I think the setup was slightly Town-sided, 4 Town prs are a bit much and everything except the Tracker was plausibly able to get ahead on kills.
Early on in scumchat I said 3 town prs was on the high-end but in the last few weeks I've learned more about setup design and just how scumsided 3 scum vs. 9 Town is by raw numbers, so 4 seems reasonable.
Town had pretty much the worse possible luck mechanically. Tracker died N1, neither Colin nor Pizza ever did anything, Meg got mislynched.
There were a couple of mechanic misplays I think? Colin and Pizza could have probably held off their claims, which allowed me to roleblock them with impunity. King Torg should have gone off N1. D2 would have been very different if grapefruit was dead and King Torg had a townfirm in his pocket.
I'll post the set up later, but suffice to say that enough of the town roles are unconfirmable and their overall power level was weak enough that I didn't feel it was especially town sided. Maybe slightly due to site claiming meta, by which I mean people here tend to trust claims more than distrust them in my experience.
I'll post the set up later, but suffice to say that enough of the town roles are unconfirmable and their overall power level was weak enough that I didn't feel it was especially town sided. Maybe slightly due to site claiming meta, by which I mean people here tend to trust claims more than distrust them in my experience.
I'm used to open setups where claims are extremely powerful which biases me somewhat.
Just forcing scum into awkward CC situations is extremely good for Town though.
King Torg could have easily given Town two more mislynches to play with, which would have been a disaster for us. I would probably have to bus Killjoy and hope to mislynch both of Tubba and Anak.
On the otherhand, I probably could have gotten pizza mislynched D3 if I had trust Killjoy's reading of the situation more and confidently fake scumread pizza.
It took three weeks to get through one topic and it was just a waste of all our time. Why everyone continued to believe Pizza after he lied confuses me. I'm not sure how much clearer I could have been about his intentional conversational avoidance against me. And why nobody else was upset at Reaverb for moving the goalposts I have no idea. It felt as if I was the only person making progress. Archon was the only person who I felt I could converse rationally with. And even he was blinded by Pizza. Sigh.
GJ scum team; Reaverb, killing me when you did was probably the right play, which makes me sad because I think I was the only one to ever suspect you (well except for Osie day one also).
Jenna, I hope this game doesn't turn you away from here, if it's any consolation, I've been on the receiving end of a pizza tunnel as town. He's a good player, just sometimes a little too confident.
Silver, thanks for the game, was an interesting setup. Wish I'd had a bit more impact.
Tubba's Clairvoyant role was both strong on it's face and a secret totally broken mode nobody noticed.
First, it could confirm other player's claims (Example: "Is there a role named 'Town Thief' in the setup?" to confirm Pizza's claim)
Second, since we could claim flavor names with impunity, Tubba could have asked us to mass-flavor claim and then use his ability as a super cop.
Example: "Is it true that ((There exists Town role PMs whose flavor names is 'Megan') AND (There exists Town role PMs whose flavor names is 'Blade'))" would result in "Yes", which would have townfirmed both Jenna and King Torg. A "No" would give less info than a single guilty but still good info to have a 1 in 2.
(Note: I'm pretty sure the correct thing to do as mod if somebody comes up with the second is do a hotfix rule patch, but it would probably require townfirming the Clairvoyant at least to avoid pulling the rug out from underneath them.)
I had no idea what to do with my power. I think if I had asked a good question on time it might have made all the difference, but maybe not as I was a light scum read for most of the game. What are good questions for a role like that?
Not Voting - 0 Jenna Tolaria was lynched. She was Megan, Town Vanilla.
The Mafia team of Grapefruit21, Killjoy, and Reaverb Tau has won the game! Random thoughts:
My eternal thanks to the many replacement players: Grapefruit, Killjoy, Pizza, Megs, and Anak.
VoteCounter was great other than a couple of hiccups.
As far as the set up goes, there were a couple of things. I wanted to try the Clairvoyant role, it's basically the reason the game existed lol. Tubba's use of it wasn't bad, and its optimal use is probably as a psuedo-rolecop which requires people to actually claim. While Reaver is correct that it /could/ be used to break the game, the role isn't guaranteed to exist and convincing other players to mass claim on D1 because you can totally break the set up /should/ be a hard sell in a closed set up game. That said, I probably underestimated the extent to which people trust claims here, but it didn't really come up. Over all the role didn't have quite as much impact on the game as I expected, but, c'est la vie.
The Thief role worked basically the way I expected, though that was probably helped by Voxx randing it since he's basically a night action magnet.
The mafia were probably a /bit/ over tuned set up wise, but that could also just be lucky night actions. Killed the tracker N1, got the Vig lynched before he shot someone, spot on role blocks, Clairvoyant asked questions that ended up being irrelevant, etc. I'm not trying to diminish their play here, their in-thread actions, presentation, and narrative control were great, but it seemed like the town didn't really have any way of actually using their night actions for most of the game and I'm not sure if that's just down to luck/skill on the Mafia's part or if the Mafia were over tuned.
If I were going to run this game again, I'd probably just axe the Clairvoyant entirely, make the Roleblocker a 1- or 2- shot, and either make the backup a watcher-only backup or a regular goon.
I really, really wish I'd had time to write flavor for this too, but, I've had a lot of life stuff getting in the way unfortunately. It had a lot of potential.
We should talk briefly about flaming and toxicity. Calling people "toxic players" and such isn't something that the forum mods have punished in the past, but, it's borderline at minimum and isn't fun for the player receiving it, for the other players and spectators reading it, or for me to have to decide if it's over the line or not. And I don't really have tools at my disposal as a game host other than modkills/force replaces which are really heavy-handed ways of handling problems between two players. In the future, if you feel a player is being toxic or flaming, report the offending posts and ignore the parts of their posts you feel are over the line. I know it's hard, and I've been guilty of engaging in heavy appeals to emotion and getting wrapped up in toxicity and stuff too in the past, but it makes for a better game experience over all.
There were a couple of game rule violations around real life excuses and stuff. It's not a standard rule around here but I think/hope those players understand why I implemented it and that it becomes more of a thing.
Thanks for being great players! I hope everyone had fun.
Congratulations again to the Mafia!
Edit: I've had a request for the set up to he added to this post.
Town
Vaimes - Tracker
Askthepizzaguy r. Voxxicus - Thief (Jack of All Trades)
Meggido r. King Torg - 1-shot Vig
Anaklusmos r. Colin - Bodyguard
Tubba Fett - Clairvoyant
DoTArchon - Vanilla
Osieorb18 - Vanilla
shadowlancerx - Vanilla
Jenna Tolaria - Vanilla
vs
Mafia
Grapefruit r. A Bear - Watcher
Reaverb Tau - Roleblocker
Killjoy r. Empoof - 1-shot Backup
The Jack of All Trades has the following abilities: 1-shot Commuter, 1-shot Jailkeeper, 1-shot 30 word message
The Clairvoyant can ask the host a question about the set up each night (i.e. "how many members of the mafia exist?") and it will be truthfully answered at dawn.
I think the setup was slightly Town-sided, 4 Town prs are a bit much and everything except the Tracker was plausibly able to get ahead on kills.
Early on in scumchat I said 3 town prs was on the high-end but in the last few weeks I've learned more about setup design and just how scumsided 3 scum vs. 9 Town is by raw numbers, so 4 seems reasonable.
Town had pretty much the worse possible luck mechanically. Tracker died N1, neither Colin nor Pizza ever did anything, Meg got mislynched.
There were a couple of mechanic misplays I think? Colin and Pizza could have probably held off their claims, which allowed me to roleblock them with impunity. King Torg should have gone off N1. D2 would have been very different if grapefruit was dead and King Torg had a townfirm in his pocket.
Scumchat(s):
https://discord.gg/MtScnsz
https://www.quicktopic.com/52/H/iaL4pS33pNwBu (Very little activity)
I'll post the set up later, but suffice to say that enough of the town roles are unconfirmable and their overall power level was weak enough that I didn't feel it was especially town sided. Maybe slightly due to site claiming meta, by which I mean people here tend to trust claims more than distrust them in my experience.
Just forcing scum into awkward CC situations is extremely good for Town though.
King Torg could have easily given Town two more mislynches to play with, which would have been a disaster for us. I would probably have to bus Killjoy and hope to mislynch both of Tubba and Anak.
On the otherhand, I probably could have gotten pizza mislynched D3 if I had trust Killjoy's reading of the situation more and confidently fake scumread pizza.
Well played scum team, especially Tau.
Wish I could have turned things around, but I don't think I ever not lynch Jenna given the discussions that we had. Oh well
Spec Chat. I suspected DoTA a little too much. Otherwise, my tinfoil was right.
Thanks for the game.
Jenna, I hope this game doesn't turn you away from here, if it's any consolation, I've been on the receiving end of a pizza tunnel as town. He's a good player, just sometimes a little too confident.
Silver, thanks for the game, was an interesting setup. Wish I'd had a bit more impact.
I wonder what you could be referring to? Lol. Pizza is cool.
@Jenna: I liked your play once you dialed down on the gimmick. I look forward to seeing you in other games.
First, it could confirm other player's claims (Example: "Is there a role named 'Town Thief' in the setup?" to confirm Pizza's claim)
Second, since we could claim flavor names with impunity, Tubba could have asked us to mass-flavor claim and then use his ability as a super cop.
Example: "Is it true that ((There exists Town role PMs whose flavor names is 'Megan') AND (There exists Town role PMs whose flavor names is 'Blade'))" would result in "Yes", which would have townfirmed both Jenna and King Torg. A "No" would give less info than a single guilty but still good info to have a 1 in 2.
(Note: I'm pretty sure the correct thing to do as mod if somebody comes up with the second is do a hotfix rule patch, but it would probably require townfirming the Clairvoyant at least to avoid pulling the rug out from underneath them.)
Roleblocks hit Town prs 4/4 times this game.
Jenna Tolaria - 4 (DoTArchon, Anaklusmos, Reaverb Tau, Killjoy) (L-0)
Killjoy - 1 (Tubba Fett)
No Lynch - 1 (Jenna Tolaria)
Not Voting - 0
Jenna Tolaria was lynched. She was Megan, Town Vanilla.
The Mafia team of Grapefruit21, Killjoy, and Reaverb Tau has won the game!
Random thoughts:
My eternal thanks to the many replacement players: Grapefruit, Killjoy, Pizza, Megs, and Anak.
VoteCounter was great other than a couple of hiccups.
As far as the set up goes, there were a couple of things. I wanted to try the Clairvoyant role, it's basically the reason the game existed lol. Tubba's use of it wasn't bad, and its optimal use is probably as a psuedo-rolecop which requires people to actually claim. While Reaver is correct that it /could/ be used to break the game, the role isn't guaranteed to exist and convincing other players to mass claim on D1 because you can totally break the set up /should/ be a hard sell in a closed set up game. That said, I probably underestimated the extent to which people trust claims here, but it didn't really come up. Over all the role didn't have quite as much impact on the game as I expected, but, c'est la vie.
The Thief role worked basically the way I expected, though that was probably helped by Voxx randing it since he's basically a night action magnet.
The mafia were probably a /bit/ over tuned set up wise, but that could also just be lucky night actions. Killed the tracker N1, got the Vig lynched before he shot someone, spot on role blocks, Clairvoyant asked questions that ended up being irrelevant, etc. I'm not trying to diminish their play here, their in-thread actions, presentation, and narrative control were great, but it seemed like the town didn't really have any way of actually using their night actions for most of the game and I'm not sure if that's just down to luck/skill on the Mafia's part or if the Mafia were over tuned.
If I were going to run this game again, I'd probably just axe the Clairvoyant entirely, make the Roleblocker a 1- or 2- shot, and either make the backup a watcher-only backup or a regular goon.
I really, really wish I'd had time to write flavor for this too, but, I've had a lot of life stuff getting in the way unfortunately. It had a lot of potential.
We should talk briefly about flaming and toxicity. Calling people "toxic players" and such isn't something that the forum mods have punished in the past, but, it's borderline at minimum and isn't fun for the player receiving it, for the other players and spectators reading it, or for me to have to decide if it's over the line or not. And I don't really have tools at my disposal as a game host other than modkills/force replaces which are really heavy-handed ways of handling problems between two players. In the future, if you feel a player is being toxic or flaming, report the offending posts and ignore the parts of their posts you feel are over the line. I know it's hard, and I've been guilty of engaging in heavy appeals to emotion and getting wrapped up in toxicity and stuff too in the past, but it makes for a better game experience over all.
There were a couple of game rule violations around real life excuses and stuff. It's not a standard rule around here but I think/hope those players understand why I implemented it and that it becomes more of a thing.
Thanks for being great players! I hope everyone had fun.
Congratulations again to the Mafia!
Edit: I've had a request for the set up to he added to this post.
Town
Vaimes - Tracker
Askthepizzaguy r. Voxxicus - Thief (Jack of All Trades)
Meggido r. King Torg - 1-shot Vig
Anaklusmos r. Colin - Bodyguard
Tubba Fett - Clairvoyant
DoTArchon - Vanilla
Osieorb18 - Vanilla
shadowlancerx - Vanilla
Jenna Tolaria - Vanilla
vs
Mafia
Grapefruit r. A Bear - Watcher
Reaverb Tau - Roleblocker
Killjoy r. Empoof - 1-shot Backup
The Jack of All Trades has the following abilities: 1-shot Commuter, 1-shot Jailkeeper, 1-shot 30 word message
The Clairvoyant can ask the host a question about the set up each night (i.e. "how many members of the mafia exist?") and it will be truthfully answered at dawn.