a letter to elleheathen (successful but futile)
Grimgroove follows bv310 (failed due to mastin2 jailkeeping Grimgroove)
bv310 neighborizes Lork Mhork (successful, created a completely unused QT entitled ‘The Barricade’)

mastin2 jailkeeps Grimgroove and kills elleheathen (both successful)


Modly thoughts before I throw the thread open again:

Thanks to everyone for playing! Extra thanks to mastin2 and Ghostlin for replacing in. My reviewers, Faraday, N, JacobSavage, and chkflip, made this game far better than it otherwise would have been, and I truly appreciate their help and guidance. Special shout-out to JacobSavage for back-up modding.

I was a bit concerned going into this that scum had too much power. As it worked out, only shos got a particularly useful result from his PR, and that was a negative—he would have been locked into tracking Malakittens nowhere for the rest of the game. There were small things that would have been useful, like the neighborhood sorting out the slightly scum-reads bv310 and Lord Mhork, and Malakittens holding onto a vote for an extra phase.

I did decide to let Lord Mhork quote his letter to elleheathen. As was pointed out in-thread, there was absolutely no guarantee that anything he claimed to write had been written, and since it wasn’t part of a QT where communication could go back and forth, I figured it was null. Had bv310 or Lord Mhork had a chance to use their QT and wanted to quote from it, I would have required them to paraphrase.

In future theme games, I would definitely specifically assign the scum fake claims. Quite frankly I’d envisioned The Bishop as the JK fakeclaim for him restraining Valjean from his former life while protecting him at the same time, and Cosette as the Redirector for her distracting Marius from his initial plans, with Marius to be available if scum wanted two prominent characters to claim with some role fudging/fabrication. My intentions were to give them flexibility, but I think it backfired.

I’d appreciate any feedback about the game and my modding—I strive to improve and to provide good experiences for players.


Edit: Sorry this didn’t go up last night; by the time I finished with other stuff the site wasn’t working for me.

[shos]

Woah, we won!
I have to say i expected my hammer to be a mislynch. This game was awesome, each second of it.

Thank yiu very much everyone, mod, reviewers, and players! This was very enjoyable.

[shos]

Lol reading scum qt=epicness.

[Ghostlin]

Hey, Mastin, aren't you glad I replaced in?

Actually, I enjoyed this game. But what really undid Mastin was his 'one white lie.'

[Grimgroove]

And his challenge to ME, the Great Grimgroove !!!

Good game everyone! Really enjoyed this one as well .I loved the set-up and mastin put up a great, great fight. A lot of scum would give up or would at least let demotivation shine through their posts after encountering the blow of having your mafia redirector lynched. I think the set-up was balanced, but the D1 lynch of the redirector was the worst thing that could happen to scum, and town made that happen.

I'd call it a well-deserved win, against a good scumteam. The sweetest kind of victories.

@scumQT: Thank you for all that scum-meta mastin. I'll be using it.

[shos]

GG, I have to say that I think we are a formidable town pair, even if I'm scum.

[Lord Mhork]

Yay! Good game everyone and thank you P_A for the funs.

[mastin2]

But what really undid Mastin was his 'one white lie.'

Actually, I attribute that one white lie to being what allowed me to make it as far as I did. Let's assume you bought a totally-BSed reason for a town-me to jailkeep Grimgroove. (Any reason I'd have to jailkeep GG would be BS, because my jailkeep of him was entirely scum-oriented.)

The day would have been much shorter. Because people would have taken all claims at face value, and lynched mine. The paranoia about there being someone lying about their role, the ability to not take claims at face value, was my only realistic shot at winning the game. Be honest, Ghostlin. Would you have lynched Grimgroove if I claimed to have jailkept him? Shos if I jailkept GG? Mhork? Malakittens?

Okay. So maybe Mhork. Maaaaaaaaaybe bv. But by then, night action dictation would have outted me anyway.

This is why I don't like role madness games. I'm sure scum wins happen in them, but every role madness game I've been in has been a town win. They're simply too swingy, and too setup-reliant. I wasn't lynched for being a scummy-as-hell player. (Though, honestly, I felt like I WAS a scummy-as-hell player. ) I was lynched as part of a plan that involved setup spec and town coordination of roles. Of having broken the setup.

The game was basically a foregone conclusion once funky flipped. I had no viable fakeclaim other than my truthful one, no viable character (I realized when reading PA's fakeclaims that they wouldn't hold up), and no viable angle other than the one I took. It got me to have a plan. One that probably wouldn't have worked--but to have one all the same. I couldn't see a path to victory without the little lie.

That said, while I felt that I played strongly, and overall stronger than Mhork and Grimgroove, gotta give credit where credit's due; I got lynched and they didn't.

Also, fun fact. Mhork (among others) said that no-lynching today would be horrible for the town. In actuality, a no-lynch for the town on D2 was the second-worst thing that could have happened to me. (Lynching me, of course, being the worst. ) Grimgroove and Mhork, both being my only viable mislynch options, had night actions easily confirmable. I couldn't realistically get a mislynch on anyone else (save for maybe-shos), and only being able to block one of them, the other would be confirmed town come D3, sealing a town win.

[Lord Mhork]

>.>
You're play wasn't that strong though. You were power tunneling me and it was very obviously bad. Sure roles helped clear some people, but you were all around scummier than GG, so I was more than willing to string you up.

Not to say you weren't doing alright, but your tunneling was definitely major scummy and not necessarily 'better' than me or GG. GG was obv town yesterday anyway.

[Kazekirimaru]

Good job, town :3

[Grimgroove]

GG, I have to say that I think we are a formidable town pair, even if I'm scum.

True that!

mastin, you were good in appearing town (very good), but you were bad at convincing others to mislynch anyone. Both when you pushed Mhork and me, you never managed to convince anyone we were scum.

You were on your way to a Mhork mislynch, but like the line you quoted in your qt coming from me sates:

""Also props to mastin. He makes no sense but it seems he was correct about all his reads. Reminiscent of an oracle, talking jibberish but truthful and full of wisdom at the core.""

you were talking jibberish and never convinced me through it. You did convince me to look into Mhork's ISO and make myself crazy, but if you had come up with that ISO pointing to the possibility of a funky-Mhork connection yourself, it might have gotten you further. As it was, I shortly convinced myself of it and called you wise for seeing what I had not seen earlier, but your case on him still was pretty bad.

Props to a game well-played, doubts were lingering until the very end, but town beat you fair and square.

[Malakittens]

This was a good game. Sorry about being inactive D1 and Mastin you are right. Il never trust you 'gain

[shos]

Looking forward to playing against GG-scum or with...
I see you've joined a game I joined, so we'll see hehe

[mastin2]

mastin, you were good in appearing town (very good), but you were bad at convincing others to mislynch anyone. Both when you pushed Mhork and me, you never managed to convince anyone we were scum.

That's because I don't believe in relying on strongarm tactics. Ultimately, I could theoretically strongman my way through a lynch on one or MAYBE two of you, but then I'd reach a dead-end. Getting people to mislynch is part of scum play, yes, but not the focus of scum play; the focus of scum play is to set up that endgame and make sure you have a realistic chance of WINNING said endgame.

In this case, had I forced the lynches through, then that would have been detrimental to the endgame I had in mind. By focusing so much on the short-term, I'd sacrifice the long-term goal I was focusing on achieving. See, a town-Mastin is typically quite short-sighted. I'm an idiot. I'll have plans, but they're not exactly well-thought-out ones. A scum-Mastin is always aiming for the long-term. In this case, by sacrificing the short-term gain of pushing through the Mhork/GG mislynches, I was hoping to get a long-term gain of potentially still being seen as town in 3p lylo.

Would it have worked? Probably not. But would it have worked better than purely strongarming my way through? I still think the answer's yes.

town beat you fair and square.

Undoubtedly. But the method they won is what I'm disappointed by. I realize that roles and their usage are

part

of the play, but as scum, if I lose, I prefer it to be because of play, and not because of roles (which're a part of play), if that makes sense. Basically, while I did lose fair and square, it was mainly because of the setup spec, roleclaims, and coming up with a gamebreaking strategy that led to that lynch--while all of those are aspects of play, they're not the core heart of play, which I see as scumhunting for town and manipulation for scum. Using them is part of scumhunting/manipulation, yes. But shouldn't be the entirety of them, which they almost were.

Mhork might have been town on other aspects, but the main draw to him being town was his roleclaim.
You being town might have been on other aspects, but the main draw was your roleclaim.
BV was a mislynch candidate, only saved by his roleclaim and the circumstances behind night-play.
shos was town through play and role, but not infallibly so for play (there were similarities to his game here to the micro where he was scum, similarities a town-me would have been pushing but a scum-me couldn't afford to risk ), and mainly got considered clear through his role.
Malakittens might have been a personal townread of mine, but was a scumread of nearly the entirety of the actual town--again only saved through her (lack of) role, via shos's track.
Ghostlin was a townread of mine, but was a scumread of nearly the entirety of the actual town--had he not had his bodyguard claim to save him, he would have been lynched D1.

Imagine instead of role madness, then, that this game were a typical micro with only ~2 power roles rather than all power roles. How many of those cease to be true? Simply put, role madness closes the door on scum's available options to push mislynches, WAY more than in a normal game, as it becomes more a game of numbers and math than it does of scumhunting and manipulation, if that makes sense. Yeah, scumhunting may influence the math (and the math contributes to scumhunting), and yeah, manipulation may change the math (and math definitely contributes to strategically manipulating), but they're simply not meant to be the central focus of a well-designed game, if that makes sense.

Basically, my main gripe isn't that you won. It's that you didn't win by looking at my play and thinking I was scum with funky. (Hell, you even said that neither my predecessor nor myself had interactions with funky that looked like scum-scum.) That's a good game for me. Getting outplayed by solid scumhunting techniques, and I have nothing to complain about other than that I wish I could have played better. Getting outplayed by running math...

...I think you get the idea. It doesn't feel like a loss, in essence. Yeah, I did lose. But it's kinda like an inversion of my town perspective. In that if I were town in this game, I wouldn't feel like I had earned my victory. But as scum, saying "town didn't earn the victory" isn't right, since they did. It's more like I didn't earn my loss, so to speak. (I'm not sure that makes sense. But I think you can follow the general principle.)

[shos]

I totally understand mastin. he played greatly, and eventually the idea that caused him to lose(at least at this day) was the inertia that his wagon had, and partly my own impatience. I really wanted to lynch mhork, not mastin

[penguin_alien]

I'm not sure why Lord Mhork and bv310 vouched for one another.

Even more baffling to me is why funkybike1 claimed Tracker with Bishop as the character with zero consultation with you, mastin2. Given that daytalk was available.

[shos]

Yes, that fakeclaim should have been thought out better. however, flavor relating - I had no memory of Les Miserables(I read it YEARS ago) and maybe funky too.

I entirely didn't consider that vouch. that's why I thought mhork was scum, it made no sense to me. I thought scum should be more powerful, so having roleblock+kill+neighbourizer could be ok..

[Lord Mhork]

I didn't figure that neighborizer would make to much sense for scum in this setup, and I doubted that any scum would try to neighbor me. I mean I considered it briefly, but bv didn't seem like the kinda guy who would have acted like that. Plus, not taking lurking into account, he wasn't all that scummy.

[Lord Mhork]

Yeah I mean your slots were good at not interacting, but a big concern of mine was that your interaction with me didn't feel like town on town.

[Grimgroove]

This was a good game. Sorry about being inactive D1 and Mastin you are right. Il never trust you 'gain

I hope, on the other hand, you'll finally be able to put behind you that paranoia lingering from that time we played in a scumteam together. That shit's gotta stop girl!

[N]

This is over already? I kept meaning to read it but never got around to it.

[elleheathen]

YAY TOWN. <3

Bahaha, called it.

Lol reading scum qt=epicness.

wut.where?

[shos]

In the role pms iirc

[mastin2]

Bahaha, called it.

Why do you think I killed you?

[Malakittens]

OPERATION: COSETTE

<.<

With that; I'm going to go give my gut a slap and a high-five.