Mafiascum.net

Hi everyone,

First, I want to give big thanks to all of my wonderful replacements (RCEnigma, Aa, Doctor Drew, Skygazer, Nancy Drew 39, Chemist1422, Auzersky, Not Known 15, Whemestar). When this game started I was coming off some really hard real life stuff and just seeing so many people interested in playing the game really made me happy. All the replacements (and would be replacements *cough* Menalque *cough*) get an Oversoul IOU. Terms and restrictions apply, but this essentially is an IOU for a favor. Replace into the game, join a game, backup mod, design, crappy flavor writing, crappier pixel art, somehow even crappier vector art, you name it.

I hope you all had fun in my game. I know I had fun modding it. My first time modding in a long time, so I apologize for some of the hiccups along the way. Namely, my prodding could have been more timely, my proofreading on RCEnigma's role PM could have been better, and I could have better prepared my flavor! Speaking of which, I had originally planned this game to have a mystery flavor related to the Title Fairies upon specific conditions 1) a mason getting Crowned, or 2) a mason dying. I had prepared the flavor up to that point, but most was not archived on site. In the 11th hour that I would actually need to release that information, I got bronchitis, had to evacuate from my home due to extreme weather, and had a crisis of faith that the flavor was not good enough. Micc had raised points about the flavor in the design and it stuck with me. As my first modded game back on this site, it would be really weird to write flavor about people I do not really know. It would be event weirder to be those people I do not know when they see some random dood talking about them, so I decided to just run this flavorless. You can see remnants of the flavor in the design thread that I will release shortly. I will be saving the role pms I made because it is my intention to use them at some point in the future.

Here is the setup:




I have wanted to run a MafiaScum-centric game for a while now. I wanted it to be fun and entertaining, but I am learning that I am not that (i)NSYNC with site jokes, not funny, and not good at writing. Any future participants in my games will have to suffer through my horrible humor and grammar for months to come. That said, I do think I have a pretty decent eye for balance and game design. I hope most of you will agree with that notion. That being said, this game was definitely townsided (not that I think this changed the overall outcome of the game). It also missed its mark with the mechanic, which I think has good potential for being a fun mechanical addition to a mafia game.

This is a pretty typical normal Micro game at face value. 2 regular mafia vs 3 decent power roles is the type of balance you will see in most normal, non-swingy Micro games. I was influenced by CFJ's Role Call game to include the Crown mechanic where players choose who gets a power role. I thought that was a cool game mechanic that could be further explored. I chose preexisting power roles for a very specific reason. I balance all of my games on the assumption that town mass claims on day 1 (I think this is usually play regardless of alignment, but we can discuss that later). From there, I wanted mafia to really have to choose between letting a townie use an unknown power versus leaving a confirmed town player alive. I did not want to upset the actual amount of town to scum in the game, so that is why I included the Bodyguard. I wanted to reward the town for correctly "blocking" a shot, but without adding another confirmed town into the mix and screwing the mafia completely. Side note: I think Bodyguard is a role that should get more use, but should also have more streamlined interactions... It can get pretty weird. Like what if a Weak Vigilante shoots a Mafia member protected by a Bodyguard? Or what if a Bodyguard protects a Tracker who visits a PGO? I don't think those scenarios have cut and dry answers yet. I think that Bodyguard + Conftown Roles is a wonderful role interaction that I hope sees more use.

Now onto the Crown abilities. I knew that I did not want to introduce strong abilities like cop, tracker, jailkeeper, etc despite wanting those things in CFJ's game. It just upsets the balance of the game too much. I did want players to feel like they could effectuate change. All of the roles could be helpful in some way, potentially catching lying scum or just helping confirm more town. I chose Fruit Vendor and Stenographer (which is basically a neighborizer who can just post in their hood before adding someone, helpful for gambits in regular games I think) because even if mafia did decide to kill them the night they could still add to the game. The mafia on the other hand would get useful information. I wanted the mafia to really have to grapple with their nightkill choices in this game because I feel like Micros are inherently scumsided due to their small size.

I am open to any and all criticism. Did you think the game was fun? Did you like the randomness of the flavor? Would you like to join another game modded by me?

Speaking of future games... I have of ideas. Some good, some bad. Some half baked, some less-than-half-baked. I will give you a little snippet of them all below. Order is not indicative of their current state of readiness.

- 13p, Murder on the Orient Express, but with lawn flamingos?

- 12p, gated night actions, hairy arms, and occult dancing.

Farmers Market - 17p, Market Place featuring more farm animals, fruits, vegetables, and of course, manure.

Heroes! Unite! - 17p, MafiaScum-centric, global gate mechanic, villains, masks, and of spandex.

- 19p, my take on an alt game.

Some Weeb Shit - I want to run a weeb game because they look like fun.

popsofctown gets the town MVP award.

Correspondence gets the funniest person(s) award.

Chemist1422 gets the my-internet-heart-breaks-for-you award.

Design Thread

I think the biggest take away from this setup is that Something_Smart and Dunnstral are entirely correct, I will not be using that tiebreaking rule ever again. And also that the masons defeated the point of the mechanic, essentially turning it into a regular game of mafia.

In post 894, Oversoul wrote:Dead Thread
Stenographer
Mason

Mafia has 48 hours to let me know if they want any redactions, otherwise the Mafia Chat will be released.

I'm good but it's definitely not up to me lol

I'd really like to see this setup concept rerun but with the crown inherently granting Untargetable and a ban on crowning the same person repeatedly.

None of the setup blurbs appealed or tempted me tbh.

Thanks for modding the game, Oversoul!
Had a lot of fun despite not playing too well in this one.
The crown mechanic is certainly interesting and something that could be experimented more with.
I don't think the game was townsided but just felt that way because Pops and Gameplay put in some convenient obvtown performances.

pops ofc town

if gameplay and I were seeking masons game would have been very different lol

I agree bodyguard is underutilized and there's a reason it appears in Undertale Smalltown

And yeah, you're right, Pops.
I would scumread myself this game probably. I got real lazy after basically being confirmed.
My excuse is that I had faith that the townbloc would prevail.

In post 906, popsofctown wrote:pops ofc town

Lul, I've been reading your name wrong this whole time.

Been reading it as "Pops of c town".
Should've asked what 'c' meant.

In post 907, popsofctown wrote:if gameplay and I were seeking masons game would have been very different lol

Yeah, that would be an entirely different game.
I die day 1 and then probably Drew day 2.

Tell us your secret, Correspondence.

It originally meant pops of c town but I am trying to change it

Because I love mafia and no longer live in c town.

In post 891, popsofctown wrote:Misreading RCE was pretty bad admittedly sorry RCE

Yeah I don't know how bragworthy my reads are thinking back

like 3 IC slots

Bit much

Gives me easy mode

Me being misread and claiming and hectic claiming right after was like the perfect storm for town to win tbh so no worries.

Oversoul is kewl

Oversoul is soft.

In post 888, popsofctown wrote:Ok but we wear crowns at the wedding gameplay ok?

Yesyesyesyesyes

Anyway was a fun game, gg, I agree it was kinda townsided but eh
Definitely on the easy side this one, yea
And actually had fun playing this one, cool players

I feel like people should ask me to review stuffs more

I don't think I'm RC level smrt but I think I would have given beneficial input to this one



I appreciate Oversoul wanting to add lots of flavor because flavor can be really fun in games but him not knowing the people in the playerlist well can be a stopgap I can see how that's a thing.
In Undertale mafia I did lots of flavor but it was all postflip which not only made me less paranoid about modslipping info (which is TERRIBAD and it has happened to "good" mods xyzzy did it in a game) but also by the time I was writing the flavor I knew more about the flavor so it helped me write it.

Consider about how maybe you can incorporate that Oversoul.

On a different forum someone solicited "when you /in for this game send me a post with a specific flavor, I'll use it for flavor this game"

Also a thingamajig that dodges mod impartiality and seemed like a good way to add flavor

Anyway this game was good

I'm looking forward to Dunnstral's opinion on the game I am positive it is and should be more complex than "pops is amazing at mafia and won".

this has been drunkpops

In post 919, popsofctown wrote:thingamajig

Ah, I like this one

GJ town.

My thoughts on the setup have mostly all been said. Masons + BG might as well have been masons + IC, BG pretty much needs to be balanced as a clear if you know they'll have an obvious protection target.

The setup concept is very interesting, albeit with the flaw that the potential for bulletproof/hider/commuter abilities creates nasty modWIFOM. Agree that the masons sorta overpowered the crown mechanic. I think this type of setup could be really interesting with weaker PR's and stronger crown effects, including maybe an extra kill for scum? (Publicly known of course.) You guys were all afraid of crowning scum even though there was almost nothing bad it could actually do...

And yeah, the tiebreaker rule was dumb Probably best to just randomize a tiebreak order and post it at the beginning of the game.

Thanks for modding Oversoul!

We had a delightful time playing with you in this game of Crown on the Ground. It is our wish to extend a sincere hand of friendship to all involved, and state that no hard feelings are harbored. In particular, we wish to thank Oversoul for wise and judicious moderation; we will seriously consider patronizing your games in the future, except for any weeb shit you put on. Reading the dead thread, this writer at least agrees that the seeking masons was a bit much. In a micro, it may have worked better to make them compulsively target someone every night, not knowing what would happen if they did. Perhaps throwing in a scum role which would make something bad happen if they targeted it. There's an interesting game in there, but I'm not sure what it is.

The Crown mechanic was an interesting one, and we suggest that its stakes could be raised further if the results of the vote (or at least the number who voted for each person) were revealed at day start. For example, when Hectic was crowned, it would be fascinating to see that he'd received four votes to Egduf's two. The identities of the voters could be public or private, at your option. While you may think this is worrisome for scum players who might reveal their subversive intent, what if the scum players had voted for us? While they risk giving us the Crown, they also have a way to frame us for the deed.

Some personal notes:

- It was, as usual, a delight playing with you. We thank you for being reliably easy to read when Town, and for your outstanding leadership. Our self-imposed post restriction made taking the mantle of leadership difficult if not impossible, and we are glad you were here.
- You were a pleasant addition to the game. It is nice to see such promising talent come out of the Newbie queue. Stick around, will you?
- Boy, are you hard to read. One of us had you pegged as Town immediately, but permitted the other to subject you to inquisition, just to be sure. Trust me, son, living up to your username isn't the best way to get Townread in this game. Also, take it from my experience - eight games is too many. A sustainable limit is between three and six, depending on size, speed, and available time.
- A clever means for subverting the mechanics. You are always fun to play with, but we would wish you more confidence in yourself. Take the initiative! Smash the opposition!
- Hey buddy, the "lurk and they won't notice me" thing is useful sometimes, but in a Micro it was deadly. With only eight other players to assess, it's really easy to get PoE'd. By the time you whipped out the claws, it was looking like desperation.
- We're not sure if you siteflaked entirely, or if this game just was too much. Either way, please come back! You actually did an entirely fine job. We were the only ones who really spotted you, and had difficulty convincing the others. It wasn't until the PoE caught up to you and you started really lurking that it turned against you. When the going gets tough, redouble your efforts.
- We're sorry for doubting you! In hindsight, our suspicion of you was likely more catching hints of your PR, mistakenly interpreting recklessness as scum lack of concern. We look forward to seeing you in future games.
- if I recall, we mostly suspected you for your suspicious methodology. The game of Mafia is all about spotting small clues and pursuing them. In your case, we found your deductions to be suspiciously wrong (see your attacks on Pops) and your deflection questioning to be worrying. Sometimes, well-intentioned people just read each other wrong. Such was the case here, and we hope no grudge is held.
- Them's the breaks, eh? Sorry, there was little you could do here, it would have taken a Herculean effort and thorough research to have had a shot at evading that lynch. We commend the effort.

Now, as for ourselves, and the inquiry as to our identity. We have decided that this experiment was a resounding success, and will be continuing our run together. Yes, most hydrae last for the course of a single game, but we intend to see how far this can go. So for now, we shall remain anonymous.

In post 922, Correspondence wrote:

Dear compatriots,

The Crown mechanic was an interesting one, and we suggest that its stakes could be raised further if the results of the vote (or at least the number who voted for each person) were revealed at day start. For example, when Hectic was crowned, it would be fascinating to see that he'd received four votes to Egduf's two. The identities of the voters could be public or private, at your option. While you may think this is worrisome for scum players who might reveal their subversive intent, what if the scum players had voted for us? While they risk giving us the Crown, they also have a way to frame us for the deed.

The crown votes public, they were revealed at twilight rather than daystart but that information gets out in time for the subsequent lynch.
Dunnstral was the main one to dig into the mechanic, pointing out it was probable that at least one scum voted me for crown.... with which I agreed... seeing as Dunnstral did...

Miss Pops

- It was, as usual, a delight playing with you. We thank you for being reliably easy to read when Town, and for your outstanding leadership. Our self-imposed post restriction made taking the mantle of leadership difficult if not impossible, and we are glad you were here.

Your slot was fun too. I don't know exactly how to feel about signing up for games and sticking to some restriction that doesn't seem it can be possibly pro-win%, but I definitely won't greylist this hydra beyond the extent to which I greylist all hydras.

Mr. Hectic

- Boy, are you hard to read. One of us had you pegged as Town immediately, but permitted the other to subject you to inquisition, just to be sure. Trust me, son, living up to your username isn't the best way to get Townread in this game. Also, take it from my experience - eight games is too many. A sustainable limit is between three and six, depending on size, speed, and available time.

The correct number of games varies from person to person and what time they have. But Hectic's D2 and D3 posts felt like they might be someone who doesn't have this game in a narrow set of games they are focusing on.

Mr. Smart, aka Aa

- A clever means for subverting the mechanics. You are always fun to play with, but we would wish you more confidence in yourself. Take the initiative! Smash the opposition!

wait am I a writer in the Correspondence hydra

Mr. Dunnstral

- Hey buddy, the "lurk and they won't notice me" thing is useful sometimes, but in a Micro it was deadly. With only eight other players to assess, it's really easy to get PoE'd. By the time you whipped out the claws, it was looking like desperation.

I don't think Dunnstral's play was terrible this game. Sometimes you can play passively and town will trip over themselves. I think passive play for the scumteam is at its worst when the entire scumteam goes for that, though, egduF was more active and took more positions but wasn't quite mover and shaker status.

Miss Egduf

- We're not sure if you siteflaked entirely, or if this game just was too much. Either way, please come back! You actually did an entirely fine job. We were the only ones who really spotted you, and had difficulty convincing the others. It wasn't until the PoE caught up to you and you started really lurking that it turned against you. When the going gets tough, redouble your efforts.

Hectic mentioned IRL issues, the way her activity pattern lines up against her slot's pressure I don't think it's possible to confirm "defeatism lurking" occurred.


I feel like if I was good at hydra hunting I'd be able to figure out a head but I'm totally not so bleh.

In post 919, popsofctown wrote:I'm looking forward to Dunnstral's opinion on the game I am positive it is and should be more complex than "pops is amazing at mafia and won".

Sure, here are my thoughts:





Personally I feel like just having 2 masons in a micro is dubious for game balance, you can imagine how I feel about 2 masons, a bodyguard, and then the crown mechanic (which is in fact townsided and I'll talk about that in a bit). A bit of research on masons in micro's brings me to this:

Subject: borkjerfkin Micro Normal Review

callforjudgement wrote:I think 2 Masons + 5 VT versus 2 Goons is doable and close enough to balance, although it's hard to assess the balance of because it's hard to fit Masons into a game this small.

I guess you can reasonably compare it to setups like Cop + 6 VT versus 2 Goons; in that setup, the Cop confirms two players if they live until D3, in this setup we have two players who can confirm each other. The difference is that that setup leaves room for fakeclaims and counterclaims and this one doesn't really (more townsided); however, that setup also allows for the Cop to potentially confirm themself, and to potentially catch scum directly (more scumsided). This one still leaves room for PR hunting (scum benefit from killing a mason early), though, so it's not entirely dayplay.

Alternate mason in a micro game example can be found here: https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=84&t=79835
(Mason Mailman, Mason Encryptor, miller, 2 goons, 4 vts)

Cursory research when reviewing the setup would have prevented this setup from coming forth, so... this shouldn't have gotten past review phase as 2 masons + bodyguard, regardless of the crown, unless the crown was somehow tilted in mafia's favor (it wasn't). Micc reviewed this game? This shows that he doesn't understand balance in his own area of setups, or even bother to do a little bit of research or consider what other people think on balance. I guess that's not a requirement for being a queue mod in the first place, just.... he should get somebody else to look over his setups because letting this one go through is shameful.

A seeker mason is weaker than a mason, but not by much, certainly not when looking at the game from a balance perspective. In fact seeker mason was so out there that it actually lent credence to Hectic's claim and prevented him from being lynched with his last minute claim.

Another aspect of balance that was overlooked: Mafia don't really get to who they kill this game. And that's not because of the crown mechanic, at all, which is what makes this setup really bad - mafia have to kill both of the masons and the bodyguard, they don't get to kill a player who is suspecting their whole team, or a frame kill, etc.



The crown mechanic was neutered to fit in a pair of masons, but the crown mechanic really should have been the focus of the setup. As it stands, I think a better name for this setup would have been "Two masons and a bodyguard" really, because that ended up being the focus of the setup instead. The masons being revealed as IC was both a cheap "gotcha" for a town that trusted the masons, and a cheap "gotcha" for the mafia if they decided to try to make the masons look like the mafia (removing every last bit of counter-play).

Speaking of the crown mechanic:

In post 923, popsofctown wrote: Dunnstral was the main one to dig into the mechanic, pointing out it was probable that at least one scum voted me for crown.... with which I agreed... seeing as Dunnstral did...

What I failed to mention, but definitely noticed, was that the crown votes at the end seemed to be ordered in the same order that they were made. I'm not sure if that's the case or if it was just a coincidence, but you'll notice that I was the last person to vote for Pops - if I was town I would have absolutely pointed to that as mafia who was deciding where to vote in their pt vs town who knew what they were picking going into twilight. I'm not certain if it was clear that this information would have been public or not, or if it's just extra stuff that was added. It does mention that the vote result would be revealed so... I guess it was implied, though some additional clarity in the rules would have been nice. Actually, it shouldn't be showing that information at all in my opinion, but as long as it's clear what is happening the specifics don't matter as much. Nobody else seems to have caught onto that this game, but it is the kind of thing that mods need to be keeping in mind instead of kind of just doing things.
With that said, there were townies who didn't even realize that the crown vote was made public, or who didn't think it mattered (which is bad play and should contribute to your faction losing IMO).

I believe the crown mechanic itself was townsided in general, without considering the what the roles were. Looking at the actual roles, It seems townsided - town can get extra investigative roles to find mafia, but mafia can only get investigative roles to find the masons, the bodyguard, or the crown powers - but nothing to actually stop any of that or neuter the increased investigative power, and they are limited on what kills they can make in the first place, so even if they find, say, a voyeur, they might still need to kill the mason.

Voyeur: Can be used to find the bodyguard and to figure out what the crown user is doing
Motion detector: Secretly a really strong role in this setup, on par with a tracker, and starting in a micro. The only thing that holds it back is town assuming mafia have powers they can target people with, or not trusting the person with this power.

In post 900, Oversoul wrote:I balance all of my games on the assumption that town mass claims on day 1 (I think this is usually THE play regardless of alignment, but we can discuss that later). From there, I wanted mafia to really have to choose between letting a townie use an unknown power versus leaving a confirmed town player alive.

There's so many things wrong with this statement it's shocking. I will go over all of them.

First of all, I'll point out that one of the mafia crown powers is a role cop. What's the point of that if town massclaims on day 1? It becomes a useless role, so if you balanced around that you really shouldn't have.
Second, mafia didn't really get to choose anything - either they kill both of the masons (and the bodyguard by extension), or they automatically lose the game. If there was an actual choice where a townie had a real crown power... why should mafia be driven into a corner by towns bad play?

Town mass claiming all of their roles on day 1 should put them in a position worse off than where they started. Instead, the opposite happened, and even though the entire town was outted with their roles, AND we lynched town, AND the crown power was very tame (neighborizor), AND we knew what the crown power was because it targetted mafia.... it still felt like we were the ones being cornered - and we were - because the setup was straight up broken.

Mafia had absolutely no answer to the entire town massclaiming on day 1 - that's a design FLAW, not a feature. That's not how setups are designed on this site generally, and yes mass claiming day 1 is, and really should be, bad play. I'd go as far as to say that a mass claim from town on day 1 should almost always result in a loss, so the fact that town wasn't hampered in the slightest, and instead seemed to have benefited from this is pretty bad and goes against a lot of the design principles I've seen on this site.

And you don't deserve to say that this is how you balance your games, from now on if you want to continue to design setups like this please say it's how you "make" your games - a small distinction, but you're not implying that you're looking out for balance, it's just how it is.

In post 900, Oversoul wrote:I wanted the mafia to really have to grapple with their nightkill choices in this game because I feel like Micros are inherently scumsided due to their small size.

Again, the opposite was accomplished and there was really no choice.

Voting is plurality based, which means it will go to the person with the most number of votes. Tie breakers will be determined by whose name comes first in the alphabet.

This rule is not ok and there's a case to be made that the game is classified as a bastard game because of it.

The case is as follows: You determined that a persons name is at least partially significant for the events in the game. When a player replaces out, you see the new player's name and decide whether to allow them to replace or not. That means that every time you allow a player to replace in, you're stepping in and making a mod decision that changes the course of the game - that's a mild case of mod intervention every single time somebody replaces in, and there's no way for it to not be mod intervention without changing the rule.

Allowing AA to replace xmaya is as if you had said "no, but I'd allow a player named XX to replace in"

One small change, where the order was determined at game start and wasn't changed due to replacements, even if it was still alphabetical.

What did Micc say when he saw this rule in the review thread? Did he say... nothing? Does he realize that this is, essentially, a rule that turns this into a form of bastard game, and that every time you replace somebody, that is an action for a bastard game as well? I am now very concerned with the state of the micro game queue, but only if Micc continues to try to review micro games himself. I don't think this game was reviewed to an acceptable degree before entering play.
I'm sure he does great with his other duties, managing the queue etc, in the same sense that a person can be a great driver but have to blow into a breathalyzer attached to their car before they drive - I think we need somebody in the micro queue thread assigned to review games when the responsibility would otherwise fall to the queue mod.



Those are my unbiased thoughts on the game, or maybe I'm just salty that I lost, who knows.
Pops I do think you are good at mafia and have generally good insight

In post 922, Correspondence wrote:

Mr. Dunnstral

- Hey buddy, the "lurk and they won't notice me" thing is useful sometimes, but in a Micro it was deadly.

It seemed to work out fine for you