I think the problems you're talking about here, especially in Sin City, have more to do with game creators misunderstanding the proper scum/town ratio.
A traitor should be considered scum for determining balance. These games, for whatever reason, didn't seem to do so. But if you subtract one scum and keep the traitor in sin city...does it seem unfair? And even then, I don't think it was that unfair in Sin City's case - the town was godawful in that game and was only able to make it so far due to the SK knocking off multiple mafia.
But in that event, you're risking shafting the mafia with one less genuine member.
If you fail to recruit, that also does terrible things to the balance. That's why they're so swingy: the activation of a traitor and the addition of a mafia player to the scum team is an incredible swing in tempo. Scum bodies are the mafia's most valuable commodity.
Plus, as someone mentioned earlier, having multiple days of genuine townie behavior under your belt is an unfair advantage. Even if they're told they're a traitor, most traitors will generally play using their town personality since they don't know the identity of the mafia.
But in that event, you're risking shafting the mafia with one less genuine member.
If you fail to recruit, that also does terrible things to the balance. That's why they're so swingy: the activation of a traitor and the addition of a mafia player to the scum team is an incredible swing in tempo. Scum bodies are the mafia's most valuable commodity.
Plus, as someone mentioned earlier, having multiple days of genuine townie behavior under your belt is an unfair advantage. Even if they're told they're a traitor, most traitors will generally play using their town personality since they don't know the identity of the mafia.
There are lots of mafia roles that are swingy. Vigs, for example are by definition super-swingy. Same with SKs - If the town lynches the SK in a normal game on D1, the mafia all of a sudden is in a huge hole as they need to survive for a much longer period.
Swingy does not equal broken. You just need to account for it properly.
having multiple days of genuine townie behavior under your belt is an unfair advantage. Even if they're told they're a traitor, most traitors will generally play using their town personality since they don't know the identity of the mafia.
Eh, limited. While this is undoubtedly true, it's not the biggest worry, and once they have to claim (as they should at some point, even if it's the lyol mass claim), the fear will come out. Moreover, people really shouldn't completely ignore recent scummy play because for a few days someone seemed town (though they shouldn't ignore the latter either).
Of note: This may be a better argument against traitors who are recruited upon being targetted with a night kill - those types of traitors can play fully townie without any worry. If the recruit requires a separate action, and they can be mafia nightkilled, then such players have a more interesting choice of what to do upon being given their role.
The biggest worry with such traitors is a cop investigation or the like finding them to be town early. That's an issue that needs consideration (Making a miller a traitor would be a way to balance this, for example)
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
There are lots of mafia roles that are swingy. Vigs, for example are by definition super-swingy. Same with SKs - If the town lynches the SK in a normal game on D1, the mafia all of a sudden is in a huge hole as they need to survive for a much longer period.
Swingy does not equal broken. You just need to account for it properly.
Swingy doesn't mean broken - it just means it's potentially broken. With an equal chance of being broken for either side. Which is balanced, but not fair, in terms of a game being determined primarily by the playskill of the participants instead of a die roll.
Vigs aren't anywhere near the magnitude of swing as traitors. They have 25-50 percent shot at hitting scum...and a 50-65 shot at hitting town, same as the lynch. If they fire once, the effect isn't that huge. If they fire multiple times, they're probably balancing out. And, they can be countered by mafia abilities.
A traitor? 100% guaranteed +1 mafia on activation. Nothing the town can do about it.
Quote from Loran16 »
Eh, limited. While this is undoubtedly true, it's not the biggest worry, and once they have to claim (as they should at some point, even if it's the lyol mass claim), the fear will come out. Moreover, people really shouldn't completely ignore recent scummy play because for a few days someone seemed town (though they shouldn't ignore the latter either).
Behavior analysis is hard enough without trying to analyze people by individual days. There's no way.
If someone gives me a 100% genuine town reaction in the early game, there's no way it makes logical sense for me to discount that completely on the weird off-chance the mod threw in a traitor or conversion role, rather than just regard their later behavior as a null tell fluke.
Quote from Loran16 »
Of note: This may be a better argument against traitors who are recruited upon being targetted with a night kill - those types of traitors can play fully townie without any worry. If the recruit requires a separate action, and they can be mafia nightkilled, then such players have a more interesting choice of what to do upon being given their role.
The biggest worry with such traitors is a cop investigation or the like finding them to be town early. That's an issue that needs consideration (Making a miller a traitor would be a way to balance this, for example)
Ugh. Except players who the town correctly reads as miller, like AI in Amistaria, are automatically cleared from being starting members of the mafia. This was precisely the problem with that setup - even if he wasn't cleared by Ged, he would have been cleared based on the D1 miller claim.
Miller/traitor is an absolutely unholy combination. Cop investigation is another problem.
Ugh. Except players who the town correctly reads as miller, like AI in Amistaria, are automatically cleared from being starting members of the mafia. This was precisely the problem with that setup - even if he wasn't cleared by Ged, he would have been cleared based on the D1 miller claim.
Miller/traitor is an absolutely unholy combination. Cop investigation is another problem.
I didn't believe his miller claim. If I'd been a regular cop, I wouldn't have wasted a shot on him, I'd have just lynched him. The problem with that role was only that there was a corner case where he could be proved to be telling the truth about being a miller without being investigated.
Or look at Amistaria. The town lynches four scum straight in four days...and then loses after only three mislynches (and a misvig)? 50% hit ratio or better is typically a landslide win for the town. But with the conversion, which messed with the balance math, everything went down in a flaming pile.
The problem here was more multiple mafias and too much scum rather than the traitor role. If there'd been 5 scum (including traitor) and an SK, town would've won that game barring AI shenanigans.
Wit's End is the PERFECT answer to your opponent's Monomania however.
Just hold on to your Wit's End when they Monomania, so you can Wit's End them on your next turn!!!
I think this is fairly reminiscent of the "Jace Battles" we have seen in past standards.. My guess is we will soon witness the great Monomania-Wit's End battles.
I'm generally of the belief that 3 mislynches should cause the town to lose. Three strikes and you're out.
Only in a mini. Think about it...in a mini, the town essentially (not always obviously) has to lynch correctly 3 times before lynching incorrectly 3 times.
As you increase the number of times the town has to lynch correctly, so must you increase the margin of error.
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
Only in a mini. Think about it...in a mini, the town essentially (not always obviously) has to lynch correctly 3 times before lynching incorrectly 3 times.
As you increase the number of times the town has to lynch correctly, so must you increase the margin of error.
Except a scum lynch is much harder to generate than a town lynch.
If this forum had Greasers, Phoenix, Commons and Semantics would be the leaders of the gang and every time they commented on something they would do a synchronized finger snap then smoke a cigarette.
Except a scum lynch is much harder to generate than a town lynch.
Indeed (which is why mafia in minis tend to be underpowered (usually 1 power role) compared to the town).
Which is why a 3 mislynch = lose situation for a normal game is ridiculous.
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I love Joboman, Poggy, Niv, and Vezok, because, while they may not be the best players, they still try to win. Having fun is the most important thing to a game, but I've learned that if you don't try to win, then you're ruining everyone else's fun.
Indeed (which is why mafia in minis tend to be underpowered (usually 1 power role) compared to the town).
Which is why a 3 mislynch = lose situation for a normal game is ridiculous.
Yeah that's usually not balanced. If you think about 1 scum lynch = 1 town lynch you realize fakeclaiming cop with a guilty day 2 is fine scum play (actually it usually is fine scum play).
Plus 9:3 starts our with mathematically worse odds than 8:3 which sticks in my craw.
P.S. 11:2 mountainous, 13:3 Double Day or 8:2:2 nightless are both considered balanced-ish.
If this forum had Greasers, Phoenix, Commons and Semantics would be the leaders of the gang and every time they commented on something they would do a synchronized finger snap then smoke a cigarette.
I'm not especially fond of traitors, but I think they're fine so long as a lot of thought has gone into the role when it's added to a set-up. A traitor that doesn't know he's a traitor ranks up there with jesters.
If someone gives me a 100% genuine town reaction in the early game, there's no way it makes logical sense for me to discount that completely on the weird off-chance the mod threw in a traitor or conversion role, rather than just regard their later behavior as a null tell fluke.
I've always felt that when a traitor flips, the mod should make the time that he flipped apparent somehow. The most obvious way would be just to announce it in-thread. Like, if a traitor joins the scum N2, then in the D3 opening the mod would say something along the lines of:
Someone among you has changed allegiances.
That way, the town has a clear time-frame to look for changes in behavior/cop results, and alerts the town that there's a traitor in the first place. It probably would have prevented the situation in Amistaria as well, because a claimed miller probably would have come under some scrutiny in such a situation.
It also adds a shiny thing for the town to discuss.
Swingy doesn't mean broken - it just means it's potentially broken. With an equal chance of being broken for either side. Which is balanced, but not fair, in terms of a game being determined primarily by the playskill of the participants instead of a die roll.
Vigs aren't anywhere near the magnitude of swing as traitors. They have 25-50 percent shot at hitting scum...and a 50-65 shot at hitting town, same as the lynch. If they fire once, the effect isn't that huge. If they fire multiple times, they're probably balancing out. And, they can be countered by mafia abilities.
A traitor? 100% guaranteed +1 mafia on activation. Nothing the town can do about it.
Depending on how the traitor flips, you could do something to partially counterbalance the swinginess if you wanted. Like, make a "latent cop" (or whatever) role that's vanilla until the traitor switches. Weird thing about that though is that the mafia might potentially be punished for recruiting the traitor in certain situations. If you put the recruiting in the traitor or someone else's hands though and make the traitor aware of the latent cop's existence, it could work.
It would also be another way of informing the town of when the traitor flipped if the latent cop knew how his abilities were triggered.
That is an interesting fix, in principle. Unfortunately, I think in practice it might be hard to use it productively, and the paranoia it will generate may well obliterate every town read up till that point.
Traitor is just more trouble to design than it's worth. The scum have to be a bit underpowered, because being able to just +1 their numbers is extremely powerful. And you can't just have some vanilla townie turn traitor because it is too likely to just never do anything. If the role ends up on some negligible player, the role is no longer a traitor, because the scum will never bother to kill said player when they're Vanilla. So it has to be attached to a decently powered role..except that the scum want to kill that role anyway. So now they're just getting a bonus for doing what they would have done in the first place.
The only way a traitor can really work is if the mod specifically selects a player for the role, and makes it extremely weak.
And when the role is done poorly, it wrecks games entirely. Please see: Return to Amistaria, or Matrix Mafia(there are other examples as well, but I don't really remember them). It's just not worth bothering with.
Traitors seem like a hilarious role to me. More than balance, the question seems like it ought to be, can it be made without detracting from other players' fun? In that vein, Dancing Mad's idea sounds pretty good in some games, since there's nothing worse than having a bunch of confirmed townies running around on day 3 or 4, making it impossible to avoid lynching by process of elimination.
Wit's End is the PERFECT answer to your opponent's Monomania however.
Just hold on to your Wit's End when they Monomania, so you can Wit's End them on your next turn!!!
I think this is fairly reminiscent of the "Jace Battles" we have seen in past standards.. My guess is we will soon witness the great Monomania-Wit's End battles.
There is nothing worse than not being able to trust someone that has exhibited overwhelmingly town behavior and/or is investigated as town because 'they might be a traitor'. It's one thing if a scum just dodges investigations and acts in an extremely town manner. Then they just got a little fortunate somewhere. A town has to have some kind of solid information at various stages in the game to be able to make correct decisions.
A town has to have some kind of solid information at various stages in the game to be able to make correct decisions.
True, but many lategames seem like they're plagued with inactivity because making a case involves 6-8 days worth of wall-of-texting, either writing them or reading them. If you can give players an incentive to look at the players around them with fresh eyes once in a while, it doesn't seem like it would ALWAYS be a bad idea.
Wit's End is the PERFECT answer to your opponent's Monomania however.
Just hold on to your Wit's End when they Monomania, so you can Wit's End them on your next turn!!!
I think this is fairly reminiscent of the "Jace Battles" we have seen in past standards.. My guess is we will soon witness the great Monomania-Wit's End battles.
What if alignments always changed! "Every day there's a new scumteam!" And the scum are randomly assigned every day! And then when one gets lynched that's -1 to the scumteam and that player is forever dead as scum.
What if alignments always changed! "Every day there's a new scumteam!" And the scum are randomly assigned every day! And then when one gets lynched that's -1 to the scumteam and that player is forever dead as scum.
That's sort of like being punched in the balls each day by the mod.
What if alignments always changed! "Every day there's a new scumteam!" And the scum are randomly assigned every day! And then when one gets lynched that's -1 to the scumteam and that player is forever dead as scum.
I actually had this idea too.
I think I just like playing devil's advocate too much.
Wit's End is the PERFECT answer to your opponent's Monomania however.
Just hold on to your Wit's End when they Monomania, so you can Wit's End them on your next turn!!!
I think this is fairly reminiscent of the "Jace Battles" we have seen in past standards.. My guess is we will soon witness the great Monomania-Wit's End battles.
What if alignments always changed! "Every day there's a new scumteam!" And the scum are randomly assigned every day! And then when one gets lynched that's -1 to the scumteam and that player is forever dead as scum.
This should not become a part of Cyan's Impossible Mafia.
Wit's End is the PERFECT answer to your opponent's Monomania however.
Just hold on to your Wit's End when they Monomania, so you can Wit's End them on your next turn!!!
I think this is fairly reminiscent of the "Jace Battles" we have seen in past standards.. My guess is we will soon witness the great Monomania-Wit's End battles.
I agree with Az on the use of alignment-changing roles in practice, and with Guardman that Seppel's idea would be like being punched in the balls by the mod. It was kind of done once: the last night of High School Mafia.
I'm not in favour of a ban on alignment-changing roles, just mode being 300% more careful about using them.
I agree with Az on the use of alignment-changing roles in practice, and with Guardman that Seppel's idea would be like being punched in the balls by the mod. It was kind of done once: the last night of High School Mafia.
I'm not in favour of a ban on alignment-changing roles, just mode being 300% more careful about using them.
*nods*
How about we edit a word of warning into the hosting signup thread?
Already done. I played a blind game on MTGD where the SK killed people by stealing their gimmick accounts (mechanic was similar to my role in IDF mafia, but with accounts rather than abilities). Of course, the SK just took a succession of lurkers, and was pretty much uncatchable as a result.
So, yeh, it definitely strikes me as an inherently broken and unfun mechanic that isn't remotely improved by knowledge of its existence.
I remember that game. I was a Talking Cantaloupe. The funny part was that the scum even sort of figured out who the SK was but we couldn't kill him as he jumped before we could stop him. It was a really weird game.
I'm never comfortable with "banning" any role design; I'd be more comfortable with just making it known that having a traitor is strongly discouraged (much like as far as I know the jester role is heavily frowned upon and probably won't make it past review, but it isn't banned, per se).
/barn. I am not a fan of WC changes, but if supported by the source material so that the players can have a hint that it might happen to that character, it can be fine.
I don't think a global ban is needed, but I think alignment changes should be limited to the more complex games (specialty, FTQ/PCQ) and that there should be hints provided.
I've always felt that when a traitor flips, the mod should make the time that he flipped apparent somehow. The most obvious way would be just to announce it in-thread. Like, if a traitor joins the scum N2, then in the D3 opening the mod would say something along the lines of:
Someone among you has changed allegiances.
That way, the town has a clear time-frame to look for changes in behavior/cop results, and alerts the town that there's a traitor in the first place. It probably would have prevented the situation in Amistaria as well, because a claimed miller probably would have come under some scrutiny in such a situation.
It also adds a shiny thing for the town to discuss.
Depending on how the traitor flips, you could do something to partially counterbalance the swinginess if you wanted. Like, make a "latent cop" (or whatever) role that's vanilla until the traitor switches. Weird thing about that though is that the mafia might potentially be punished for recruiting the traitor in certain situations. If you put the recruiting in the traitor or someone else's hands though and make the traitor aware of the latent cop's existence, it could work.
It would also be another way of informing the town of when the traitor flipped if the latent cop knew how his abilities were triggered.
There is nothing worse than not being able to trust someone that has exhibited overwhelmingly town behavior and/or is investigated as town because 'they might be a traitor'.
How is that any different than scum that looks obvtown.
Does everyone's opinion of traitors extend to cults?
Does everyone's opinion of traitors extend to cults?
I'm really not a fan of any role that causes someone to change win cons, so, yeah - as they exist in the general sense, I do heavily disagree with the inclusion of cults. Although, I think they've been falling out of favor as a whole on this site.
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If you're town and I'm mafia, you've already lost. You just don't know it yet.
I'm not a fan of alignment changes that could happen, as they are inherently swingy, but alignment changes that are certain can be planned and balanced. My opinion anways.
I'm not a fan of alignment changes that could happen, as they are inherently swingy, but alignment changes that are certain can be planned and balanced. My opinion anways.
That's probably the crux, right there.
In CropCircles' Final Fanstasy VII game, there were 3 potential traitor roles with conditions for turning such that one and only one of them absolutely was going to become a traitor at some point, but which one was left to how the game played out. Perhaps it was partly due to the general mayhem of that game, but the system worked out pretty well.
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The Golden Rule of forums: If you're going to be rude, be right. If you might be wrong, be polite.
It's true, the traitor role in that game worked alright.
But then like, when your SK daykills 4 people at a time(once every 4 days, but still), , and any cultists die when the cult leader dies, it's alot harder for a role like that to hide.
That game is also like the one good implementation I've ever seen for a traitor.
I'm not a fan of ingame statements like 'someone among you has changed alignment', because that just creates too much of a WIFOMy game state. It also invalidates all previous investigations, etc.
I feel like people are just arguing on principle here. I am extremely skeptical that, given the option, anyone would choose playing in a game with a traitor vs. playing in a game without one. People just don't like the word 'ban'. But saying that it's 'strongly discouraged and probably won't pass a setup review' is the same thing as saying 'it's banned'.
Ah, the good old days. I had a (potential) Traitor in my first game, (LoTR) which was almost 100% for flavor purposes, certainly not "balance" where I did not exactly know what i was doing. Difference there was that it was the Traitor himself who could essentially decide whether or not he wanted to flip, and I tried to put a serious hint in the opening post warning about the "corrupting" power of the ring.
I wouldn't go quite so far as to put an outright ban on the role (though I really dislike it now in principle). I think the Town needs some way to know it's a possibility up front though and/or some way to combat it.
The 3 mislynch thing is kind of a minimum balance requirement the way I see it now. You try to design so that if everything goes horribly wrong for the Town, it still takes ~3 mislynches. But that also requires things like mis-vigs. Town causing the death of other town. If it's just 3 mislynch/lose in a large game and the Town didn't cause any other town deaths, then that would mean the scum had some completely out of whack killing capacity.
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Quote from Bateleur »
Ambush Krotiq makes me laugh so much. I keep rereading the card and it keeps not having Flash. In what sense is this an ambush again? I just have visions of this huge Krotiq poorly concealed in some bushes, feeling slightly sad that his carefully planned ambushes never seem to work.
Isn't the problem with Traitors linked to having investigative roles? (and by extension, cults) Return to Am's problem with the role was Ged, as the psudo-cop, asked the perfect question that invaidated his results, much like if he was a normal cop and had investigated AI night 1. (There also was a 1 town shot, which could have been directed towards AI,)
The partial solution is to have a cop receive a flavor change after someone he investigated changes sides. Another solution is to ban alignment changes after X days, 3 being my suggestion. Or simply label the Traitor as a Bastard Mechanic and leave it at that. My favorite solution is simply to not have cops with traitors.
If this forum had Greasers, Phoenix, Commons and Semantics would be the leaders of the gang and every time they commented on something they would do a synchronized finger snap then smoke a cigarette.
That is an interesting fix, in principle. Unfortunately, I think in practice it might be hard to use it productively, and the paranoia it will generate may well obliterate every town read up till that point.
Too right. If the mod announced that, I would delete my notes, go to DEFCON 1, and start playing as if I were the only townie in the game. It wouldn't be pretty.
What if alignments always changed! "Every day there's a new scumteam!" And the scum are randomly assigned every day! And then when one gets lynched that's -1 to the scumteam and that player is forever dead as scum.
Does everyone's opinion of traitors extend to cults?
Still have never played in a game that involved any level of culting (both South Park and Meadows technically had CLs; neither lived long enough to recruit a member). Can't wait to come up against one (or even better, be one.)
Cults are the 9th circle of hell, and cult games end in disease, famine, and disaster upon the land.
Lynching scum doesn't help the town. Town read is a joke concept invented by demons. Good players inevitably fall under suspicion. Idiots live forever, because the cult leader won't recruit them, the town won't lynch them because the cult leader wouldn't recruit them, and then they are STUPID ALL OVER THE THREAD.
Eventually the townies realize that their cause is lost and start to beg the cult leader to recruit them so they can win.
If this forum had Greasers, Phoenix, Commons and Semantics would be the leaders of the gang and every time they commented on something they would do a synchronized finger snap then smoke a cigarette.
It's true, Cults are the absolute worst. I only like them when the cultists just revert and scum can't be recruited, but even then they are really swingy.
Re: Axelrod's traitor in LOTR, that's about as good an implementation as I have seen. Traitor controls if they flip (so no being unwillingly recruited), the town got a clue in flavour that Frodo was about to go (the description of the kill he caused with the ring) and the idea of Frodo being corrupted by the ring was inherent in the flavour of the game even without that.
Arcadic: it's not just the interaction with cops that's unfair.
I don't like cults, but I don't think they are quite as bad as traitors. Reason being that typically you'll start to see at least some interaction that's noteworthy between all the members, and that can mean real trouble for them. Where with traitors, it can be a lot harder to spot.
Also, if you get just one cultist, that not only reveals that there is one, but starts to weaken the resolve of the rest...
...they still suck though.
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Quote from TheFooFish »
Lies! -I'm Buffy Summers, town tracker. I used my ability on you and saw that you didn't use any abilities before the game started. My flavor is I was sucked through a mysterious space-time portal and I'm here to kill all the vampires, and my tracking ability is a combination of my Slayer and Native American skills.
Cults in my opinion when they are done right are fine. It's when they are done wrong that you get problems.
A good cult as Alpha said is usually much more noticeable than a traitor in interactions and once a cult member is lynched you know to be on the lookout for shift in behaviors.
Cults are easy. You just come into the thread the next day saying how you were recruited and you don't want to be a cultist, so you gotta find the CL and kill them.
I don't like cults, but I don't think they are quite as bad as traitors. Reason being that typically you'll start to see at least some interaction that's noteworthy between all the members, and that can mean real trouble for them. Where with traitors, it can be a lot harder to spot.
Also, if you get just one cultist, that not only reveals that there is one, but starts to weaken the resolve of the rest...
...they still suck though.
It doesn't weaken the resolve of the rest. Because lynching cultists is ANTI TOWN.
If there's 11 town and 3 cult, and you lynch a cultist, then what happens? Tomorrow there's 10 town and 3 cult.
It's the most maddening exercise in futility. Cultists will claim to save cult leader? So cultist claims CL to save town! Then town gets lynched the next day, and the next time a cultist claims you have NO IDEA what's happening! Does someone have decent reads? Who knows? The cult leader can recruit a player whose playing scummy to bus them and earn town cred for the entire cult, or reveal the person whose been hounding cultists and the leader as cult scum.
And, asides from that, there's no pro-town way to get rid of the complete idiots, because the cult leader never touches them, so eventually the game sinks into a bog of lurkers, spammers, cult scum, and increasingly frustrated players who beg the CL to recruit them out of this hell (and cultists fake begging the cult leader to recruit them).
In the hands of just a competent player, the CL role is a free win and a frustrating game. In the hands of a good player, the CL role is a nightmare that drives people to replace out in droves as the thread devolves into madness.
If this forum had Greasers, Phoenix, Commons and Semantics would be the leaders of the gang and every time they commented on something they would do a synchronized finger snap then smoke a cigarette.
The way a CL should win is by "poisoning" other living players. They retain their original win conditions while "poisoned" and only he wins if some balanced majority of players are poisoned.
Optional rule: The poison spreads when a player targets or is the target of a poisoned played.
If this forum had Greasers, Phoenix, Commons and Semantics would be the leaders of the gang and every time they commented on something they would do a synchronized finger snap then smoke a cigarette.
Wit's End is the PERFECT answer to your opponent's Monomania however.
Just hold on to your Wit's End when they Monomania, so you can Wit's End them on your next turn!!!
I think this is fairly reminiscent of the "Jace Battles" we have seen in past standards.. My guess is we will soon witness the great Monomania-Wit's End battles.
I've been talking about taking some time off of mafia for awhile, and I've decided that now is the time for it. I was going to do so before Zindabad's game, but eventually relented and joined. But that was a mistake..my heart just wasn't in it, though I tried to make it be.
I've just become frustrated with the game on many levels. I feel like Mods try too hard to trick the players now. When someone claims Doc, your first question shouldn't be 'are they actually scum that was given a Doc claim to discourage mod-gaming/give them an out?'. But anymore, that is immediately what I think when I see a Doc claim. And too frequently, I feel, that is exactly what it ends up being. I feel like mods, for the most part, have moved away from providing the game for the enjoyment of the players, and are just putting the players through whatever madness they feel is enjoyable to themselves. And that just isn't how it should be. Modding is a way to give back to the mafia community. It's not a vehicle to have fun at everyone else' expense. This isn't to say that I don't like Specialty games. I do. They're easily my favorite. But I just don't think that mods should focus so much on punishing players for setup analysis. Setup analysis is part of every game of mafia, and is completely unavoidable. When you actively try your hardest to stifle it, you are really only punishing the town, and giving a huge unwritten advantage to the scum.
I'm also frustrated with many of the recent players. No one ever wants to lynch anyone anymore. In Amistaria, TFF could not have been scummier in his early game exchange with Azrael. He accumulated a few quick votes, and then came back with some ridiculously lame 'I was getting ready to vote Az and he just saw it and beat me to it' and..somehow...everyone believed it. Even though it was obvious nonsense if you simply read the exchange in question.
In other circumstances, people claim Vanilla, and then..everyone unvotes. That is not how the game works. As RP was saying earlier, when you bring a person to 'claim range', you are indicating your intent to lynch them, barring a claim that makes it seem extremely likely that they would be town. But anymore, everyone just runs up everyone else, sees their claim, and then moves on. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to find scumminess in various wagons.
It doesn't help that I feel like players now just jump into the first game that shows up, even though they've never even read a game of mafia before, and have no idea what they're about to get into. Then they proceed to either completely bumble their role, or, just get completely overwhelmed, never post, and request replacement half-way through Day 1.
I'm probably not gone forever. There are certain Mods that I will always sign up for. Not many these days, but a few. I've long since wanted to be a Mafia Mod, or at least part of the Council, but I suspect that the years of animosity between myself and some of the staff here have rendered this impossible. But I love the game, so I'll be around, giving my insights, etc. For now, I just don't have it in me to play the game, even though I love this game(and I do..next to poker and chess, it's my favorite hobby by far).
Thanks for so many years of great memories. I guess I'm just joining the ranks of most of the players I've looked up to.
I have a thought of a game I've been wanting to run, Cyan, that I think you'd enjoy. I'm hoping that, whenever I get off my ass and design it, you'll join it for me.
I agree with Cyan somewhat about the red herrings and such in games. atlseal's game made me cringe as scum to see the NK could be blocked by the mechanics of the game alone. I thought that was one of the cardinal rules of being a mod.
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But in that event, you're risking shafting the mafia with one less genuine member.
If you fail to recruit, that also does terrible things to the balance. That's why they're so swingy: the activation of a traitor and the addition of a mafia player to the scum team is an incredible swing in tempo. Scum bodies are the mafia's most valuable commodity.
Plus, as someone mentioned earlier, having multiple days of genuine townie behavior under your belt is an unfair advantage. Even if they're told they're a traitor, most traitors will generally play using their town personality since they don't know the identity of the mafia.
There are lots of mafia roles that are swingy. Vigs, for example are by definition super-swingy. Same with SKs - If the town lynches the SK in a normal game on D1, the mafia all of a sudden is in a huge hole as they need to survive for a much longer period.
Swingy does not equal broken. You just need to account for it properly.
Eh, limited. While this is undoubtedly true, it's not the biggest worry, and once they have to claim (as they should at some point, even if it's the lyol mass claim), the fear will come out. Moreover, people really shouldn't completely ignore recent scummy play because for a few days someone seemed town (though they shouldn't ignore the latter either).
Of note: This may be a better argument against traitors who are recruited upon being targetted with a night kill - those types of traitors can play fully townie without any worry. If the recruit requires a separate action, and they can be mafia nightkilled, then such players have a more interesting choice of what to do upon being given their role.
The biggest worry with such traitors is a cop investigation or the like finding them to be town early. That's an issue that needs consideration (Making a miller a traitor would be a way to balance this, for example)
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
Swingy doesn't mean broken - it just means it's potentially broken. With an equal chance of being broken for either side. Which is balanced, but not fair, in terms of a game being determined primarily by the playskill of the participants instead of a die roll.
Vigs aren't anywhere near the magnitude of swing as traitors. They have 25-50 percent shot at hitting scum...and a 50-65 shot at hitting town, same as the lynch. If they fire once, the effect isn't that huge. If they fire multiple times, they're probably balancing out. And, they can be countered by mafia abilities.
A traitor? 100% guaranteed +1 mafia on activation. Nothing the town can do about it.
Behavior analysis is hard enough without trying to analyze people by individual days. There's no way.
If someone gives me a 100% genuine town reaction in the early game, there's no way it makes logical sense for me to discount that completely on the weird off-chance the mod threw in a traitor or conversion role, rather than just regard their later behavior as a null tell fluke.
Ugh. Except players who the town correctly reads as miller, like AI in Amistaria, are automatically cleared from being starting members of the mafia. This was precisely the problem with that setup - even if he wasn't cleared by Ged, he would have been cleared based on the D1 miller claim.
Miller/traitor is an absolutely unholy combination. Cop investigation is another problem.
I didn't believe his miller claim. If I'd been a regular cop, I wouldn't have wasted a shot on him, I'd have just lynched him. The problem with that role was only that there was a corner case where he could be proved to be telling the truth about being a miller without being investigated.
Also, in regards to this:
The problem here was more multiple mafias and too much scum rather than the traitor role. If there'd been 5 scum (including traitor) and an SK, town would've won that game barring AI shenanigans.
Sounds like this is the problem more than the actual effect of the role.
Only in a mini. Think about it...in a mini, the town essentially (not always obviously) has to lynch correctly 3 times before lynching incorrectly 3 times.
As you increase the number of times the town has to lynch correctly, so must you increase the margin of error.
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
Except a scum lynch is much harder to generate than a town lynch.
Indeed (which is why mafia in minis tend to be underpowered (usually 1 power role) compared to the town).
Which is why a 3 mislynch = lose situation for a normal game is ridiculous.
Logical Reasoning is dead; Long Live Stupidity
Yeah that's usually not balanced. If you think about 1 scum lynch = 1 town lynch you realize fakeclaiming cop with a guilty day 2 is fine scum play (actually it usually is fine scum play).
Plus 9:3 starts our with mathematically worse odds than 8:3 which sticks in my craw.
P.S. 11:2 mountainous, 13:3 Double Day or 8:2:2 nightless are both considered balanced-ish.
I've always felt that when a traitor flips, the mod should make the time that he flipped apparent somehow. The most obvious way would be just to announce it in-thread. Like, if a traitor joins the scum N2, then in the D3 opening the mod would say something along the lines of:
Someone among you has changed allegiances.
That way, the town has a clear time-frame to look for changes in behavior/cop results, and alerts the town that there's a traitor in the first place. It probably would have prevented the situation in Amistaria as well, because a claimed miller probably would have come under some scrutiny in such a situation.
It also adds a shiny thing for the town to discuss.
Depending on how the traitor flips, you could do something to partially counterbalance the swinginess if you wanted. Like, make a "latent cop" (or whatever) role that's vanilla until the traitor switches. Weird thing about that though is that the mafia might potentially be punished for recruiting the traitor in certain situations. If you put the recruiting in the traitor or someone else's hands though and make the traitor aware of the latent cop's existence, it could work.
It would also be another way of informing the town of when the traitor flipped if the latent cop knew how his abilities were triggered.
That is an interesting fix, in principle. Unfortunately, I think in practice it might be hard to use it productively, and the paranoia it will generate may well obliterate every town read up till that point.
The only way a traitor can really work is if the mod specifically selects a player for the role, and makes it extremely weak.
And when the role is done poorly, it wrecks games entirely. Please see: Return to Amistaria, or Matrix Mafia(there are other examples as well, but I don't really remember them). It's just not worth bothering with.
True, but many lategames seem like they're plagued with inactivity because making a case involves 6-8 days worth of wall-of-texting, either writing them or reading them. If you can give players an incentive to look at the players around them with fresh eyes once in a while, it doesn't seem like it would ALWAYS be a bad idea.
That's sort of like being punched in the balls each day by the mod.
I actually had this idea too.
I think I just like playing devil's advocate too much.
This should not become a part of Cyan's Impossible Mafia.
I'm not in favour of a ban on alignment-changing roles, just mode being 300% more careful about using them.
Don't encourage him. That setup is going to be ridiculous[ly awesome] enough as it is, and I don't want to have to balance that crap.
Come on now, Ged. You know you'll do it.
@ puddlejumper: Cyan's Impossible Mafia is a game that Seppel has created made up of roles that Cyan has said would never be in a game of mafia.
And I cannot wait to play in that game.
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I remember that game. I was a Talking Cantaloupe. The funny part was that the scum even sort of figured out who the SK was but we couldn't kill him as he jumped before we could stop him. It was a really weird game.
This sums up my feelings on the matter.
This could be a decent solution.
How is that any different than scum that looks obvtown.
Does everyone's opinion of traitors extend to cults?
smoke_Killah
I'm really not a fan of any role that causes someone to change win cons, so, yeah - as they exist in the general sense, I do heavily disagree with the inclusion of cults. Although, I think they've been falling out of favor as a whole on this site.
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That's probably the crux, right there.
In CropCircles' Final Fanstasy VII game, there were 3 potential traitor roles with conditions for turning such that one and only one of them absolutely was going to become a traitor at some point, but which one was left to how the game played out. Perhaps it was partly due to the general mayhem of that game, but the system worked out pretty well.
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She knows why.
But then like, when your SK daykills 4 people at a time(once every 4 days, but still), , and any cultists die when the cult leader dies, it's alot harder for a role like that to hide.
That game is also like the one good implementation I've ever seen for a traitor.
I'm not a fan of ingame statements like 'someone among you has changed alignment', because that just creates too much of a WIFOMy game state. It also invalidates all previous investigations, etc.
I feel like people are just arguing on principle here. I am extremely skeptical that, given the option, anyone would choose playing in a game with a traitor vs. playing in a game without one. People just don't like the word 'ban'. But saying that it's 'strongly discouraged and probably won't pass a setup review' is the same thing as saying 'it's banned'.
I wouldn't go quite so far as to put an outright ban on the role (though I really dislike it now in principle). I think the Town needs some way to know it's a possibility up front though and/or some way to combat it.
The 3 mislynch thing is kind of a minimum balance requirement the way I see it now. You try to design so that if everything goes horribly wrong for the Town, it still takes ~3 mislynches. But that also requires things like mis-vigs. Town causing the death of other town. If it's just 3 mislynch/lose in a large game and the Town didn't cause any other town deaths, then that would mean the scum had some completely out of whack killing capacity.
The partial solution is to have a cop receive a flavor change after someone he investigated changes sides. Another solution is to ban alignment changes after X days, 3 being my suggestion. Or simply label the Traitor as a Bastard Mechanic and leave it at that. My favorite solution is simply to not have cops with traitors.
My wife was on MTV with this video.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUutIZg2EpU
Ged found the 100% wrong question to ask to break the setup
Too right. If the mod announced that, I would delete my notes, go to DEFCON 1, and start playing as if I were the only townie in the game. It wouldn't be pretty.
This sounds like my kind of game.
Still have never played in a game that involved any level of culting (both South Park and Meadows technically had CLs; neither lived long enough to recruit a member). Can't wait to come up against one (or even better, be one.)
"...a talisman against all evil, so long as you obey me."
Cults are the 9th circle of hell, and cult games end in disease, famine, and disaster upon the land.
Lynching scum doesn't help the town. Town read is a joke concept invented by demons. Good players inevitably fall under suspicion. Idiots live forever, because the cult leader won't recruit them, the town won't lynch them because the cult leader wouldn't recruit them, and then they are STUPID ALL OVER THE THREAD.
Eventually the townies realize that their cause is lost and start to beg the cult leader to recruit them so they can win.
Re: Axelrod's traitor in LOTR, that's about as good an implementation as I have seen. Traitor controls if they flip (so no being unwillingly recruited), the town got a clue in flavour that Frodo was about to go (the description of the kill he caused with the ring) and the idea of Frodo being corrupted by the ring was inherent in the flavour of the game even without that.
Arcadic: it's not just the interaction with cops that's unfair.
Also, if you get just one cultist, that not only reveals that there is one, but starts to weaken the resolve of the rest...
...they still suck though.
A good cult as Alpha said is usually much more noticeable than a traitor in interactions and once a cult member is lynched you know to be on the lookout for shift in behaviors.
Then you do, and you're town again.
Win win.
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It doesn't weaken the resolve of the rest. Because lynching cultists is ANTI TOWN.
If there's 11 town and 3 cult, and you lynch a cultist, then what happens? Tomorrow there's 10 town and 3 cult.
It's the most maddening exercise in futility. Cultists will claim to save cult leader? So cultist claims CL to save town! Then town gets lynched the next day, and the next time a cultist claims you have NO IDEA what's happening! Does someone have decent reads? Who knows? The cult leader can recruit a player whose playing scummy to bus them and earn town cred for the entire cult, or reveal the person whose been hounding cultists and the leader as cult scum.
And, asides from that, there's no pro-town way to get rid of the complete idiots, because the cult leader never touches them, so eventually the game sinks into a bog of lurkers, spammers, cult scum, and increasingly frustrated players who beg the CL to recruit them out of this hell (and cultists fake begging the cult leader to recruit them).
In the hands of just a competent player, the CL role is a free win and a frustrating game. In the hands of a good player, the CL role is a nightmare that drives people to replace out in droves as the thread devolves into madness.
Optional rule: The poison spreads when a player targets or is the target of a poisoned played.
Well first off, you set the percentage of poisons to a reasonable number.
And second, players are immediately notified of being poisoned.
Or make it so EVERYONE in the game is a CL, and they have to fight to see which becomes the dominant cult.
Or even why I'm posting it.
I've been talking about taking some time off of mafia for awhile, and I've decided that now is the time for it. I was going to do so before Zindabad's game, but eventually relented and joined. But that was a mistake..my heart just wasn't in it, though I tried to make it be.
I've just become frustrated with the game on many levels. I feel like Mods try too hard to trick the players now. When someone claims Doc, your first question shouldn't be 'are they actually scum that was given a Doc claim to discourage mod-gaming/give them an out?'. But anymore, that is immediately what I think when I see a Doc claim. And too frequently, I feel, that is exactly what it ends up being. I feel like mods, for the most part, have moved away from providing the game for the enjoyment of the players, and are just putting the players through whatever madness they feel is enjoyable to themselves. And that just isn't how it should be. Modding is a way to give back to the mafia community. It's not a vehicle to have fun at everyone else' expense. This isn't to say that I don't like Specialty games. I do. They're easily my favorite. But I just don't think that mods should focus so much on punishing players for setup analysis. Setup analysis is part of every game of mafia, and is completely unavoidable. When you actively try your hardest to stifle it, you are really only punishing the town, and giving a huge unwritten advantage to the scum.
I'm also frustrated with many of the recent players. No one ever wants to lynch anyone anymore. In Amistaria, TFF could not have been scummier in his early game exchange with Azrael. He accumulated a few quick votes, and then came back with some ridiculously lame 'I was getting ready to vote Az and he just saw it and beat me to it' and..somehow...everyone believed it. Even though it was obvious nonsense if you simply read the exchange in question.
In other circumstances, people claim Vanilla, and then..everyone unvotes. That is not how the game works. As RP was saying earlier, when you bring a person to 'claim range', you are indicating your intent to lynch them, barring a claim that makes it seem extremely likely that they would be town. But anymore, everyone just runs up everyone else, sees their claim, and then moves on. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to find scumminess in various wagons.
It doesn't help that I feel like players now just jump into the first game that shows up, even though they've never even read a game of mafia before, and have no idea what they're about to get into. Then they proceed to either completely bumble their role, or, just get completely overwhelmed, never post, and request replacement half-way through Day 1.
I'm probably not gone forever. There are certain Mods that I will always sign up for. Not many these days, but a few. I've long since wanted to be a Mafia Mod, or at least part of the Council, but I suspect that the years of animosity between myself and some of the staff here have rendered this impossible. But I love the game, so I'll be around, giving my insights, etc. For now, I just don't have it in me to play the game, even though I love this game(and I do..next to poker and chess, it's my favorite hobby by far).
Thanks for so many years of great memories. I guess I'm just joining the ranks of most of the players I've looked up to.
/melodrama
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