Mini 1586: shoot yourself in the foot mafia (game over)

[Jargonaut]

Haha grammer fail

[Jargonaut]

This setup was crazy. I think it was good luck for town that Elyse and Rob got the guns, but all the town flips lost them the game.

The fact that Elyse got the gun again was what convinced me of the setup once I thought about it enough.

[Rob14]

I hate you all. ;(

[Rob14]

I think the most problematic issue with this setup is that the two scum teams would be immediately aware of each others existence and the mechanic based upon me and Elyse's claims, while town remains unaware of the existence of two scum. Combine this with how many scum there are (7:2:2), and it's a bit nuts.

Very swingy as well, obviously.

I think 9:2:2 would have worked better, given the setup. OR less scum PR - especially surrounding that Who flip.

[Rob14]

Like, for instance, if I thought the guns were scum controlled, Cooldog would have been dead as dicks because I was the obvious choice of gun holder for a scumteam involving him.

[Jargonaut]

Actually I gave you the gun. He gave it to Elyse.

[Jargonaut]

I'm a 1-shot gladiator BTW. If there was a time when I should have used it feel free to tell me. I have no idea. The fact that town was all VT made using it seem too risky.

[CooLDoG]

This setup was crazy. I think it was good luck for town that Elyse and Rob got the guns, but all the town flips lost them the game.

The fact that Elyse got the gun again was what convinced me of the setup once I thought about it enough.

^same with you guys and rob. The initial reasoning for giving the gun to elyse was she was the newest player on the wagon that lynched so quickly l-1, making her a very easy lynch target. Later we decided to keep on giving the gun to her because she didn't really know how to use it and, I at least thought, that the way she acted was predictable enough to deal with.

I'm fairly sure Rob would win if we ended up 1v1.

TBM said this is what would happen, which is why I claimed scum in that post. I wouldn't have if I could have drawn.

I think the most problematic issue with this setup is that the two scum teams would be immediately aware of each others existence and the mechanic based upon me and Elyse's claims, while town remains unaware of the existence of two scum. Combine this with how many scum there are (7:2:2), and it's a bit nuts.

Very swingy as well, obviously.

I think 9:2:2 would have worked better, given the setup. OR less scum PR - especially surrounding that Who flip.

9:2:2 would have worked better tbh. But that we immediately knew what was going on is untrue. The possibility of a town counter-part or an SK (which for the number of players honestly seemed more likely) made it unknown until the first scum flip.

Like, for instance, if I thought the guns were scum controlled, Cooldog would have been dead as dicks because I was the obvious choice of gun holder for a scumteam involving him.

We gave a gun to rob last night. We did discuss the wifom situation with you thinking, "holy shit, why elyese gun switch? Wait, if someone can control it then that person doesn't want to die, qed CD is scum". And that was a main worry. But we decided to give it to you anyway. At least the reason I went along with it was because I knew you would play by the "rules" that I told you previously. Basically rob, you were had and manipulated by me and that is why we gave you king-maker status.

Actually I gave you the gun. He gave it to Elyse.

N1 and N2, yes.

[Rob14]

I meant N3.

[Rob14]

Lol - what manipulation? You told me to listen to what town wanted, and I told you to fuck off and I'd shoot whoever I damn well pleased.

-.-

[Rob14]

Wait, so if it's 7:2:2, then Who was a townie without a flip reveal? That's pretty scum-sided. It means that it's virtually impossible for town to EVER figure out the setup, which is really bad imo.

[Jargonaut]

Well CD used his janitor on him.

Speaking of PRs, who did empking neighborize? Anyone?

[CooLDoG]

wtf is a gladiator? *goes to wiki* realizes he was in that game *face desk*.

In my opinion for you to use that roll you would have had to do d2 and early on. Basically you should have come out and called bullshit on either rob or elyse's rolls and forced the town to pic between a rando and getting good information. It isn't unrecoverable because honestly if you had done that I would have been in the jarg is town camp because you force information to get outed, which is a good thing.

I'm also curious to see how that would have interacted with a daykill... but whatever.

@rob, you played exactly how I wanted you to play D2 and D3 which set-up this nice scenario where it gave me and empking a pretty damn good chance of being the only 2 left with you D4.

This setup from a scum perspective is really frustrating because it makes it difficult to win if the town are playing optimally in the end game because 1 town 1 scum = town win. The reason being is you get to lylo, kill someone and then force an NL to victory.

Obviously this setup is a 1-off because if anyone is familiar with this game it turns into a very formulaic game that is basically zero fun.

[CooLDoG]

Empking didn't read his PM correctly and so he didn't do it. Honestly in a screw-ball like this neighbors play in favor of town.

N1 I janitored myself. N2 I did empking. N3 was who (bad move. Should have done empking. BAAAAAD PLAY).

[mykonian]

As the sun sets, three people are alive still in this now ghostly town. Rob looks shiftily from Cooldog to Jargonaut. "you don't blame me, guys, do you? I just found this gun on my porch, and I used it to my best ability!".

Cooldog starts to laugh. "Rob, we know what you did. I'm the mafia, I cleaned up some of the mess you made. All I had to do is to put the fear of god into you, and you made the shots for me! What fingerprints do you think the cops would find?" Cooldog laughs out loud. "Oh but this is capitital" Jargonaut joins Cooldog in laughter. "Great minds think alike, don't they?". They shake hands, and lynch their skapegoat.

Rob, VT, was lynched!

That means all scum make up and live happily ever after. All town are dead and have lost, and showdowns we could do in mishmash... but lets not let that decide a game here!

Thoughts about the setup soon.

[Jargonaut]

Oh cool.

[Jargonaut]

Can someone tell me why HD's claim looked fake? As you saw, it was real.

[TheButtonmen]

Oh look at myko being nice and making it a happy every after.

Aren't you scum lucky he came back.

[mykonian]

Oh look at myko being nice and making it a happy every after.

Aren't you scum lucky he came back.

same concept different name. They earned it!

[mykonian]

Shoot yourself in the foot mafia.

Mafia Janitor
Mafia 1-shot neighbourizer

Mafia champion
Mafia 1-shot BP

7 VT

Mafia gives 1 shot dayvigs as a team.


So the big thing obviously is the mechanic mafia get here. There's a lot of cute things it does which is why I fell in love with it, but the big thing balance wise which me and my reviewer worried about is how town/scumsided it would actually be. If scum can't find someone weak and obvious town players arise quickly, they have no way of removing the strong players and will basically get shot to pieces because the town gets 3 ways of eliminating scummy looking players every day (if discussion arises about the kills/if the daykills end up on town)

In that way, it basically would resemble a nightless game, theoretically balanced 8-4 (a whole 4 man scumteam) and that's still being won by town in the large majority. Those are not nice games for scum, so that was one worry. The fact that it were 2 split scumteams was not entirely a problem for scum, I believed, since that did give them a chance at perhaps shooting someone at some point, and maybe some confusion about the daykills would get them a little advantage compared to a clean 8-4 nightless. Still, the powers given to them were small in the favor they gave them but were all but one confusion tools to give them hope in a situation where obvious townies arose (the big threat to scum in nightless)

On the other hand, if there were misguided townies to be found, obviously this daykill giving was a lot of fun. The name of the game works basically if scum or town win, someone would have to give the other the game. Esspecially my reviewer was worried that the daykills, given to weaker members of the town, would prove to be a very mixed blessing for town. The power scum got there though would still be little concrete, only the bulletproof is straight up numbers power. I did not have a solution for this and feared it less. Even in this game, I didn't feel the killers were esspecially weak players, though maybe partially in the scums pocket (but then, that was the game!). Also, allowing town to chime in who got killed was imo always a good idea. The 72h timer on it was imposed just to make it a scum ability in essence.

Personally I liked the concept of the janitor here. Compared to a normal game, here it was a skill intensive role (scum would have to predict the kill to get value) meaning that an early loss of a flip would be rarer (which is where it is most destructive, by my estimation), while it was mostly a confusing ability in a game where town still held all the cards.

So yeah, given that nightless games are already hard to balance in practice, and we don't have a lot of practice with it as MS, this games balancing was awkward. I simply didn't know where to go with it nor would I know a lot of people who would know for sure where to go. Similar games simply haven't been run that often. This is why I gave a warning that this game was experimental, even talking with my reviewer, we worried on both sides and given what we knew we still had no clue where to put the balance down.

I also said that I hoped this game would be fun for the players. I myself fell in love with what the mechanic did, partially how that affected multiball as is, but also how scum would want to manipulate town into making mistakes, while town would want to find the manipulators, which I hoped would make for a more active game, scum might not be able to afford to lay back and let the game happen (if everything worked out).

I had not considered that scum would be conservative with their daykills and would not spread them. That is admittedly a weakness in the fun factor.

[Who]

Can someone tell me why HD's claim looked fake? As you saw, it was real.

Because given that townies were the ones with the guns, scum BP was much more likely than town BP.

I thought of the possibility of BP scum before (Though I wasn't expecting it to be just one scum, I was expecting something like all the scum were BP) HD's claim, but I wasn't sure and I was also afraid that if I said the theory people would think it was a scumslip. Also, the theory was rather irrelevant until someone either claimed BP or didn't die from a shot.

About the setup, personally I think that the confusion and difficulty to figure it out made it too imbalanced in favor of scum. The town is supposed to be the uninformed minority, but we were really really uninformed, I think more than we should have been. I also think that it would have been really fun had I been scum.

[Who]

I had not considered that scum would be conservative with their daykills and would not spread them. That is admittedly a weakness in the fun factor.

Giving daykills to the same people each day made the town much more confused. I think that that was definitely a good strategy on the scum's part.

[Rob14]

After seeing the whole setup, my biggest suggestion would have been to make the scum flip in a way that reveals they are on separate teams; one could be werewolves and the other mafia, or just different colors of mafia. This rewards town for lynching scum and allows them to get a better sense of where they are in progress. We made a lot of choices assuming that there were, at most, three scum, because that was really the only choice that made any sense. This might also make the Janitor more acceptable to the setup, in my mind, although I never really like janitors.

As for HD's claim: It didn't look fake; it just didn't look like it could come from town. If town controls all the kills, like we were theorizing, then town would never be given a bulletproof ability. Only scum would. Ergo, kill HD.

[mykonian]

About the setup, personally I think that the confusion and difficulty to figure it out made it too imbalanced in favor of scum. The town is supposed to be the uninformed minority, but we were really really uninformed, I think more than we should have been. I also think that it would have been really fun had I been scum.

Had a lot to do with town not finding any scum anytime soon

Which I guess ends up being a circular argument, or "who was first, chicken or egg".

[Who]

About the setup, personally I think that the confusion and difficulty to figure it out made it too imbalanced in favor of scum. The town is supposed to be the uninformed minority, but we were really really uninformed, I think more than we should have been. I also think that it would have been really fun had I been scum.

Had a lot to do with town not finding any scum anytime soon

Which I guess ends up being a circular argument, or "who was first, chicken or egg".

I disagree. Even had we found scum earlier, we would still be massively confused about the setup. Especially since the flips did nothing to imply multiball.