California Trilogy: City of Angels - On Camera (Game Over)

[Zachrulez]

I was also frustrated by particular people in the game (and it's probably no surprise who they are), which may have affected my enjoyment of the game. I'm particularly frustrated by hewitt, whom I feel gave the game to scum by not trying after so much effort had been put into the game by so many people. (Granted, the scum played magnificently, so it's entirely possible we wouldn't have won anyway.)

While I can understand your feelings, I believe that Hewitt (and probably Starkiss as well.) should have been dealt with LONG before endgame.

Instead we lynched far more valuable players.

I do agree with this - but when? The only time I can point to is scene 5(?) when I went hard after curiouskarmadog, which feels a little silly right now. I don't think Gaspar should have been lynched, but if I remember, scum largely controlled that as well. It felt like the town had very little room for error - scum would be able to control or largely influence at least one half of the game, and the other half would be more of a crapshoot.

I think we lynched mafiajin on scene 4, which was a lynch I disagreed with. Hewitt was a leading candidate then if I recall and could have been dealt with then. (I can't remember if Starkiss was off camera as well at that point in time.)

I am not sure why Gaspar was lynched. In hindsight, I am wondering if it might have been a good idea to have had VP stunt him on camera to stop that lynch.

[Zachrulez]

Also, when I glanced at the QT, DGB was insistent that our looking at those that pushed the wrong choices was a bad table.

I'm kinda interested in what people think about the theory in general. Because the scum do, and did need to work at nudging us in the wrong direction.

[Zachrulez]

Also, I learned that while I might like the people who are in hydras, I hate hydra play.

In thread hydra conflicts are scummy? That might be a good solution to what happened in this game... lol

[Thesp]

And curiouskarmadog, I'm sorry I was horribly, horribly wrong about you.

[VP Baltar]

The mafiajin lynch was my fault. There was something about them that was bothering me all game...but both of them always look like scum to me.

In regards to your table, Zach, I think you were definitely going in the right direction and that was what I tried to recreate in endgame. The scum had to be pushing for bad choices to get us to that worst possible endgame, so I think it was a very accurate indicator for the most part. Unfortunately, abberations that did not wish to put any effort into the game prevented it from being even more effective.

[Thok]

I do agree with this - but when? The only time I can point to is scene 5(?) when I went hard after curiouskarmadog, which feels a little silly right now. I don't think Gaspar should have been lynched, but if I remember, scum largely controlled that as well. It felt like the town had very little room for error - scum would be able to control or largely influence at least one half of the game, and the other half would be more of a crapshoot.

My general feeling about the Glork/Yos2 lynches is that they shouldn't have been pressured, but once pressured they made mistakes that made their lynches inevitable. I'd argue that CKD should have been lynched Day 2 or 3.

This was a weird game, as a lot of town players (and a lot of good town players) made fairly obvious mistakes. I'm sort of curious why Glork thought it was a good idea to imitate my play from Kingmaker 1 with respect to the AP. (Incidentally, I'd argue that Panzer played the AP part of his role well until he was forcibly replaced; scum didn't have him as a likely AP candidate.)

I also feel like people got caught up too much in the on-screen stuff, both with the acting and the trying to win points.

Finally, I'm still not sure how you're supposed to role play Glen Stewart Godwin.

[Zachrulez]

The mafiajin lynch was my fault. There was something about them that was bothering me all game...but both of them always look like scum to me.

In regards to your table, Zach, I think you were definitely going in the right direction and that was what I tried to recreate in endgame. The scum had to be pushing for bad choices to get us to that worst possible endgame, so I think it was a very accurate indicator for the most part. Unfortunately, abberations that did not wish to put any effort into the game prevented it from being even more effective.

Yeah, Goofball's counterargument was that scum could manipulate their voting record however they wanted to have as good or as bad of a record as they wanted.

She was assuming that I was looking at the pure data when I was analyzing things. (Afterall, there was a reason I wanted to lynch her before you around scene 4. She was masterminding it all.)

[VP Baltar]

It is pretty funny because hewitt and Starkiss were arguing the same thing about manipulating voting records in endgame because of their horrible track records.

Then when I looked at DGB and Thok, they had conveniently taken very few stances in the game to the point that it looked scummy.

Once again though, MO probably would have given me problems because theirs was more of a mixed bag, which I felt was what an actual townperson's would look like.

[Zachrulez]

It is pretty funny because hewitt and Starkiss were arguing the same thing about manipulating voting records in endgame because of their horrible track records.

Then when I looked at DGB and Thok, they had conveniently taken very few stances in the game to the point that it looked scummy.

Once again though, MO probably would have given me problems because theirs was more of a mixed bag, which I felt was what an actual townperson's would look like.

When he was an advocate in scene 5, I had actually determined that he was scum. (But I can't remember exactly how right now. A lot of time has passed since then... bah!)

Then a bunch of crazy stuff happened. This really was a game where distractions were easy to make.

[DrippingGoofball]

Yeah, Goofball's counterargument was that scum could manipulate their voting record however they wanted to have as good or as bad of a record as they wanted.

That's something I knew from experience, haha. From Thok's too-good-to-be-true record, to my middling-to-bad record, our records show how we CHOSE to position ourselves in the suspicion order, if you will.

It was tough balancing when to put oneself in harm's way, and when to jockey for town cred. I kept safely off the Gaspar wagon, because I knew he'd be lynched anyway and I hate to lie to elvis, but whenever I was on-stage I pretty much decided I'd crash and burn for points. I was hoping to last as long as possible, at the same time.

Thok would have been great in end game but we couldn't pass the opportunity to speedlynch a mason. I thought MO would be a treasure of town cred and his last phony case against hewitt was the crown jewel amongst the doubloons. Starkiss had skillfully managed to escape notice for most of the game, I was hopeful that the lurker scum slot would outlast a lurker townie. The presence of Starkiss & MO in end game did cost us Thok's accumulated town cred.

[Zachrulez]

What is amusing me right now is your hydra's iso 32 and 33.

There's a shred of truth in that little story you told.

I'm pretty sure there was another post where you pretty much gave away that the bulk of the "decepticons" were off and on camera on particular scenes. I can't remember exactly where it was now.

[hasdgfas]

Ah, I see the game is finally over. Looks like things just went completely downhill after we died and I stopped really reading. Too bad, I thought we had been doing well up to that point. Not really sure what happened though, as I stopped reading.

I would like to say well done to Mighty Orbots though, I don't remember being suspicious of them at all while I was still in the game.

This was an extremely fun game though, and I really enjoyed hydra'ing as it lowered the pressure on just me to post all the time. Thank you everyone for playing, and I hope to play with most of you again(after my game hiatus)

[Papa Zito]

I'm going to have to go back and read this alleged scum meltdown. Too bad the lousy QT is epically long and won't let me view all posts so I don't have to click back 110 times.

http://www.quicktopic.com/43/H/ZWS4Mqh8585wj/p1466.1150

[curiouskarmadog]

I cant believe once I flipped town and ALL the information I gave you, no one thought to lynch orbits...I am also surprised Star stayed in this game so long. I hated losing this game. I should have chosen to be scum, I thought "hey, why not make this game interesting and stay town"...BAD MISTAKE...apparently no one can believe someone chosing to be town over scum...and being that I could for some time chose who went on stage, my win condition could have been easy...

dammit...thanks for game mith, but the game left a bad taste in my mouth..just need to figure out why..

[zu_Faul]

Thanks mith, for running this game.

And MO, you sure had guts to hammer.

I sure have learned a lot from it, both good things and bad things. I have learned a good deal about myself, how I need to play to get the results. And hey, I was right about Thesp and Baltar, and should not have been talked out of my suspicions of MO. I just need to be more self confident and it'll work.

Though because of the bad things I have learned this game, I guess I'll never find a use for my newfound skills.

Thanks again to mith for running this game.

[hewitt]

i really hated this game. i was soooo pissed off because i was 100% sure that MO and either VP/Thesp were the scumteam and i was like this is never going to happen we're going to lose for sure. so at some point i was like okay the scumteam has to be MO/VP because VP is failing to see logic in not lynching me here and i know him to be logical so there's no chance we're going to win with that team, they controlled everything.

little did i know VP was innocent too so my incorrect assumption in the scumteam led to me pretty much falling out of this game and giving up. i'm shocked starkiss was scum, that really surprised me.

[DrippingGoofball]

...but the game left a bad taste in my mouth..just need to figure out why..

We were so totally convinced that you were on our side, I insisted on killing Mr JellyLee TO PROTECT YOU from his attacks!!!

I hope that puts the smile back on your face, pal.

[curiouskarmadog]

ha!

but you did use it against me later....thanks anyway?

[Sajin]

I was lynched in a all townie off stage scene. Joy.

I was having a hard time finding scum but I found several town and go figure 2 of my strongest town reads that I insisted on get lynched right after me.

Good job scum.

[petroleumjelly]

My only comment will be that I strongly disapprove of the Mafia Screen Guild junk in Scene One. I do not like when mods play "hide the ball," and that is pretty much all that was. I wanted to lynch CKD for nothing that had to do with his play -- whoever was chosen to be that Advocate was probably going to be lynched in any town that displayed any logic whatsoever.

Like Thesp, I did not enjoy this game. I do not like being constantly separated from other players; when I tried to discuss players On Stage, I was attacked for not talking about people Off Screen. It's just silly. I also do not like the "role-playing" aspect On Stage, because all it does is dilute something that could be useful into being practically meaningless.

I think I will probably stay away from mith games in the future. It seems like his games turn into "games within games," when I really just want to get to the

mafia

game, not the game inside the game.

[mith]

I'm sorry you felt that way, pj.

For what it's worth, your complaints seem specific to Mr. Grey games, rather than mith games in general (in fact, I don't know that I've even run a closed setup under this account in a while - the /in-vitational was semi-open, Eddie Izzard was Smalltown...). While the mechanics were different (and in some cases, not as successful as I would have hoped), the underlying theme of all three games was: "There's some weird stuff going on here, and you aren't going to figure all of it out... but as far as winning is concerned, most of it is irrelevant compared to good old fashioned scumhunting."

I felt both the town, and ckd himself, handled his information rather poorly. It makes almost no sense for scum to claim (except for the WIFOM aspect), and almost everyone was too quick to jump to conclusions about it - which in any other game might be perfectly reasonable, but in the third game of a trilogy with multiple misleading roles/etc.?

That's not to say that I am happy with how that whole thing worked out, or that I would do it again - part of why I am retiring the Mr. Grey account is to move away from this sort of thing in future games. But at the same time, I don't feel that the setup was necessarily at fault for that, or for you being attacked for not talking about people Off Screen, or for the role-playing being a distraction, or anything else in the area of "what the players choose to focus on".

[petroleumjelly]

The real question is whether or not you actually allowed for a scum to get the Advocate that allowed them to swap to the SMG. If not, then your selection of Advocates was not "random," as you claimed it was. As you know, I already have a innate dislike for alignment-switching roles, so that was not exactly helping my attitude towards this game. Also, saying that a player can "join" a group that does not even exist is outright misleading, if not lying.

My complaint largely hinges on the fact that the way this set-up was made, the mod is doing a good deal of the work for the scum. Why even include the SMG except to confuse the town? It strikes me more as "Aha, I tricked you!" -- and the problem with that is it is not even the mafia tricking the town, but the mod tricking the town. I had the same problem with Space Monkeys.

This is probably more of a difference in modding policies than anything -- you seem to like players to "figure things out," whereas I find more and more that I like to be largely straightforward so the town can just get to the scumhunting.

~

As a side-note, I will note that despite the fact that I thought Talilan was town, I did push for Talilan to be modkilled for (i) their post On Screen which obviously influenced the On Screen decision, and (ii) for seriously advocating that players modkill themselves by not posting [in that case, why not modkill yourself by quoting your role PM?].

[ortolan]

I think at least one other person accidentally posted on-stage like did beforehand (shadowlurker). Obviously I didn't intend that at all, not being scum, and obviously I regret it because of its negative consequences. I don't think it should have influenced the on-screen decision in the way some people think it seemed to (particularly as I thought a whole bunch of people said we were scummy and thus I would think they would do the opposite of what we were saying)

I also don't think I ever directly advocated inciting modkill through inactivity, I merely placed it on the table. There was a precedent for that method of inciting modkill compared with other actions which entail modkill- ehobanar (spelling?). Also another obvious benefit is that the consequences of a an inactivity modkill had already been made clear in both the rules and with the death of Pooky- one just died and had one's alignment revealed at the end of the scene. If one sought to be modkilled through different methods mith may have reacted more harshly to the town faction in response.

rawr...anything but the worst endgame scenario and I think we would have had a good chance of winning.

Agreed. We screwed up on the choices for the last scene so I'm very sorry about that.

[zu_Faul]

I think at least one other person accidentally posted on-stage like did beforehand (shadowlurker). Obviously I didn't intend that at all, not being scum, and obviously I regret it because of its negative consequences.

What has being scum to do with that? Even a town player can want to illegally post there.

(Unless you meant real life scum).

[ortolan]

zu_Faul: I didn't intend to post it there. Tbh I think deliberately breaking the rules is something neither town nor scum would do, but if anyone would deliberately break the rules in that context it would be scum trying to mislead the town and happy to cop a strike for it. I hope none of you think I deliberately posted on-stage, it was an accident, as I said.