Alright, as I was trying to say, there was a restriction on my watcher role and Killjoy's tracker. We couldn't both use our abilities on the same Night or else we would make it to where any results turned up blank. And the Night I could have Watched someone without worry I got lynched...
Ability - Each night, if a majority of players have used the smilie the previous day, then you will have grown enough merry-making plants that you can invite another player to make merriment with you that night. Said player will be unable to refuse such a wonderful invitation. They will then get so distracted they won’t be able to use any abilities, but they’ll also be transported to a higher plane of existence, making them unfindable by killers and thus protected from all kills for the night.
tl;dr you’re a jailer who can only use your ability if a majority of players used the smilie during the previous day. Enjoy.
You win when all threats to the town are gone.
Quote from desCoures »
You are desCoures, Town Donating Vig. No joke, this is my favorite role I’ve ever designed, so I’m bringing it back from Ged’s Normal and using it here.
Ability - Each night you may target any other player who used the word “kill” in a post the previous day. That player will gain a one shot daykill they can use at any point in the future by posting “kill: playername” - these two words will not count as their words for the post. You may not target yourself because you’re afraid of pulling the trigger of any guns yourself.
You win when all threats to the town are gone.
Quote from Kosakosa »
A scum by any other name would smell as foul! You are kosakosa, Town Poetic Cop.
Ability - You’re a standard alignment cop. You may target a player at night and I’ll tell you whether they’re town or not (barring any millers, godfathers, or sanity quirks). One catch - you can’t use your ability unless a majority of living players have developed an appreciation of poetry by making a post the previous day whose two words rhyme with each other - i.e. “Ged dead” or “rabbit habit” or “barn Sir Karn”. If a majority of living players have not made such a post on a given day, you cannot use your ability that night.
You win when all threats to the town are gone.
Quote from Killjoy »
You are Killjoy, Town Even Stevens Twin (Tracker). Your oddball genetic duplicate is Shockwave07. The two of you may not talk privately, and you are have no confirmation of each other’s alignment! Stay paranoid. What you do have is a family penchant for psychically linked targeting abilities.
Ability - You can target someone each night and learn the names of any player that player targets - you’re a tracker. You also know that your twin has some sort of targeting ability, and because of some weird genetic quirk, if both of you try to use your abilities at night, both of your abilities will fail! That is all.
You win when all threats to the town are gone.
Quote from Shockwave07 »
You are Shockwave07, Town Oddball Twin (Watcher). Your even stevens genetic duplicate is Killjoy. The two of you may not talk privately, and you are have no confirmation of each other’s alignment! Stay paranoid. What you do have is a family penchant for psychically linked targeting abilities.
Ability - You can target someone each night and learn the names of any other player that targets your target - you’re a watcher. You also know that your twin has some sort of targeting ability, and because of some weird genetic quirk, if both of you try to use your abilities at night, both of your abilities will fail! That is all.
You win when all threats to the town are gone.
Quote from Void »
Hey there, neighbor. You are Void, Town Neighbor. You live in a duplex withGerrard’s Mom, and thus may speak at length with them privately at night via PM. Please add me to the thread for any PMs you do or don’t exchange. You have no confirmation as to Gerrard’s Mom’s alignment.
You win when all threats to the town are gone.
Quote from Burning_Earth »
What? Sorry? I was looking at my phone. Oh you? You are Burning_Earth, Town Tweeter. Vows of silence don’t extend to social media, and your mom sent you an iPhone last Christmas. Time to bust that bad boy out.
Ability - Each night you can send me a message of up to 140 characters which I will post at the start of the day. Cool.
You win when all threats to the town are gone.
Quote from Nachomamma8 »
I sense that you are Nachomamma8, Town Telepath. Vows of silence don’t extend to inexplicable psychic gifts!
Ability - Good news, you’ve got two votes! The first one works like any old vote, the second one you use by voting in orange. Bad news, the orange vote can’t be unvoted. Good news, you can communicate via PM with the person you’re voting with your orange vote at any time (until it’s night and you’re not voting them anymore)! Just be sure include me on the thread for any of those PMs You may place your orange vote in the same post as your normal vote and not have either count as your two words for your post. Attempting in a later post to unvote your orange vote or revote with your orange vote WILL count towards your word restriction for that post.
You win when all threats to the town are gone.
Quote from Rezombied »
Express yourself! You are Rezombied, Town Artistic Speech Therapist. It may sound weird that a group of monks that have taken vows of silence would need a speech therapist, but it's always been a hobby of yours. However, since you've never been able to speak yourself, you help cure speech impediments by showing afflicted parties your gallery of paintings.
Ability - If you express yourself by posting in blue at any point during the day, the person who posted just before you will be able to post four words at a time the following day. That’s the power of self expression, baby. Whoa! Only your last expression of creativity will go into effect.
You win when all threats to the town are gone.
Quote from Deathjoey »
Holy moley, you are Deathjoey, Town Angel.
Ability - Being an angel doesn’t come with as many perks as it used to, but there’s still one big one: when you die, you may make one post of as great a length as you’d like. You may write a novel, quote as many people as you want, say as much as you desire… but only once you’ve died. You will have three (3) real life days to make this post from the time that you die until the opportunity expires and you head up to heaven. If those days carry into night (e.g. you’re lynched), you instead will have until the end of the night to PM me your post which I will then include with the day scene. Cool? Cool.
You win when all threats to the town are gone.
Quote from SelesnyaNewLife »
You are SelesnyaNewLife, Town Townie. You can vote.
You win when all threats to the town are gone.
Please confirm by PM.
Quote from Cantripmancer »
You are Cantripmancer, Town Townie. You can vote.
You win when all threats to the town are gone.
Please confirm by PM.
Scum Roles
Quote from SunglassesCoolPizza »
SunglassesCoolPizza, you are a Mafia Role Blocker. According to my notes, you really hate rodents. I have no idea why (true story).
Ability - Each night you may target a player, preventing that player from using any action that night. You may not use this and the mafia kill on the same night.
Quote from Iso »
Iso, you are a Mafia Self-Watcher. You are secretly made of cyan goo! Yes, this role comes straight from that one game I can't remember. I think it was MTGS Redux #2.
Ability - Whenever you are targeted by an ability, that player’s name will turn the color cyan in the opening post and all future votecounts and mod posts of all kinds.
Quote from Gerrard"s Mom »
Gerrard’s Mom, you are a Mafia Neighbor. You live in a duplex with Void, and thus may speak at length with them privately at night via PM. Please add me to the thread for any PMs you do or don’t exchange. You have no confirmation as to Void’s alignment.
Maaaaaaaaaaan! Sorry guys. I blew it. I weighed it with Iso's double-bus on one side, and several of SNL's responses on the other. There was a post SNL made where he towncleared me for two posts, one of which made some sense, the other made NO sense. He had several posts like that. Sorry, SNL.
On the other hand, I figured his knowledge of "Town Townie" would be exactly the kind of info that would be handed to a Godfather. But Kosa's right: the myriad of investigative roles should have tipped me off.
Oh, and trying to argue a case with only two words a post? Ridiculous. I would have found this game unenjoyably easy if I had been scum (barring investigations). It's like mod-enforced lurking.
Scum's problem in this game was the same as in WWE: roleblocker lynched on D1. A roleblocker alive could severely hinder town.
And while I agree that 12 town was a bit much (maybe a neutral? Idk), town was way too hindered on our PRs. See ducks, for example.
Oh, yeah, that: ducks lynch would have been absolutely atrocious, considering his early D1 Jailer claim and Mafia roleblocker dead. Granted, he's at his own fault for that (I didn't even remember he had claimed Jailer until I died while rereading the game), but he should have been treated as confirmed town at endgame... had he managed to not lurk his way all up to a modkill
I've always been fascinated by the Mostly Mute Mechanic ever since I first stumbled upon it over on mafiascum something like 8 years ago. I'd always wanted to run one, and I'm very glad I got to. I'll talk more about what I learned about the mechanic later.
So I sit down to design this game, and there’s two big questions: “what kinds of roles are interesting in this game?” and “how does the mass PR affect the power level of the town?”
First, the roles. I drew heavily from the original MMM game for inspiration. That setup had many roles that required communication in order to activate. There were a pair of masons who didn’t know each other’s identities but were called the optimist and the pessimist - fun little minigame of trying to find each other there. Then there were the roles activated when a majority of players said a particular word (“Amen” and “Hallelujah” in that game’s case). I took to heart the idea there that communication minigames would be fun. The people directly involved with them get the fun of the minigame, and meanwhile everyone else gets the potential discussion topic of trying to decipher what exactly is being communicated.
While designing another game I had the idea for the “twins”, two roles that couldn’t both fire and had to coordinate. Roles like that, that require communication to be effective, they seemed like a perfect fit for a game that’s limiting communication, so I took them off the game I was designing and used them here.
I brainstormed a couple of conditions ala “Amen” and “Hallelujah” that I could attach as riders to other power roles and came up with the pot smilie and rhyming. Really these could’ve been anything, but I’m pleased with the ones I picked.
I was working on a MTGS Redux setup with CropCircles back before Redux 2 actually happened, and one of the things I wanted to do there was to just straight reuse some favorite roles I’d seen in the past. This is actually one of my obsessions with mafia design and annoyances with mafia design culture - so many good roles come and go, but they’re so rarely reused. Part of this is that the more complicated a role, the more you can just point to the original game and say “I’m that!”. And if you’re not lying and the role is really specific, it’s easy to almost clear yourself (if you’re town) or be identified (if you’re mafia). Then there’s other roles like the Dodgeball Kid in Sin City that are built as a surprise. Used a second time, they’re just less surprising and maybe even obnoxious. But people should be reusing roles more - mafia doesn’t have a huge amount of design space, and just like Magic brings back mechanics, we should be bringing back our greatest hits more often.
Anyway, I’m always looking for ways to reuse innovative roles without giving anyone some kind of meta-benefit because the role existed before, and a game where players were going to be limited in their ability to point to another game and say “I’m that!” seemed like a good place. I loved the Cyan Goo role from Redux 2, and this game seemed like a wonderful place to bring it back - the existence of the old game would give some players a small hint about what could be happening which could help overcome the difficulty talking about it. Then the donating vig is my favorite role I’ve ever designed, so in it went. I’m happy enough with the results, though I wish I’d seen desCoures get to use his role or Iso get targeted earlier on.
A few years back I had a draft of the game, and I had Az review it. He was very, very skeptical of the ability to run a MMM game at all. The PR was just too restrictive in his opinion. Again, we’ll get to what I thought and think about that later, but I walked away from the review thinking about trying to keep the PR but open up communication. This was when many of the town communication roles got added.
The telepath was actually the first role I ever designed. It was probably 2006, and I’ve been looking for a home for it ever since. So obviously it never gets used. Alas. But this is exactly why we should be reusing roles more.
The rest of the town communication roles were pretty obvious. I’ve always loved the vengeful townie role, and this game’s angel is a nice little variant on that. Sometimes you maybe even want to get NKed with that role just so you can post a novel for everyone. A shame that Deathjoey ended up too busy to make use of it. The tweeter came from the newspaper reporters from Sin City (god I love that setup…) and the speech therapist came from combining various parts of roles from the first MMM game (there was a town abbot there who’s first post was “Abbot speak three!” as well as several players who had to target players by posting specific things after them).
The last piece of the puzzle was figuring out how many bodies should be on each side of the game. I figured early that a large game would be headaches all around. I considered doing a mini, but I assumed that the PR was enough that a 9-3 balance wouldn’t work out well. In retrospect, I have no idea why I didn’t run a 10-2 (or 9-2-1) mini. I think I just wanted to give everyone more time to explore the mechanic.
I ended up deciding on the following logic for running a 12-3 game: assume that the PR is worth one misslynch and one modkill on a townie. 12-3 still seemed very town sided, especially with two strong info roles, but I decided I’d rather overshoot the balance in the town’s favor than the mafia’s.
Additionally, I misjudged completely how much the scum would use the public component of so many of the roles to hunt people down. I assumed that if you were scum and someone out there started asking for, say, everyone to start rhyming, you take the hint that that person has a power role. Maybe not one as powerful as a cop, but even still. I figured that would limit the town power a lot. While it ended up not hurting the info roles, the town never got its jailer or vig to fire because of communication issues.
So there was the setup.
GAMEPLAY
Let’s talk about modkills, because there were four of them, and that’s super harsh. First, as I stated in the spec chat a few days ago, I’ve started just kind of assuming that I’m going to end up modkilling one townie due to inactivity. Replacements are a thing that happens, and while they’re pretty doable early in the game, they just get so hard for everyone as the game goes on. That day 2 replacement that always crops up is just so much easier to off. And as a bonus, everyone gets another body to talk about. I’d be happy to talk more about modkill philosophy in general if anyone wants to. That accounted for Void.
Then there’s B_E. In retrospect I really wish I’d come up with a better system for what happens to you when you break PR in this game. Optimally, just no one would. But if the penalty isn’t harsh, people will start trying to game the system, and that’s sad. I started thinking around day 2 that I wish I had a “three strikes” system, but even that ends up with the same problems once someone has two strikes. And are the strikes public? Do mafia members get strikes?
I still don’t know what the right thing to do here is. I wish B_E hadn’t had to have been modkilled, but I don’t know what the right solution is.
Finally, there’s dC and ducks. These were really frustrating for me. I didn’t do a good job as a mod this game… I just didn’t have enough investment in it to keep up on everyone’s activity levels when I should have, and as a result, ducks just vanished and it was a month before anything was done about it. Even if I’d caught it early though, I’d tried to get a replacement for Void with no luck, and now the game was twice as long. What could I have done? Especially when offing him took the town from two misslynches to just one in that endgame, I REALLY didn’t want to kill him.
But then dC had to go V/LA for like 10 days. I don’t think I can just let that happen, either - it’s not fair to everyone in the community let alone the players to have to wait an extra 10 days on a game that should be over in 2-3. I decided that a reasonable course of play would be that the town lynches ducks (because it looked like it was about to) and then Iso NKs dC. Rather than waiting for something like that to happen, I just modkilled them both and jumped to endgame. It seemed like the best way to maintain whatever integrity the endgame had left while still moving forward in a reasonable amount of time.
Then there’s the endgame… I was very surprised when Cantrip didn’t just hammer Iso on the spot. I think Kosa’s right that it really speaks to the existence of the Godfather role doing it’s job of making all cops every worse. Honestly, that’s probably a good thing, but it’s still a little weird feeling in this particular case.
THE FUTURE
So what’d we learn about the MM mechanic?
I’d absolutely love to run another MM game. I’d absolutely make changes. First, two words is too few. I was told this going in, but I just wanted to try it and see what happened. It almost works, and I think it’d actually play great in a game with all overly active, overly spammy players, but that’s not MTGS. In a culture that makes the MM game more about navigating a PR rather than encouraging spam, I’d bump the PR up to four words. I really liked the kinds of posts being made by people who B_E had targeted. Additionally, I’d allow one quote per post. Not allowing that was, again, probably a mistake. But a mistake I don’t regret - I was fascinated by what happened.
Some people really liked this game. Some people really hated it. Next time I think I’d have to be better about warning everyone what they’re getting into.
Finally, I think people who only post once a day or less just shouldn’t have signed up. dC is one of my favorite people around, but his posting frequency wasn’t healthy for this game. Others too, I just remember him off the top of my head. If you can’t post at least once a day and maybe twice, I don’t think MM is the kind of game for you. Four words a post would probably help this, though.
I loved all the roles, though. If anything, there should’ve been even more town communication roles. I love the idea of people being able to speak freely in some circumstances while very limited in public.
Anyway, those are my design notes and other thoughts. Let me know what you thought of the game and whether you’d play another. I’m thinking of getting on the mini list with a revised MM setup…
Thank you all for playing and / or spectating. It was a pleasure. Even more than normal though, seriously thank you for participating in this crazy and not-always-fun experiment, especially given my inattentive modding at times. I had a blast just seeing what happened.
Oh, and trying to argue a case with only two words a post? Ridiculous. I would have found this game unenjoyably easy if I had been scum (barring investigations). It's like mod-enforced lurking.
Disagreed. This game was hella stacked against scum, and honestly, I would've gone after Pizza and GM the exact same way if I were town. And probably Ducks, too. The thing is, I played TOO well to be town in this game - the fact that I didn't have the opportunity to run my mouth more than necessary really helped me out.
I've always been fascinated by the Mostly Mute Mechanic ever since I first stumbled upon it over on mafiascum something like 8 years ago. I'd always wanted to run one, and I'm very glad I got to. I'll talk more about what I learned about the mechanic later.
So I sit down to design this game, and there’s two big questions: “what kinds of roles are interesting in this game?” and “how does the mass PR affect the power level of the town?”
First, the roles. I drew heavily from the original MMM game for inspiration. That setup had many roles that required communication in order to activate. There were a pair of masons who didn’t know each other’s identities but were called the optimist and the pessimist - fun little minigame of trying to find each other there. Then there were the roles activated when a majority of players said a particular word (“Amen” and “Hallelujah” in that game’s case). I took to heart the idea there that communication minigames would be fun. The people directly involved with them get the fun of the minigame, and meanwhile everyone else gets the potential discussion topic of trying to decipher what exactly is being communicated.
While designing another game I had the idea for the “twins”, two roles that couldn’t both fire and had to coordinate. Roles like that, that require communication to be effective, they seemed like a perfect fit for a game that’s limiting communication, so I took them off the game I was designing and used them here.
I brainstormed a couple of conditions ala “Amen” and “Hallelujah” that I could attach as riders to other power roles and came up with the pot smilie and rhyming. Really these could’ve been anything, but I’m pleased with the ones I picked.
I was working on a MTGS Redux setup with CropCircles back before Redux 2 actually happened, and one of the things I wanted to do there was to just straight reuse some favorite roles I’d seen in the past. This is actually one of my obsessions with mafia design and annoyances with mafia design culture - so many good roles come and go, but they’re so rarely reused. Part of this is that the more complicated a role, the more you can just point to the original game and say “I’m that!”. And if you’re not lying and the role is really specific, it’s easy to almost clear yourself (if you’re town) or be identified (if you’re mafia). Then there’s other roles like the Dodgeball Kid in Sin City that are built as a surprise. Used a second time, they’re just less surprising and maybe even obnoxious. But people should be reusing roles more - mafia doesn’t have a huge amount of design space, and just like Magic brings back mechanics, we should be bringing back our greatest hits more often.
Anyway, I’m always looking for ways to reuse innovative roles without giving anyone some kind of meta-benefit because the role existed before, and a game where players were going to be limited in their ability to point to another game and say “I’m that!” seemed like a good place. I loved the Cyan Goo role from Redux 2, and this game seemed like a wonderful place to bring it back - the existence of the old game would give some players a small hint about what could be happening which could help overcome the difficulty talking about it. Then the donating vig is my favorite role I’ve ever designed, so in it went. I’m happy enough with the results, though I wish I’d seen desCoures get to use his role or Iso get targeted earlier on.
A few years back I had a draft of the game, and I had Az review it. He was very, very skeptical of the ability to run a MMM game at all. The PR was just too restrictive in his opinion. Again, we’ll get to what I thought and think about that later, but I walked away from the review thinking about trying to keep the PR but open up communication. This was when many of the town communication roles got added.
The telepath was actually the first role I ever designed. It was probably 2006, and I’ve been looking for a home for it ever since. So obviously it never gets used. Alas. But this is exactly why we should be reusing roles more.
The rest of the town communication roles were pretty obvious. I’ve always loved the vengeful townie role, and this game’s angel is a nice little variant on that. Sometimes you maybe even want to get NKed with that role just so you can post a novel for everyone. A shame that Deathjoey ended up too busy to make use of it. The tweeter came from the newspaper reporters from Sin City (god I love that setup…) and the speech therapist came from combining various parts of roles from the first MMM game (there was a town abbot there who’s first post was “Abbot speak three!” as well as several players who had to target players by posting specific things after them).
The last piece of the puzzle was figuring out how many bodies should be on each side of the game. I figured early that a large game would be headaches all around. I considered doing a mini, but I assumed that the PR was enough that a 9-3 balance wouldn’t work out well. In retrospect, I have no idea why I didn’t run a 10-2 (or 9-2-1) mini. I think I just wanted to give everyone more time to explore the mechanic.
I ended up deciding on the following logic for running a 12-3 game: assume that the PR is worth one misslynch and one modkill on a townie. 12-3 still seemed very town sided, especially with two strong info roles, but I decided I’d rather overshoot the balance in the town’s favor than the mafia’s.
Additionally, I misjudged completely how much the scum would use the public component of so many of the roles to hunt people down. I assumed that if you were scum and someone out there started asking for, say, everyone to start rhyming, you take the hint that that person has a power role. Maybe not one as powerful as a cop, but even still. I figured that would limit the town power a lot. While it ended up not hurting the info roles, the town never got its jailer or vig to fire because of communication issues.
So there was the setup.
GAMEPLAY
Let’s talk about modkills, because there were four of them, and that’s super harsh. First, as I stated in the spec chat a few days ago, I’ve started just kind of assuming that I’m going to end up modkilling one townie due to inactivity. Replacements are a thing that happens, and while they’re pretty doable early in the game, they just get so hard for everyone as the game goes on. That day 2 replacement that always crops up is just so much easier to off. And as a bonus, everyone gets another body to talk about. I’d be happy to talk more about modkill philosophy in general if anyone wants to. That accounted for Void.
Then there’s B_E. In retrospect I really wish I’d come up with a better system for what happens to you when you break PR in this game. Optimally, just no one would. But if the penalty isn’t harsh, people will start trying to game the system, and that’s sad. I started thinking around day 2 that I wish I had a “three strikes” system, but even that ends up with the same problems once someone has two strikes. And are the strikes public? Do mafia members get strikes?
I still don’t know what the right thing to do here is. I wish B_E hadn’t had to have been modkilled, but I don’t know what the right solution is.
Finally, there’s dC and ducks. These were really frustrating for me. I didn’t do a good job as a mod this game… I just didn’t have enough investment in it to keep up on everyone’s activity levels when I should have, and as a result, ducks just vanished and it was a month before anything was done about it. Even if I’d caught it early though, I’d tried to get a replacement for Void with no luck, and now the game was twice as long. What could I have done? Especially when offing him took the town from two misslynches to just one in that endgame, I REALLY didn’t want to kill him.
But then dC had to go V/LA for like 10 days. I don’t think I can just let that happen, either - it’s not fair to everyone in the community let alone the players to have to wait an extra 10 days on a game that should be over in 2-3. I decided that a reasonable course of play would be that the town lynches ducks (because it looked like it was about to) and then Iso NKs dC. Rather than waiting for something like that to happen, I just modkilled them both and jumped to endgame. It seemed like the best way to maintain whatever integrity the endgame had left while still moving forward in a reasonable amount of time.
Then there’s the endgame… I was very surprised when Cantrip didn’t just hammer Iso on the spot. I think Kosa’s right that it really speaks to the existence of the Godfather role doing it’s job of making all cops every worse. Honestly, that’s probably a good thing, but it’s still a little weird feeling in this particular case.
THE FUTURE
So what’d we learn about the MM mechanic?
I’d absolutely love to run another MM game. I’d absolutely make changes. First, two words is too few. I was told this going in, but I just wanted to try it and see what happened. It almost works, and I think it’d actually play great in a game with all overly active, overly spammy players, but that’s not MTGS. In a culture that makes the MM game more about navigating a PR rather than encouraging spam, I’d bump the PR up to four words. I really liked the kinds of posts being made by people who B_E had targeted. Additionally, I’d allow one quote per post. Not allowing that was, again, probably a mistake. But a mistake I don’t regret - I was fascinated by what happened.
Some people really liked this game. Some people really hated it. Next time I think I’d have to be better about warning everyone what they’re getting into.
Finally, I think people who only post once a day or less just shouldn’t have signed up. dC is one of my favorite people around, but his posting frequency wasn’t healthy for this game. Others too, I just remember him off the top of my head. If you can’t post at least once a day and maybe twice, I don’t think MM is the kind of game for you. Four words a post would probably help this, though.
I loved all the roles, though. If anything, there should’ve been even more town communication roles. I love the idea of people being able to speak freely in some circumstances while very limited in public.
Anyway, those are my design notes and other thoughts. Let me know what you thought of the game and whether you’d play another. I’m thinking of getting on the mini list with a revised MM setup…
Thank you all for playing and / or spectating. It was a pleasure. Even more than normal though, seriously thank you for participating in this crazy and not-always-fun experiment, especially given my inattentive modding at times. I had a blast just seeing what happened.
~Ged
I'd play another MMM if you ran it, seeing as you clearly learned from what worked and what didn't in this one.
That said, can you answer my question about zombad, now?
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Heh, I guess what I'm trying to get at is, would you tell a player with zombad's role that scum would still be informed of him targeting them if they asked?
I would've told zombad if he asked, yes, but I didn't tell him upfront. But that was just because I hadn't thought about what would happen if he targeted a scum... :/
Nope modkilling me was absolutely correct modding and I'm glad you were strong enough to do it.
On another note, sorry for being modkilled.
I agree it was the right thing to do at the time, but I still wish I'd had a better system in place for PR breakers.
OH - just thought of an idea: if you break PR and it's a small break (as defined by the mod), you can't post the rest of the day and lose your vote for the day. If you're abusing that rule, you get modkilled for funny business, but otherwise I like where that goes. Punishment that has a real consequence, but not one that ends in a modkill for simple spelling errors.
Heh, I guess what I'm trying to get at is, would you tell a player with zombad's role that scum would still be informed of him targeting them if they asked?
I would've told zombad if he asked, yes, but I didn't tell him upfront. But that was just because I hadn't thought about what would happen if he targeted a scum... :/
Nope modkilling me was absolutely correct modding and I'm glad you were strong enough to do it.
On another note, sorry for being modkilled.
I agree it was the right thing to do at the time, but I still wish I'd had a better system in place for PR breakers.
OH - just thought of an idea: if you break PR and it's a small break (as defined by the mod), you can't post the rest of the day and lose your vote for the day. If you're abusing that rule, you get modkilled for funny business, but otherwise I like where that goes. Punishment that has a real consequence, but not one that ends in a modkill for simple spelling errors.
That seems like a terrible idea @ PR break rule.
It also probably would have given any non-Iso scum a huge advantage to tell them that they were targeted with the ability (I pieced it together that he targeted me because Cyan + flip).
Oh, and my other question about zombad? Edit: Read spec chat and I was correct.
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
@Killjoy: Actually, I killed you because you confirmed yourself as a PR to me by not picking up on the "Town Townie" thing. I didn't expect Ged to make the Cop so obvious (Kosa's PR ) nor did I think Ducks would be any trouble to lynch. Then Kosa claimed and I was like "********************. GOTTA PUSH GODFATHER AT ENDGAME." Also, Cyan Goo was in Goo Mafia, too.
@Kosa: Honestly, I didn't WANT to bus my teammates in this game. I wanted to make it as quick and painless as possible for us, and I by no means should have been able to carry this entire game on my own. I honestly just got lucky that Cantrip doubted the Cop result and figured that if anyone would've, he would've. For what it's worth, I was planning on killing him that Night and pushing dC as the Godfather before the modkills happened.
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Wait so, Iso... did you say you WERE or WEREN'T told that zombied targeted you?
If I was alive you wouldn't have gotten far with Cyan Goo claim. My first question would have been "Why useful?" and I don't think you could have easily answered that.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
Wait so, Iso... did you say you WERE or WEREN'T told that zombied targeted you?
If I was alive you wouldn't have gotten far with Cyan Goo claim. My first question would have been "Why useful?" and I don't think you could have easily answered that.
I was informed by Ged that zombad targeted me. Like I said, it wasn't necessary [for me] and it was something I figured out as soon as the Day started, but a decision I disagreed with all the same.
As far as response to the usefulness of Cyan Goo, "Self Watcher", "Nightkiller Revealed", etc. Basically, my excuse for being alive was going to be - if questioned on it - that the scum couldn't afford to kill me because they'd be instantly revealed by doing so.
Which actually kind of baffles me that no one even bothered looking at Goo Mafia or Redux 2 to figure out what the hell my role did after claiming it.
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Oh, and my apologies to Ducks. I was on board the KosaTrain because he openly requested help, explained it, and pushed it. You, Ducks, just said "Town? Post [weed]". It felt tricksy and sneaky, and I didn't trust it.
I looked at Goo Mafia to figure out what your role did, and I figured immediately that you were an anti-kill town role. I had to think harder about how it could be a scum role.
I was informed by Ged that zombad targeted me. Like I said, it wasn't necessary [for me] and it was something I figured out as soon as the Day started, but a decision I disagreed with all the same.
Maybe I'm misreading your sentence, but are you saying you think I shouldn't have informed you that you'd been targeted? Because then what happens if rezombied targets a scum day 1, they aren't informed, and then don't get the benefit? Rezombied gets a heads up that something is amiss, and it's almost like an extra town info role (of which there were already many).
Oh, and my apologies to Ducks. I was on board the KosaTrain because he openly requested help, explained it, and pushed it. You, Ducks, just said "Town? Post [weed]". It felt tricksy and sneaky, and I didn't trust it.
I'm still baffled by the fact that so many people trusted Kosa and so few trusted Ducks. I totally understand either blindly trusting or blindly not trusting roles like that, but splitting your opinion over the two was weird to me. I guess it speaks to how much personality and methods can affect a game like this.
I'm not sure how I feel about that just since having symmetrical PRs would alleviate a lot of your PR breaking concerns, but I'll respect giving the scum room to fake claim.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Can we have Megiddo removed from the forum forever please?
i'm pretty sure i can find your ***** online within 3 minutes
I looked at Goo Mafia to figure out what your role did, and I figured immediately that you were an anti-kill town role. I had to think harder about how it could be a scum role.
That's exactly what I was hoping someone would do after I pointed out my claim enough times.
I was informed by Ged that zombad targeted me. Like I said, it wasn't necessary [for me] and it was something I figured out as soon as the Day started, but a decision I disagreed with all the same.
Maybe I'm misreading your sentence, but are you saying you think I shouldn't have informed you that you'd been targeted? Because then what happens if rezombied targets a scum day 1, they aren't informed, and then don't get the benefit? Rezombied gets a heads up that something is amiss, and it's almost like an extra town info role (of which there were already many).
Maybe you're right, and under different circumstances the player with the ability wouldn't have breadcrumbed their target so heavy-handedly; alternatively, scum could play around it by waiting to see if anyone else posted with 2 words before making their own post. Oh well, either way, it didn't have an effect on the way this game turned out, IMO. I just feel like it's potentially giving the scum too much information; maybe it would've been fine the way I suggested it if there was no Cop.
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Maybe you're right, and under different circumstances the player with the ability wouldn't have breadcrumbed their target so heavy-handedly; alternatively, scum could play around it by waiting to see if anyone else posted with 2 words before making their own post. Oh well, either way, it didn't have an effect on the way this game turned out, IMO. I just feel like it's potentially giving the scum too much information; maybe it would've been fine the way I suggested it if there was no Cop.
Yeah, I actually like your role better, it just needs to be respected as a very minor informational role.
I think Megiddo might be right about giving the mafia the PR, though, which would make the point moot in the future.
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
...meh. I knew there was something weird about how confident Iso was that there were three scum. (That's what my last post was about, by the way.) By the numbers there could easily have been three or four, which meant with the modkills it was entirely likely we were at LyLo that day... and yet Iso threw on a vote with no hesitation. If I'd actually been around I would probably have (tried to) follow up on that.
@Ged - I have to agree with you on my participation this game. I originally joined this game because I thought that with only two words per post, it would be easy to follow and I wouldn't have to spend much time on it, which was a distinct plus given my schedule at the time and upcoming trip. Which was true, but the communication difficulty plus the obvious difference in posting times meant I wasn't able to do half as much as I would have liked. That being said, I think the large number of modkills did, in fact, very heavily influence the game, and as Iso says, was probably directly responsible for the scum win. To my mind, only the B_E modkill was sufficiently justified.
Also, to redress the communication issue in future MMMs, might I suggest allowing hyperlinks to previous posts in the thread only? With that, even two words should be enough. As it was, too many 'words' were spent on post numbers.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Esper Simperer; Even the court homonculi need someone to look down on.
Jund Fangirl; Few things can describe the bliss of the fangirl's cries fading to silence (broken by occasional munching sounds).
Grixis Emo; 'Why should I go out there? They're all uncaring zombies! *sniff* No one understands me...' Bant Wageslave; Behind every successful knight is a corporate drudge doing his taxwork.
Naya Overenthusiast; Because there is such a thing as too much enthusiasm.
Ah yes, not being able to respond to posts directly unless you were on when the other person was, was miserable.
@dC: With everyone but me and ducks Cop-cleared, it seemed like the townie thing to do to presume there were only 3 scum and not speculate on a Godfather until necessary.
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
@Ged - I have to agree with you on my participation this game. I originally joined this game because I thought that with only two words per post, it would be easy to follow and I wouldn't have to spend much time on it, which was a distinct plus given my schedule at the time and upcoming trip. Which was true, but the communication difficulty plus the obvious difference in posting times meant I wasn't able to do half as much as I would have liked. That being said, I think the large number of modkills did, in fact, very heavily influence the game, and as Iso says, was probably directly responsible for the scum win. To my mind, only the B_E modkill was sufficiently justified.
I'll defend the Void modkill, but still don't know how I feel about the later two.
Also, to redress the communication issue in future MMMs, might I suggest allowing hyperlinks to previous posts in the thread only? With that, even two words should be enough. As it was, too many 'words' were spent on post numbers.
I like this as a solution a lot. But with the bug in curse software about linking to posts in thread (they all break when the name of the thread changes), I don't think it's viable at the moment.
I've been trying to brainstorm how I could mod a game without changing the thread title. I lament, bemoan, and despise the lack of linkability.
It is tedious, but you can always change the URLs each day. The numeric thread identifier stays the same, so you'd just have to change a small part of it.
For example:
1. [b][color=maroon]SunglassesCoolpizza, Mafia Roleblocker[/color][/b] - [url=http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/outside-magic/mafia/548994-mostly-mute-monk-mafia-day-1?comment=343]lynched day 1[/url]
Would become, by replacing -day-1 with -postgame
1. [b][color=maroon]SunglassesCoolpizza, Mafia Roleblocker[/color][/b] - [url=http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/outside-magic/mafia/548994-mostly-mute-monk-mafia-postgame?comment=343]lynched day 1[/url]
And it works. If you keep the thread titles simple, like "LOTR Mafia: Day 1", you'd just have to change the actual numeric figure in each link at the start of each Day.
That said, Meg hit it on the head, and that's what I am going to try and do when my game runs.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
EDH UUU Azami, Lady of Scrolls RRR Diaochan, Artful Beauty UR(U/R) Tibor, Lumia, & Melek (WIP)
I don't have any hard numbers on this, but I'm targeted more often than a black guy driving a beat-up sedan with a broken tail-light and no license plate, and Cy's well aware of that.
@Ged - I have to agree with you on my participation this game. I originally joined this game because I thought that with only two words per post, it would be easy to follow and I wouldn't have to spend much time on it, which was a distinct plus given my schedule at the time and upcoming trip. Which was true, but the communication difficulty plus the obvious difference in posting times meant I wasn't able to do half as much as I would have liked. That being said, I think the large number of modkills did, in fact, very heavily influence the game, and as Iso says, was probably directly responsible for the scum win. To my mind, only the B_E modkill was sufficiently justified.
I'll defend the Void modkill, but still don't know how I feel about the later two.
Also, to redress the communication issue in future MMMs, might I suggest allowing hyperlinks to previous posts in the thread only? With that, even two words should be enough. As it was, too many 'words' were spent on post numbers.
I like this as a solution a lot. But with the bug in curse software about linking to posts in thread (they all break when the name of the thread changes), I don't think it's viable at the moment.
I think the simplest solution is to allow post numbers and not count them towards word total.
2011: Best Mafia Performance (Individual) - Best Newcomer
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Alright, as I was trying to say, there was a restriction on my watcher role and Killjoy's tracker. We couldn't both use our abilities on the same Night or else we would make it to where any results turned up blank. And the Night I could have Watched someone without worry I got lynched...
My bad play, but still it hurts.
Gah!
Thanks to Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sigpic.
Spider-Man Mafia 3 (Off-Site: NGA)
Metroid Mafia (Off-Site: Mafia Universe)
That just leaves SelesnyaNewLife, Town Townie and Iso, Mafia Self-Watcher.
Iso smiles.
The Mafia have won the game. It is now post-game. Roles and thoughts coming soon.
Scum Roles
On the other hand, I figured his knowledge of "Town Townie" would be exactly the kind of info that would be handed to a Godfather. But Kosa's right: the myriad of investigative roles should have tipped me off.
Bah.
Links to mafia chat/spec chat?
A lot of the town roles did have a limitation to them, but interesting.
Thanks to Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sigpic.
Spider-Man Mafia 3 (Off-Site: NGA)
Metroid Mafia (Off-Site: Mafia Universe)
And while I agree that 12 town was a bit much (maybe a neutral? Idk), town was way too hindered on our PRs. See ducks, for example.
Oh, yeah, that: ducks lynch would have been absolutely atrocious, considering his early D1 Jailer claim and Mafia roleblocker dead. Granted, he's at his own fault for that (I didn't even remember he had claimed Jailer until I died while rereading the game), but he should have been treated as confirmed town at endgame... had he managed to not lurk his way all up to a modkill
DESIGN
I've always been fascinated by the Mostly Mute Mechanic ever since I first stumbled upon it over on mafiascum something like 8 years ago. I'd always wanted to run one, and I'm very glad I got to. I'll talk more about what I learned about the mechanic later.
So I sit down to design this game, and there’s two big questions: “what kinds of roles are interesting in this game?” and “how does the mass PR affect the power level of the town?”
First, the roles. I drew heavily from the original MMM game for inspiration. That setup had many roles that required communication in order to activate. There were a pair of masons who didn’t know each other’s identities but were called the optimist and the pessimist - fun little minigame of trying to find each other there. Then there were the roles activated when a majority of players said a particular word (“Amen” and “Hallelujah” in that game’s case). I took to heart the idea there that communication minigames would be fun. The people directly involved with them get the fun of the minigame, and meanwhile everyone else gets the potential discussion topic of trying to decipher what exactly is being communicated.
While designing another game I had the idea for the “twins”, two roles that couldn’t both fire and had to coordinate. Roles like that, that require communication to be effective, they seemed like a perfect fit for a game that’s limiting communication, so I took them off the game I was designing and used them here.
I brainstormed a couple of conditions ala “Amen” and “Hallelujah” that I could attach as riders to other power roles and came up with the pot smilie and rhyming. Really these could’ve been anything, but I’m pleased with the ones I picked.
I was working on a MTGS Redux setup with CropCircles back before Redux 2 actually happened, and one of the things I wanted to do there was to just straight reuse some favorite roles I’d seen in the past. This is actually one of my obsessions with mafia design and annoyances with mafia design culture - so many good roles come and go, but they’re so rarely reused. Part of this is that the more complicated a role, the more you can just point to the original game and say “I’m that!”. And if you’re not lying and the role is really specific, it’s easy to almost clear yourself (if you’re town) or be identified (if you’re mafia). Then there’s other roles like the Dodgeball Kid in Sin City that are built as a surprise. Used a second time, they’re just less surprising and maybe even obnoxious. But people should be reusing roles more - mafia doesn’t have a huge amount of design space, and just like Magic brings back mechanics, we should be bringing back our greatest hits more often.
Anyway, I’m always looking for ways to reuse innovative roles without giving anyone some kind of meta-benefit because the role existed before, and a game where players were going to be limited in their ability to point to another game and say “I’m that!” seemed like a good place. I loved the Cyan Goo role from Redux 2, and this game seemed like a wonderful place to bring it back - the existence of the old game would give some players a small hint about what could be happening which could help overcome the difficulty talking about it. Then the donating vig is my favorite role I’ve ever designed, so in it went. I’m happy enough with the results, though I wish I’d seen desCoures get to use his role or Iso get targeted earlier on.
A few years back I had a draft of the game, and I had Az review it. He was very, very skeptical of the ability to run a MMM game at all. The PR was just too restrictive in his opinion. Again, we’ll get to what I thought and think about that later, but I walked away from the review thinking about trying to keep the PR but open up communication. This was when many of the town communication roles got added.
The telepath was actually the first role I ever designed. It was probably 2006, and I’ve been looking for a home for it ever since. So obviously it never gets used. Alas. But this is exactly why we should be reusing roles more.
The rest of the town communication roles were pretty obvious. I’ve always loved the vengeful townie role, and this game’s angel is a nice little variant on that. Sometimes you maybe even want to get NKed with that role just so you can post a novel for everyone. A shame that Deathjoey ended up too busy to make use of it. The tweeter came from the newspaper reporters from Sin City (god I love that setup…) and the speech therapist came from combining various parts of roles from the first MMM game (there was a town abbot there who’s first post was “Abbot speak three!” as well as several players who had to target players by posting specific things after them).
The last piece of the puzzle was figuring out how many bodies should be on each side of the game. I figured early that a large game would be headaches all around. I considered doing a mini, but I assumed that the PR was enough that a 9-3 balance wouldn’t work out well. In retrospect, I have no idea why I didn’t run a 10-2 (or 9-2-1) mini. I think I just wanted to give everyone more time to explore the mechanic.
I ended up deciding on the following logic for running a 12-3 game: assume that the PR is worth one misslynch and one modkill on a townie. 12-3 still seemed very town sided, especially with two strong info roles, but I decided I’d rather overshoot the balance in the town’s favor than the mafia’s.
Additionally, I misjudged completely how much the scum would use the public component of so many of the roles to hunt people down. I assumed that if you were scum and someone out there started asking for, say, everyone to start rhyming, you take the hint that that person has a power role. Maybe not one as powerful as a cop, but even still. I figured that would limit the town power a lot. While it ended up not hurting the info roles, the town never got its jailer or vig to fire because of communication issues.
So there was the setup.
GAMEPLAY
Let’s talk about modkills, because there were four of them, and that’s super harsh. First, as I stated in the spec chat a few days ago, I’ve started just kind of assuming that I’m going to end up modkilling one townie due to inactivity. Replacements are a thing that happens, and while they’re pretty doable early in the game, they just get so hard for everyone as the game goes on. That day 2 replacement that always crops up is just so much easier to off. And as a bonus, everyone gets another body to talk about. I’d be happy to talk more about modkill philosophy in general if anyone wants to. That accounted for Void.
Then there’s B_E. In retrospect I really wish I’d come up with a better system for what happens to you when you break PR in this game. Optimally, just no one would. But if the penalty isn’t harsh, people will start trying to game the system, and that’s sad. I started thinking around day 2 that I wish I had a “three strikes” system, but even that ends up with the same problems once someone has two strikes. And are the strikes public? Do mafia members get strikes?
I still don’t know what the right thing to do here is. I wish B_E hadn’t had to have been modkilled, but I don’t know what the right solution is.
Finally, there’s dC and ducks. These were really frustrating for me. I didn’t do a good job as a mod this game… I just didn’t have enough investment in it to keep up on everyone’s activity levels when I should have, and as a result, ducks just vanished and it was a month before anything was done about it. Even if I’d caught it early though, I’d tried to get a replacement for Void with no luck, and now the game was twice as long. What could I have done? Especially when offing him took the town from two misslynches to just one in that endgame, I REALLY didn’t want to kill him.
But then dC had to go V/LA for like 10 days. I don’t think I can just let that happen, either - it’s not fair to everyone in the community let alone the players to have to wait an extra 10 days on a game that should be over in 2-3. I decided that a reasonable course of play would be that the town lynches ducks (because it looked like it was about to) and then Iso NKs dC. Rather than waiting for something like that to happen, I just modkilled them both and jumped to endgame. It seemed like the best way to maintain whatever integrity the endgame had left while still moving forward in a reasonable amount of time.
Then there’s the endgame… I was very surprised when Cantrip didn’t just hammer Iso on the spot. I think Kosa’s right that it really speaks to the existence of the Godfather role doing it’s job of making all cops every worse. Honestly, that’s probably a good thing, but it’s still a little weird feeling in this particular case.
THE FUTURE
So what’d we learn about the MM mechanic?
I’d absolutely love to run another MM game. I’d absolutely make changes. First, two words is too few. I was told this going in, but I just wanted to try it and see what happened. It almost works, and I think it’d actually play great in a game with all overly active, overly spammy players, but that’s not MTGS. In a culture that makes the MM game more about navigating a PR rather than encouraging spam, I’d bump the PR up to four words. I really liked the kinds of posts being made by people who B_E had targeted. Additionally, I’d allow one quote per post. Not allowing that was, again, probably a mistake. But a mistake I don’t regret - I was fascinated by what happened.
Some people really liked this game. Some people really hated it. Next time I think I’d have to be better about warning everyone what they’re getting into.
Finally, I think people who only post once a day or less just shouldn’t have signed up. dC is one of my favorite people around, but his posting frequency wasn’t healthy for this game. Others too, I just remember him off the top of my head. If you can’t post at least once a day and maybe twice, I don’t think MM is the kind of game for you. Four words a post would probably help this, though.
I loved all the roles, though. If anything, there should’ve been even more town communication roles. I love the idea of people being able to speak freely in some circumstances while very limited in public.
Anyway, those are my design notes and other thoughts. Let me know what you thought of the game and whether you’d play another. I’m thinking of getting on the mini list with a revised MM setup…
Thank you all for playing and / or spectating. It was a pleasure. Even more than normal though, seriously thank you for participating in this crazy and not-always-fun experiment, especially given my inattentive modding at times. I had a blast just seeing what happened.
~Ged
On another note, sorry for being modkilled.
/barn links to mafia and spec chat
I took most of my raving to Ged's PM box, so I can post those exchanges if you guys are interested.
What are you suggesting? I was town alive at endgame in Drury Lane recently!
Disagreed. This game was hella stacked against scum, and honestly, I would've gone after Pizza and GM the exact same way if I were town. And probably Ducks, too. The thing is, I played TOO well to be town in this game - the fact that I didn't have the opportunity to run my mouth more than necessary really helped me out.
I mean, I did claim like 5 times this game...
I'd play another MMM if you ran it, seeing as you clearly learned from what worked and what didn't in this one.
That said, can you answer my question about zombad, now?
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Get it?
POSTgame?
Because no more POST restriction?
...
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
For reference, the question was:
I would've told zombad if he asked, yes, but I didn't tell him upfront. But that was just because I hadn't thought about what would happen if he targeted a scum... :/
I agree it was the right thing to do at the time, but I still wish I'd had a better system in place for PR breakers.
OH - just thought of an idea: if you break PR and it's a small break (as defined by the mod), you can't post the rest of the day and lose your vote for the day. If you're abusing that rule, you get modkilled for funny business, but otherwise I like where that goes. Punishment that has a real consequence, but not one that ends in a modkill for simple spelling errors.
Dude... Leave the jokes to me.
That seems like a terrible idea @ PR break rule.
It also probably would have given any non-Iso scum a huge advantage to tell them that they were targeted with the ability (I pieced it together that he targeted me because Cyan + flip).
Oh, and my other question about zombad?Edit: Read spec chat and I was correct.no
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Ah. DEFINITELY an Iso alt
@Kosa: Honestly, I didn't WANT to bus my teammates in this game. I wanted to make it as quick and painless as possible for us, and I by no means should have been able to carry this entire game on my own. I honestly just got lucky that Cantrip doubted the Cop result and figured that if anyone would've, he would've. For what it's worth, I was planning on killing him that Night and pushing dC as the Godfather before the modkills happened.
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Lol I'm very forgettable.
Why did my ability go through on ISO when I died? I didn't get a 'ability successful' message night 2 like I did night1.
If I was alive you wouldn't have gotten far with Cyan Goo claim. My first question would have been "Why useful?" and I don't think you could have easily answered that.
Nope.
I was informed by Ged that zombad targeted me. Like I said, it wasn't necessary [for me] and it was something I figured out as soon as the Day started, but a decision I disagreed with all the same.
As far as response to the usefulness of Cyan Goo, "Self Watcher", "Nightkiller Revealed", etc. Basically, my excuse for being alive was going to be - if questioned on it - that the scum couldn't afford to kill me because they'd be instantly revealed by doing so.
Which actually kind of baffles me that no one even bothered looking at Goo Mafia or Redux 2 to figure out what the hell my role did after claiming it.
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
I looked at Goo Mafia to figure out what your role did, and I figured immediately that you were an anti-kill town role. I had to think harder about how it could be a scum role.
Maybe I'm misreading your sentence, but are you saying you think I shouldn't have informed you that you'd been targeted? Because then what happens if rezombied targets a scum day 1, they aren't informed, and then don't get the benefit? Rezombied gets a heads up that something is amiss, and it's almost like an extra town info role (of which there were already many).
Basically just so they could false claim PR breaking roles if they wanted to.
I'm still baffled by the fact that so many people trusted Kosa and so few trusted Ducks. I totally understand either blindly trusting or blindly not trusting roles like that, but splitting your opinion over the two was weird to me. I guess it speaks to how much personality and methods can affect a game like this.
That's exactly what I was hoping someone would do after I pointed out my claim enough times.
Maybe you're right, and under different circumstances the player with the ability wouldn't have breadcrumbed their target so heavy-handedly; alternatively, scum could play around it by waiting to see if anyone else posted with 2 words before making their own post. Oh well, either way, it didn't have an effect on the way this game turned out, IMO. I just feel like it's potentially giving the scum too much information; maybe it would've been fine the way I suggested it if there was no Cop.
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
Yeah, I actually like your role better, it just needs to be respected as a very minor informational role.
I think Megiddo might be right about giving the mafia the PR, though, which would make the point moot in the future.
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
@Ged - I have to agree with you on my participation this game. I originally joined this game because I thought that with only two words per post, it would be easy to follow and I wouldn't have to spend much time on it, which was a distinct plus given my schedule at the time and upcoming trip. Which was true, but the communication difficulty plus the obvious difference in posting times meant I wasn't able to do half as much as I would have liked. That being said, I think the large number of modkills did, in fact, very heavily influence the game, and as Iso says, was probably directly responsible for the scum win. To my mind, only the B_E modkill was sufficiently justified.
Also, to redress the communication issue in future MMMs, might I suggest allowing hyperlinks to previous posts in the thread only? With that, even two words should be enough. As it was, too many 'words' were spent on post numbers.
Jund Fangirl; Few things can describe the bliss of the fangirl's cries fading to silence (broken by occasional munching sounds).
Grixis Emo; 'Why should I go out there? They're all uncaring zombies! *sniff* No one understands me...'
Bant Wageslave; Behind every successful knight is a corporate drudge doing his taxwork.
Naya Overenthusiast; Because there is such a thing as too much enthusiasm.
@dC: With everyone but me and ducks Cop-cleared, it seemed like the townie thing to do to presume there were only 3 scum and not speculate on a Godfather until necessary.
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
I'll defend the Void modkill, but still don't know how I feel about the later two.
I like this as a solution a lot. But with the bug in curse software about linking to posts in thread (they all break when the name of the thread changes), I don't think it's viable at the moment.
And if it's Night just make that your end of Day post is very obvious.
It is tedious, but you can always change the URLs each day. The numeric thread identifier stays the same, so you'd just have to change a small part of it.
For example:
Would become, by replacing -day-1 with -postgame
And it works. If you keep the thread titles simple, like "LOTR Mafia: Day 1", you'd just have to change the actual numeric figure in each link at the start of each Day.
That said, Meg hit it on the head, and that's what I am going to try and do when my game runs.
UUU Azami, Lady of Scrolls
RRR Diaochan, Artful Beauty
UR(U/R) Tibor, Lumia, & Melek (WIP)
Mafia Stats
You could do it quickly with a find+replace but still.
Plus, it unfortunately doesn't address in-thread links.
Thanks, Obama.
I think the simplest solution is to allow post numbers and not count them towards word total.
Whatever he was, I didn't want both townies with unlockables getting them. u_u
{мы, тьма}
2012: Best (False?) Role Claim - Worst Town Performance (Group) - Best Mafia Performance (Group) - Best SK Performance - Best Overall Player
2013: Best Non-SK Neutral Performance
2014: Best Town Performance (Individual) - Best Town Performance (Group) - Most Interesting Role - Best Game - Best Overall Player
2015: Worst Mafia Performance (Group) - Best Read
2016: Best Town Performance (Group) - Best Town Player - Best Overall Player
I still like allowing quotes.