In post 26, popsofctown wrote:mod: can we vote for ourselves to wear the crown. Also, are crown votes public?
Selfvoting to wear the crown is allowed. Crown votes will be made public after the crown bearer has been selected. The votes will be blind for the 24 hour period, but then be revealed once the crown bearer has been selected.
Last edited by Oversoul on Sat Aug 17, 2019 2:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
Crown voting begins now. Please PM me your vote for who wears the Crown. You will have 24 hours for this phase of the game. Night will then begin and last 48 hours.
(expired on 2019-08-27 00:00:00)
Last edited by Oversoul on Fri Aug 30, 2019 1:48 am, edited 2 times in total.
In post 895, popsofctown wrote:We should grant credit to Correspondence's Day 1 Egduf read being on-point.
@Oversoul - can you release the full setup for our curiosity or are you going to keep as much as possible secret for potential reuses
I will be releasing everything momentarily. Something_Smart, as well as several of others including yourself, made several cogent points about the setup overall that there is enough I would change that I do not fear releasing the information publicly.
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:
Spoiler: Setup
In post 0, Oversoul wrote:Thank you for looking at my set-up. Everything is negotiable.
Ability cop
: Will get the ability name for the secret ability the target has. In this game the only possible results would be "Innocent Child(x2), Bodyguard, Jailkeeper, Neapolitan, Stenographer, Voyeur)
Searching mason
: Mason who knows there is another mason in the game, but cannot communicate with them unless they both target each other on the same night. Their secret ability makes both of them Innocent Children. If they had gained a PT before becoming Innocent Children, they keep the PT.
Stenographer
: I have wanted this modified version of Neighborizer for awhile. Basically, the player gets access to a PT that they can then invite a person to. In my experience, the PT only becomes created AFTER a successful resolution of the neighborizing action.
My overall idea is that I want the players to decide who gets a power role, but I want there to be serious trade offs for who they select since it will be plurality. I didn't want it to be simple for scum to just shoot whoever gets the power role, so I added the searching masons and the bodyguard. I think Bodyguard + Mason/IC is such a neat interaction because if it succeeds it mostly maintains the EV. I think with just masons + bodyguard, the EV is ~40%.
No one will be told what their secret ability is until after they have been selected to wear the crown.
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
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. 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
something
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
a lot
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.
In the Land of Heat & Lightning
- 13p, Murder on the Orient Express, but with
pink
lawn flamingos?
Under the Moon
- 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
a lot
of spandex.
A Game of Mafia
- 19p, my take on an alt game.
Some Weeb Shit - I want to run a weeb game because they look like fun.
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 924, Dunnstral wrote: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.
I want to address this when I have time, which is not right now. I think I should put the clarification that massclaim occurs very easily in minis/micros. You were a part of two micros where this occurred. This game and Ircher's micro normal where you were friendly neighbor. I think that is an inherent problem in micros though.
In post 924, Dunnstral wrote: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.
Role Cop can also see people's roles after Crowning. You are incorrect that it is useless, just less useful in the event of a massclaim.
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?
I acknowledge that the masons undercut many of the play elements that I wanted to incorporate. I do think that it was an issue to have mafia need to successfully lynch 3 out of the 4 VTs. That said, I do think that RCEnigma could have gotten killed if the scumteam pushed that way when he claimed.
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.
Why should mass claim necessarily harm town? In my opinion, power roles are not meant to catch scum. They are meant to prevent mislynches.
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.
I would argue that town were harmed in this game because a mason died the first night. As I noted in the dead thread, scum would have been better off if the bodyguard was 1-shot or if they had a 1-shot roleblocker of their own.
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.
I am sorry you seem so personally offended by this game. I apologize that you did not have fun. I do think it is only fair to point out that scum's own actions could have lead to a different result. You by your very nature have a lowkey, lurking style of play. That works in large games, but I do not think it works in smaller games, especially micros. It is unfortunate that your style of play in particular was punished this game.
That said, I think this game was doomed from the start. Even though EV states two ICs in 9p is scumfavored, I do not think this is true in practice. The type of mechanic I wanted to explore greatly benefits from a larger game mode and allows for different power roles to be used on both sides of the ball. It also makes the mechanic itself more interesting as choosing the IC to crown was essentially a waste of time for everyone involved.
I want to again say I apologize to the players in this game who expected better balance. In particular, I apologize to Chemist, Dunnstral, and Egduf. The game was ultimately not fair to your faction.
Since this game turned out super townsided, I guess that means I have to make my next game super scumsided.
I promise for my next game I will be more diligent in examining the balance. I will probably not be running a game until Christmas time.
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. I promise for my next game I will be more diligent in examining the balance. I will probably not be running a game until Christmas time.
