I don't really like that AE is so happy to jump on the Scarbo wagon. But I want a flip and for this day not to go to waste. I like Zinda's findings, and I can agree I have been vote happy this game.
Fair enough. What I really am saying is that I don't like the idea of voting alongside you. But it doesn't matter since this will hopefully be the end of this miserable endgame. We are very much winning the worst town award at next years awards.
I'm told there was a lynch. I am actually in the office a lot this week, including today, so I'll get the Day ended when I'm back from work this afternoon or evening.
You can still post in the meantime.
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When did Seppel flip roleblocker? That literally never happened. Explain that, scarbo.
Continuing with scarbo's posts, he then votes Hawk, inaccurately claims he was just hammered by hunt, inexplicably votes me (that's two people he had previously called stonewall town that he has abruptly reversed position on), more talk about Obzedat despite claiming he hasn't been interested in him since D2, votes Atog, votes Obzedat again, continues to back keeping Rhand alive, votes huntzilla, votes Atog again (please note that my daykill on killjoy has happened by this point and he has said LITERALLY nothing about it), announces he's going to track Rhand, claims he did so and Rhand didn't target anyone, votes Hawk, states Axelrod isn't obviously town to him, votes Axelrod, votes AE.
I'm pretty much convinced now. Here's some of scarbo's questionable behavior:
- Was on Atogaholic literally the entire game but failed to track him on two separate occasions.
- Has been talking about Obzedat nonstop.
- Defended scum Taredas using WIFOM.
- Said barely a word about scum ZDS or scum killjoy, including not even commenting on the latter's death by daykill.
- Claimed that he was roleblocked on D5 despite earlier (D2) complaining when KA announced he was roleblocked.
- Inexplicably stated Seppel was a roleblocker.
- Performed a classic scum 180 on days 5 and 6 vis-a-vis me, Hawk, and AE. After previously stating we were ironclad town, he was forced to reverse that position in order to keep himself from being PoE'd out as the game wore on and he lost killjoy.
- Overall terrible use of his claimed ability
He later retracted saying he confused the game. I missed that part.
I stand by my choice of night actions, but what doesn't make any sense is saying that I'm scum for what you interpret as poor choices. Where's the scum motivation in my actions? If your response is to accuse me of lying about what I did, you don't get to criticize my actions.
I thought watching you was the best course of action because Boros had protection business going on, so I figured KA wouldn't be the kill target. I tracked Obzedat because if it were scum as a player not in the game it would make sense for it to perform the kill. Pretty sure I already explained that. I stated I would be tracking Rhand, but no one attempted to dissuade me, so you again don't get to call that a poor choice. I didn't track Atog precisely because he knew I had a scum read on him and thus why would we have performed the kill?
I have not been talking about Obezdat "nonstop." That's garbage and you know it.
You use my constant scum read on Atog against me while at the same time the changes in my reads on you, hawk, and AE. Which is it? Which is scummy, zinda? Unchanging reads or changing reads?
I very explicitly stated why I was defending Taredas- because it seemed like he genuinely thought I was scum.
After KA claimed roleblocker, the charade is dissolved, so there's no point for me to lie about not having been roleblocked, because at that pointed scum knew that town knew that they had a roleblocker. Make sense?
Pretty sure that covers everything you have against me, but I don't see this game ending without me being lynched, be it now or at lylo. So go ahead. I'm really at my wit's end. Hunt is parroting and contradicting himself, damn near slipping when he said he thought AE should be lynched "first." Even Obzedat has caught on to him. Lynch me now. Lynch hunt tomorrow. If it's Axel oh well. He'll make his scum team very happy.
I don't really like that AE is so happy to jump on the Scarbo wagon. But I want a flip and for this day not to go to waste. I like Zinda's findings, and I can agree I have been vote happy this game.
So, I'm assuming this game isn't over yet, one way or the other. Or SOMEBODY would have said something, yes?
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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.
You are Lazav, Dimir Mastermind, the guildmaster of House Dimir
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. As long as you are alive, the scum may speak in the quicktopic during the Day.
3. You appear as town to any investigations.
The scum have all been eliminated. The town has won the game!
7hawk77 was Firefist Striker, a member of the Boros Legion
Archmage Eternal was Ordruun Veteran, a member of the Boros Legion
Axelrod was Cartel Aristocrat, a member of the Orzhov Syndicate
Huntzilla was Skinbrand Goblin, a member of the Gruul Clans
Zindabad was Borborygmos Enraged, the guildmaster of the Gruul Clans
DCIII was Obzedat, Ghost Council, the guildmaster of the Orzhov Syndicate
Congratulations to the town for winning Gatecrash!
Postgame thoughts, end-of-game flavor (really this time), and chat links to follow.
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Dead players can now post yadda yadda. I'll edit flavor into this post and make a new post for the postgame thoughts. I have to run some errands so wait a couple of hours for these things.
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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.
Oh man. Well played Scarbo - you'll see how much I waffled between you and Hunt at the end there. I was on you all game but you kept getting me to hit the pause button.
This was an interesting game, to be sure. It was definitely a top-down concept game. After RTR, or more accurately, after I designed RTR, I wanted to explore the Guild concept a little more in depth. This led me to the idea of having a game with factions, where each Guild was a faction within the game. Not alignments. The idea was never to have a bunch of different wincons running around a la Astarte, but rather to have different groups intertwined and functioning in the same space within the game.
As RTR had the structure of guildmaster + guild members, I started with that paradigm for GTC as well. As you can see, that stuck through until the end. Let me talk a bit about the individual factions.
Orzhov: Obzedat was the first role created for the game. I loved the idea of having a dead player role. The idea of the Ghost Council growing as the players died was really appealing to me. The idea that the alignments weren't revealed came during review, I believe. I think this guild fell a bit short of expectations, though I'm not really sure what the best fix would be. If I were to make one tweak now it would be that players couldn't vote to eject themselves, and therefore you'd need to wait until there were three people in the group to eject. That would have made the decision making a little harder.
Gruul: This was the next role I created, simultaneously with the guild roles. In effect this was just a multi-shot Daykiller, but it came at the expense of outing the entire guild (as well as himself, obviously), and the risk that you would miss on having enough votes. In effect that meant it was a second lynch rather than a true daykill (hard to aezwolg when you need 5 votes in the wagon before you can successfully daykill). This I was OK with. The Gruul ability was not super relevant apart from the guildmaster's ability, which was fine. If the game had been wildly swung by the Gruul people would probably have been upset.
Boros: This is my least favorite guild from a design standpoint (as it's a bit wonky and the only way to make it work cleanly was random choices), though it actually played out fairly well, in my opinion. Aurelia was, like Borborygmos, the glue that held the guild together. I'll talk more about the passing ability in the Simic section, but that was a safeguard against having Aurelia killed early (as we saw she had to claim D1 or so this game). Somehow people thought this ability was not autotown. I am not sure why. Without Aurelia the guild was kind of derpy, though the Night actions I believe resulted in successful protection several times. Hawk and AE were fairly good about picking the same target, as I recall.
Simic: This was the last guild finalized and the hardest to do. I knew that the Simic would have to be responsible for the investigative power in the setup, so I was trying to find something that worked. There were some really bad designs at various points in the setup, like having the Simic be the Boros 2.0 with investigative abilities instead of protective, but in the end I think I settled on something that worked. I don't like full alignment cops, so having an alignment cop that weakened over the course of the game really appealed to me. In practice I think it worked well, and the fact that Zegana passed the ability to the scum Simic was great.
Speaking of the passing abilities, that was one aspect of the setup I might have changed. It made sense for all of the guilds, honestly, as the town power was concentrated in exactly three roles, but it had the unintended consequence of making it really obvious that there was one scum per guild (or at least one scum in each guild). Doing the setup again, I would have had death bonuses for the guildmasters, but had them be different. Zegana's would remain, as that's what the ability does. Aurelia's might have upgraded all of the Boros that Night to count as two Boros each (so everybody is a bodyguard, two equals a full protection). I'm not sure what to do with Borborygmos, but I could think of something given time. This would have helped achieve my other major goal with the game: Unbreakability.
I have a few design rules for mafia games. One of them is that the scum shouldn't lose the game with a D1 massclaim. This game was designed so that the scum would never be identified by claims D1. Consider what happens if everybody claims their role D1. You get 3 guildmasters and a bunch of vanilla guild members. There's really nothing mechanically to go on in terms of catching the scum. That was the intention. As a brief aside, I recognize that this is me forcing my will onto the players. I was saying to the scum, "to win this game, keep your head down and blend in." Some players don't like that or aren't good at it. Case in point: Taredas, who decided to run a weird mechanical gambit and claim a bizarre ability that didn't fit into the game at all. I am not sure if this is a failing of the setup or in communication. It feels wrong to just place all blame on Taredas, though.
I'm starting to ramble now, but my last design point will be that I highly value simplicity and "elegance" in my games. I'm not Xyre. I don't design games with a thousand moving pieces that all come together in weird and awesome ways. I can't; I'm not really good enough to balance all of that. If you look at all of the games I've designed and run, they all have a central design "hook" and build out from there. This game's "hook" was the guild system. The goal was to have a game where the town couldn't win through mechanics. They could win through POE if they figured out how the scum were distributed, but my hope was that they'd assume that wasn't the distribution and avoid such POE (in fact it wasn't, thanks to Gideon, but the scum killed him). In the end, Scarbo was lynched not because he was Simic but because of his behavior and Night actions, which is about as happy of an outcome as I could hope for.
At this point, ask me questions and give me comments. I could keep going but I have to write the flavor and go to the gym before it gets too late. I'm particularly interested in hearing your opinions on:
1. The fun factor of the game.
2. The design of the game (holistically or individual roles).
3. The balance.
MVPs:
I am taking nominations for MVPs. Let me know who you think deserves it!
Finally, thanks to everybody for playing and watching. It was a fun three months!
I also want to say that there probably will not be a sequel to this game. Like the actual MTG set Dragon's Maze, a mafia Dragon's Maze really doesn't need to exist. So, for my next game I'll be going back to minis, and probably with FTL Mafia. Hopefully see you there.
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I keep going back and forth on Scarbo. He's probably the player in-game I most think could go either way. Zindabad is probably in that boat too.
Taredas
ZDS
Seppel
DK
Killjoy? Scarbo? Zind? Axel?
That's kind of where I am atm."
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"Tare
ZDS
Seppel
Scarbo
DK
Yeah. That looks good."
I was pretty happy with this one and it was interesting trying to read/influence the game without being able to give much reasoning.
I did get flavor-game distracted with Orzhov because I thought you'd have made it such that I could get bounced if I was in the minority. Killjoy eluded me the most, actually... because he felt a lot like Star Trek when he was posting, that was the big surprise for me when he flipped.
And Scarbo, I have to tip my hat to you. I even wrote somewhere in there "Scarbo is abso-scum" and then as the game started winding down, you didn't really hiccup, which was good. The biggest beef I had with Axel was how he presented my message to him (and how he didn't say who it was and how he pulled the 'so he's not really infallible' line when my Az read was wrong but my next two were ZDS and Tare - I was thinking he knew he probably had to share the reads but wanted to discredit them... also the Orzhov thing).
Thanks for making the role/game and getting me into it, Meg.
I enjoyed my short time in this game and getting to work with so many awesome townies. While my D1 was a bit off-kilter I had reasonable reads and if I had remained in the game I would have killed the scum much faster, so I'm very satisfied with my play (especially soaking up two NKs as vanilla).
I wonder what would happen if the Orzhov knew that they would be going to the Ghost Council upon death - the design, while cool, kind of felt clunky and felt as though DCIII + others were in this glass soundproof room trying to scream. I would have maybe allowed the Obzedat to maybe gain a mason chat with one of the Orzhov? The problem with the Immortal Servitude ability was that people essentially just saw "a miller guild" and were put off by it. Vanilla town + downside isn't that fun.
The Gruul were fine - the extra votes ability hardly came up since Az posted about it D1. Basically vanilla and daykiller.
Boros was cool but the problem with it are the sheer number of ways for scum to get past the protection (dkings unblockability, scum extra kill). I don't think that the Boros actually protected anybody the entire game. The gimmick was cool though - a way to make "weak" roles.
I really liked the Simic. Having a cop ability is fine on D1 when its at its least swingy and having the investigative power decrease as the game goes on is sweet.
--
Ultimately I think that if the scum were stronger (had more experienced players) they would have tore through the town. The scum team effectively died when KoolKoal copped ZDS D2. You have two not-very-good scum members who were liable to die (killjoy and Taredas) and one who lived deep (scarbo). Speaking of which scarbo did AMAZING this game. He was mostly meh for me D1 and he pulled off great "give-up" posts that read very genuinely. If not for his night actions (should have killed hawk -> zinda, not Rhand) then I 100% believe he would have pulled a kpaca. The town lategame was really bad and he capitalized on it with ease. scarbo should be obvious for scum MVP.
Town MVP (in all seriousness) shouldn't be awarded this game. The town pulled through on the final Day with a combination of teamwork and by having the most brains operating at the right time. The town's play this game was.. they had occasional moments of brilliance but were mostly durdling the entire time.
Also - Rhand - I've noticed that early game we're fine... it's late-mid to late game where I always end up scum reading you... and it never fails. I can't quite pin point it yet but I think I'm getting closer and hopefully soon.
Good game. I enjoyed it. Something I really didn't enjoy was how terrible AE was. You guys complained nonstop in spec about how I was willing to believe the town's docs were scum, blah blah blah, but you didn't have to put up with his crap this game. He was begging to be killed and if the game had gone on another day I would've obliged him gladly. We were effectively a man down the entire game - 2 if you count non-contributor hawk, who to his credit did finally activate his brain on the last day, and 2.5 if you count barnzilla - oh, sorry, huntzilla. He was the opposite of Hawk. Fine at the start, useless by the end.
Now that I've blasted my teammates, let's look at the scum - ZDS was OK but was definitely making it obvious by the end of D1, Taredas was abominable, killjoy not too much better, and scarbo was good but had no options left by the end.
The setup was fine if a little low-powered and minimalistic for my taste. It ended up being a durdle-fest between two poor teams, settled by some mechanical strokes of luck along the way - KK copping ZDS, me killing killjoy.
You probably read this post and were like "why'd he say he enjoyed the game?" but I really did. Maybe it was just because it had been so long since I last played, and because I traditionally do badly in endgame situations, but it was a nice mix of characters and not too much flavor or setup gaming. And I got to kill Seppel. So there's that.
I don't have any cohesive thoughts on the set up right now. I think it was largely fine. Actually think the overall Guild design was sweet. Maybe could have used a tweak here or there, but, seeing the end, I'm happy not to be throwing up my hands and crying "bull----" like I was threatening. :p.
I enjoyed it for the most part, end game distractions and frustrations notwithstanding. I just don't understand why nobody else sees things like me. Seriously, DCIII, why you couldn't see why I wouldn't spill (1) your name, and (2) the fact you claimed unkillable out into the thread was beyond me. You should want the scum thinking you are being controlled by an actual player in the game (or at least, have them wondering about it). And, being unkillable, you should hope that they waste a NK shot on you. I mean, that's why I said it the way I said it. I even said exactly the thing you apparently thought I should have said - which was it doesn't make a lot of sense for scum Obzedat to finger Az to me in a message the same night they are killing him. But apparently you didn't like the way I presented it?
Scarbo, I thought you played really well right up until you WIFOM'd yourself out of the game by killing Rhand. Yes, it caused confusion, but it also left you sticking out there like a sore thumb. I wasn't enthusiastic about it, but you were just the most logical choice at that moment. You needed a few things to go your way, and you probably killed your easiest mislynch (I can't imagine I would have changed my position very easily, esp. after Atog flipped Town) - someone who was even supporting you at the end. And I suspect that would have been much easier to chain into the last mislynch you would have needed. I think you feared the Bomb a little too much.
I think it's good in a way though that no one was 100% right about anything this game. It either speaks well of the set-up or of the player/scum in general. It's personally depressing to be picking between two people (Rhand/Scarbo) and pick so wrong so close to the end, but I'll get over it. I'm okay with the rest of how I played for the most part, when I had the time/energy to put into it.
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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.
The really painful thing about the endgame that kept throwing me all over was people's insistence that either Hawk or AE could be scum when both behaviorally and role wise it didn't make any sense at all. AE put forth way too little effort to be scum, as sad as that is to say, he'd have had more self-preservation. It's like anger with his play overruled reason surrounding his play. And Hawk was just very behaviorally towny... plus, another scum in that guild would have left KA and one town in the protective slot with two scum and a neutral.
So it was hard to sift through the bad focus on them with the desperate scum focus on them.
I killed Rhand because I had to. I thought for sure you guys would question the fact that a TRACKER was left alive, so the only option for me was to get rid of Rhand and thereby my tracking ability. Even if I were town that would have been an incredibly risky play for scum because if he had been tracked it would have been game over. It's really surprising no one brought this up.
I thought the game was pretty well designed. I didn't like how there was one scum in each guild and the mechanics almost lent themselves to such a level of modgaming that we saw a bit of. My biggest frustration was that after KJ died I was under some pretty heavy suspicion, so I just assumed I was at an autoloss. But then town started playing SO POORLY, I mean so poorly that I had a glimmer of hope of winning, then I felt like everyone was getting lazy. In hindsight I should have jumped on the AE wagon earlier or whoever it was.
The scum team did not coordinate well at all. There was some early resentment with me and the way ZDS and Taredas decided to bus me out the gate. You can see this in the scum chat. That escalated into a severe lack of coordination. It started to work out when Rhand decided Taredas's attacks couldn't have been a bus, but I felt I had to kill him.
All in all, pretty good game. Frustrating as hell, but challenging and interesting, as any mafia game should be. Congrats to town for the win.
I enjoyed it for the most part, end game distractions and frustrations notwithstanding. I just don't understand why nobody else sees things like me. Seriously, DCIII, why you couldn't see why I wouldn't spill (1) your name, and (2) the fact you claimed unkillable out into the thread was beyond me. You should want the scum thinking you are being controlled by an actual player in the game (or at least, have them wondering about it). And, being unkillable, you should hope that they waste a NK shot on you. I mean, that's why I said it the way I said it. I even said exactly the thing you apparently thought I should have said - which was it doesn't make a lot of sense for scum Obzedat to finger Az to me in a message the same night they are killing him. But apparently you didn't like the way I presented it?
Axel - I wanted my name in thread because I was hoping that if people knew it was me that they'd be more likely to listen to my reads than some random entity they knew nothing about.
I wanted them to know that I couldn't be killed because I didn't want people wasting time trying to lynch my slot or, worse, vigging me/use Zinds role on me (which almost happened) and I really didn't think it was likely that scum would waste a kill on the slot of a hidden player who could barely communicate anyway.
That wasn't the biggest thing, though, that was more of a factor later when they were talking about PoEing me out with Zind and you weren't saying anything. The biggest issue I had with your communication was the way you presented my reads with the "obviously not infallible" line - it felt like you were trying to discredit them in the wake of Az's flip. Then, as the game progressed, there was so much flailing and lack of reasoning being used in a lot of places, while you were calm, cool and collected but, other than Rhand, you didn't really seem to have a push or a direction, and you were talking about how AE wasn't a bad lynch and I'd think you'd have known better.
And it was also a bit of a "how is Axel still alive considering some of the kill selections" piece AND a mod gaming piece where I really though there were likely to be two scum Orzhov because of how the mechanics were designed.
Oh also I totally misunderstood the Boros bomb phenomenon until Axel or whoever reposted it. I thought someone in Boros turned into a bomb that carried into battalion, so if like hawk and AE had used their battalion on zinda and I tried to kill zinda, there would have been a 50% chance the bomb died instead and thereby me. If I had been paying attention things might have turned out differently, though probably not.
The really painful thing about the endgame that kept throwing me all over was people's insistence that either Hawk or AE could be scum when both behaviorally and role wise it didn't make any sense at all. AE put forth way too little effort to be scum, as sad as that is to say, he'd have had more self-preservation. It's like anger with his play overruled reason surrounding his play. And Hawk was just very behaviorally towny... plus, another scum in that guild would have left KA and one town in the protective slot with two scum and a neutral.
Well, first, there were 6 Boros, not 5. It could have been 3 Town, 2 Scum + a Neutral. While lopsided, that definitely wouldn't have been impossible. It's wasn't ever the thing I thought most likely, but you would be stupid to dismiss anything out of hand. And the idea that "AE put forth way too little effort to be scum" is just absurd.
About 95% of the spec chat comes from a position of knowledge where everything is obvious and the idiots still playing who can't see it are morons. That's all fine, but, they really should remember that it looks a little different from the other side when you don't already have all the answers. It's not like they haven't all been there themselves.
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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.
And the idea that "AE put forth way too little effort to be scum" is just absurd.
I disagree - I find that most people who are scum who aren't just completely new and paralyzed by the situation aren't willing to just be complete non-entities. It draws way too much attention - and those who are willing to do that are players with established metas of basically always playing like that so that people don't know how to read them.
There are scum lurkers who "post just enough" but AE wasn't doing that at all... he wasn't even remotely trying to seem like he was contributing which read as much more likely to be disengaged/disinterested Town who felt cleared based on role than scum who decided that the best strategy was to play like that, and then adding the role piece, I had a hard time seeing how either he or Hawk kept being put on the table.
Plus, I've played with lurker scum AE before and he'd certainly make an effort to look like he was trying to do stuff when he posted, albeit rarely, which isn't really relevant to the initial discussion above, but was also another factor.
About 95% of the spec chat comes from a position of knowledge where everything is obvious and the idiots still playing who can't see it are morons. That's all fine, but, they really should remember that it looks a little different from the other side when you don't already have all the answers. It's not like they haven't all been there themselves.
Ok ok... but why kill me? where you expecting to get axel lynched? the way things where going keeping me alive was a much easier way to ensure i would have pushed Axel... so yeah tell me why me over a Gruul?
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Call me old fashioned, but an evil ascension to power just isn't the same without someone chanting faux Latin in the background.
Oreo, Glazing people better than Dunkin' Donuts since 2009
That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange eons even death may die.
I think a lot of it had to do with Obzedat becoming suspicious of me and the fact that we didn't want him to tell you and thereby everyone else why I was scum.
This game was also interesting as an example of how to play around with expectations. The end result - one hidden scum in each guild - looks simple and even breakable if the town guesses that there is exactly one scum per guild, but that's a very risky assumption for the Town to ever make. And here I think that Megs RTR game helps him, in as much as I seem to recall that there was a guild with no scum in that game and another (or multiple?) with multiple scum, so the precedent was against what he did here. Also, the thing with the guildleaders. Going in (again, with RTR as a baseline) I more or less assumed that at least one of the "Guildleaders" would turn out to be scum, but they were all Town. And not just Town but the strongest roles in the game. It was the one thing that kept me uncertain about the Obzedat role for so long. And the fact that DKings had to kill the Guildleaders, and they all turned out to be town (notwithstanding Lazhov hiding as a non-guildleader) just seemed wrong. Do I understand that DKings didn't actually have to kill Obzedat to win, but he didn't know it (like, how could he?), and actually wasted a shot trying to kill him on N1? I think I would probably have been at least a little upset there.
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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.
This game was also interesting as an example of how to play around with expectations. The end result - one hidden scum in each guild - looks simple and even breakable if the town guesses that there is exactly one scum per guild, but that's a very risky assumption for the Town to ever make. And here I think that Megs RTR game helps him, in as much as I seem to recall that there was a guild with no scum in that game and another (or multiple?) with multiple scum, so the precedent was against what he did here. Also, the thing with the guildleaders. Going in (again, with RTR as a baseline) I more or less assumed that at least one of the "Guildleaders" would turn out to be scum, but they were all Town. And not just Town but the strongest roles in the game. It was the one thing that kept me uncertain about the Obzedat role for so long. And the fact that DKings had to kill the Guildleaders, and they all turned out to be town (notwithstanding Lazhov hiding as a non-guildleader) just seemed wrong. Do I understand that DKings didn't actually have to kill Obzedat to win, but he didn't know it (like, how could he?), and actually wasted a shot trying to kill him on N1? I think I would probably have been at least a little upset there.
This post makes me really happy!
Ged was extremely concerned about the simple and easy distribution. I fought for it because I knew that the town would not and could not afford to just make that assumption. It was a gamble, but I think it worked out.
Yes, dkings did not have to kill Obzedat. This was a bit of a "haha I'm so clever" moment and not actually good for gameplay. I was treating Obzedat as a mystery element and not explaining anything about it.
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 think a lot of it had to do with Obzedat becoming suspicious of me and the fact that we didn't want him to tell you and thereby everyone else why I was scum.
Ghosts are scary.
Well, except Mort, I've learned. He's a fun time.
(Not being able to influence the game much was frustrating but the obz chat was one of the more fun experiences I've had in mafia in a while).
At one point in design I think there was a Teysa character who had a perma-link to the GC so that the GC could actually communicate. I removed it for being unnecessary. Also Teysa was in DGM, not GTC.
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
The Strike Gold Vote Count 6.5 (As of post #2131)
scarbo (2): 7hawk77, Zindabad
Archmage Eternal (1): Huntzilla
Huntzilla (1): Obzedat
4 to lynch.
Deadline is in 6 hours! No lynch will happen unless a majority is reached.
So we need one more person to vote.
They hate us cause they ain't us.
Vote Scarbo
I don't really like that AE is so happy to jump on the Scarbo wagon. But I want a flip and for this day not to go to waste. I like Zinda's findings, and I can agree I have been vote happy this game.
They hate us cause they ain't us.
Vote: Huntzilla
I'm told there was a lynch. I am actually in the office a lot this week, including today, so I'll get the Day ended when I'm back from work this afternoon or evening.
You can still post in the meantime.
"...a talisman against all evil, so long as you obey me."
What Zinda said.
He later retracted saying he confused the game. I missed that part.
I stand by my choice of night actions, but what doesn't make any sense is saying that I'm scum for what you interpret as poor choices. Where's the scum motivation in my actions? If your response is to accuse me of lying about what I did, you don't get to criticize my actions.
I thought watching you was the best course of action because Boros had protection business going on, so I figured KA wouldn't be the kill target. I tracked Obzedat because if it were scum as a player not in the game it would make sense for it to perform the kill. Pretty sure I already explained that. I stated I would be tracking Rhand, but no one attempted to dissuade me, so you again don't get to call that a poor choice. I didn't track Atog precisely because he knew I had a scum read on him and thus why would we have performed the kill?
I have not been talking about Obezdat "nonstop." That's garbage and you know it.
You use my constant scum read on Atog against me while at the same time the changes in my reads on you, hawk, and AE. Which is it? Which is scummy, zinda? Unchanging reads or changing reads?
I very explicitly stated why I was defending Taredas- because it seemed like he genuinely thought I was scum.
After KA claimed roleblocker, the charade is dissolved, so there's no point for me to lie about not having been roleblocked, because at that pointed scum knew that town knew that they had a roleblocker. Make sense?
Pretty sure that covers everything you have against me, but I don't see this game ending without me being lynched, be it now or at lylo. So go ahead. I'm really at my wit's end. Hunt is parroting and contradicting himself, damn near slipping when he said he thought AE should be lynched "first." Even Obzedat has caught on to him. Lynch me now. Lynch hunt tomorrow. If it's Axel oh well. He'll make his scum team very happy.
Honestly I'm glad. Lynch him tomorrow.
I MEAN CAN YOU PEOPLE NOT READ? HOLY *****.
Kinda pissed about this lynch.
Outdated Mafia Stats
"...a talisman against all evil, so long as you obey me."
scarbo (4): Archmage Eternal, Axelrod, Zindabad, Huntzilla
Huntzilla (1): Obzedat
---
Scarbo has been lynched. Here is his role PM:
The scum have all been eliminated. The town has won the game!
7hawk77 was Firefist Striker, a member of the Boros Legion
Archmage Eternal was Ordruun Veteran, a member of the Boros Legion
Axelrod was Cartel Aristocrat, a member of the Orzhov Syndicate
Huntzilla was Skinbrand Goblin, a member of the Gruul Clans
Zindabad was Borborygmos Enraged, the guildmaster of the Gruul Clans
DCIII was Obzedat, Ghost Council, the guildmaster of the Orzhov Syndicate
Congratulations to the town for winning Gatecrash!
Postgame thoughts, end-of-game flavor (really this time), and chat links to follow.
GG guys.
Good job, guys!
Sorry I didn't believe you, Axel!
http://www.quicktopic.com/51/H/73hZHFc6j3z
Town Win % = 75%
Mafia Win % = 75%
Overall Win % = 75%
Completed Game Log
2014: Best Mafia Performance (Group)
2014: Most Improved Player
2014: Best Town Player
2014: Best Overall Player
Town Win % = 75%
Mafia Win % = 75%
Overall Win % = 75%
Completed Game Log
2014: Best Mafia Performance (Group)
2014: Most Improved Player
2014: Best Town Player
2014: Best Overall Player
This was an interesting game, to be sure. It was definitely a top-down concept game. After RTR, or more accurately, after I designed RTR, I wanted to explore the Guild concept a little more in depth. This led me to the idea of having a game with factions, where each Guild was a faction within the game. Not alignments. The idea was never to have a bunch of different wincons running around a la Astarte, but rather to have different groups intertwined and functioning in the same space within the game.
As RTR had the structure of guildmaster + guild members, I started with that paradigm for GTC as well. As you can see, that stuck through until the end. Let me talk a bit about the individual factions.
Orzhov: Obzedat was the first role created for the game. I loved the idea of having a dead player role. The idea of the Ghost Council growing as the players died was really appealing to me. The idea that the alignments weren't revealed came during review, I believe. I think this guild fell a bit short of expectations, though I'm not really sure what the best fix would be. If I were to make one tweak now it would be that players couldn't vote to eject themselves, and therefore you'd need to wait until there were three people in the group to eject. That would have made the decision making a little harder.
Gruul: This was the next role I created, simultaneously with the guild roles. In effect this was just a multi-shot Daykiller, but it came at the expense of outing the entire guild (as well as himself, obviously), and the risk that you would miss on having enough votes. In effect that meant it was a second lynch rather than a true daykill (hard to aezwolg when you need 5 votes in the wagon before you can successfully daykill). This I was OK with. The Gruul ability was not super relevant apart from the guildmaster's ability, which was fine. If the game had been wildly swung by the Gruul people would probably have been upset.
Boros: This is my least favorite guild from a design standpoint (as it's a bit wonky and the only way to make it work cleanly was random choices), though it actually played out fairly well, in my opinion. Aurelia was, like Borborygmos, the glue that held the guild together. I'll talk more about the passing ability in the Simic section, but that was a safeguard against having Aurelia killed early (as we saw she had to claim D1 or so this game). Somehow people thought this ability was not autotown. I am not sure why. Without Aurelia the guild was kind of derpy, though the Night actions I believe resulted in successful protection several times. Hawk and AE were fairly good about picking the same target, as I recall.
Simic: This was the last guild finalized and the hardest to do. I knew that the Simic would have to be responsible for the investigative power in the setup, so I was trying to find something that worked. There were some really bad designs at various points in the setup, like having the Simic be the Boros 2.0 with investigative abilities instead of protective, but in the end I think I settled on something that worked. I don't like full alignment cops, so having an alignment cop that weakened over the course of the game really appealed to me. In practice I think it worked well, and the fact that Zegana passed the ability to the scum Simic was great.
Speaking of the passing abilities, that was one aspect of the setup I might have changed. It made sense for all of the guilds, honestly, as the town power was concentrated in exactly three roles, but it had the unintended consequence of making it really obvious that there was one scum per guild (or at least one scum in each guild). Doing the setup again, I would have had death bonuses for the guildmasters, but had them be different. Zegana's would remain, as that's what the ability does. Aurelia's might have upgraded all of the Boros that Night to count as two Boros each (so everybody is a bodyguard, two equals a full protection). I'm not sure what to do with Borborygmos, but I could think of something given time. This would have helped achieve my other major goal with the game: Unbreakability.
I have a few design rules for mafia games. One of them is that the scum shouldn't lose the game with a D1 massclaim. This game was designed so that the scum would never be identified by claims D1. Consider what happens if everybody claims their role D1. You get 3 guildmasters and a bunch of vanilla guild members. There's really nothing mechanically to go on in terms of catching the scum. That was the intention. As a brief aside, I recognize that this is me forcing my will onto the players. I was saying to the scum, "to win this game, keep your head down and blend in." Some players don't like that or aren't good at it. Case in point: Taredas, who decided to run a weird mechanical gambit and claim a bizarre ability that didn't fit into the game at all. I am not sure if this is a failing of the setup or in communication. It feels wrong to just place all blame on Taredas, though.
I'm starting to ramble now, but my last design point will be that I highly value simplicity and "elegance" in my games. I'm not Xyre. I don't design games with a thousand moving pieces that all come together in weird and awesome ways. I can't; I'm not really good enough to balance all of that. If you look at all of the games I've designed and run, they all have a central design "hook" and build out from there. This game's "hook" was the guild system. The goal was to have a game where the town couldn't win through mechanics. They could win through POE if they figured out how the scum were distributed, but my hope was that they'd assume that wasn't the distribution and avoid such POE (in fact it wasn't, thanks to Gideon, but the scum killed him). In the end, Scarbo was lynched not because he was Simic but because of his behavior and Night actions, which is about as happy of an outcome as I could hope for.
At this point, ask me questions and give me comments. I could keep going but I have to write the flavor and go to the gym before it gets too late. I'm particularly interested in hearing your opinions on:
1. The fun factor of the game.
2. The design of the game (holistically or individual roles).
3. The balance.
MVPs:
I am taking nominations for MVPs. Let me know who you think deserves it!
Chat links:
Spec: http://www.quicktopic.com/51/H/frsnfKhr87Ra
Mafia: http://www.quicktopic.com/51/H/th9F9xusBBJ
Ghost Council: http://www.quicktopic.com/51/H/73hZHFc6j3z
Finally, thanks to everybody for playing and watching. It was a fun three months!
I also want to say that there probably will not be a sequel to this game. Like the actual MTG set Dragon's Maze, a mafia Dragon's Maze really doesn't need to exist. So, for my next game I'll be going back to minis, and probably with FTL Mafia. Hopefully see you there.
I keep going back and forth on Scarbo. He's probably the player in-game I most think could go either way. Zindabad is probably in that boat too.
Taredas
ZDS
Seppel
DK
Killjoy? Scarbo? Zind? Axel?
That's kind of where I am atm."
------
"Tare
ZDS
Seppel
Scarbo
DK
Yeah. That looks good."
I was pretty happy with this one and it was interesting trying to read/influence the game without being able to give much reasoning.
I did get flavor-game distracted with Orzhov because I thought you'd have made it such that I could get bounced if I was in the minority. Killjoy eluded me the most, actually... because he felt a lot like Star Trek when he was posting, that was the big surprise for me when he flipped.
And Scarbo, I have to tip my hat to you. I even wrote somewhere in there "Scarbo is abso-scum" and then as the game started winding down, you didn't really hiccup, which was good. The biggest beef I had with Axel was how he presented my message to him (and how he didn't say who it was and how he pulled the 'so he's not really infallible' line when my Az read was wrong but my next two were ZDS and Tare - I was thinking he knew he probably had to share the reads but wanted to discredit them... also the Orzhov thing).
Thanks for making the role/game and getting me into it, Meg.
Town Win % = 75%
Mafia Win % = 75%
Overall Win % = 75%
Completed Game Log
2014: Best Mafia Performance (Group)
2014: Most Improved Player
2014: Best Town Player
2014: Best Overall Player
I wonder what would happen if the Orzhov knew that they would be going to the Ghost Council upon death - the design, while cool, kind of felt clunky and felt as though DCIII + others were in this glass soundproof room trying to scream. I would have maybe allowed the Obzedat to maybe gain a mason chat with one of the Orzhov? The problem with the Immortal Servitude ability was that people essentially just saw "a miller guild" and were put off by it. Vanilla town + downside isn't that fun.
The Gruul were fine - the extra votes ability hardly came up since Az posted about it D1. Basically vanilla and daykiller.
Boros was cool but the problem with it are the sheer number of ways for scum to get past the protection (dkings unblockability, scum extra kill). I don't think that the Boros actually protected anybody the entire game. The gimmick was cool though - a way to make "weak" roles.
I really liked the Simic. Having a cop ability is fine on D1 when its at its least swingy and having the investigative power decrease as the game goes on is sweet.
--
Ultimately I think that if the scum were stronger (had more experienced players) they would have tore through the town. The scum team effectively died when KoolKoal copped ZDS D2. You have two not-very-good scum members who were liable to die (killjoy and Taredas) and one who lived deep (scarbo). Speaking of which scarbo did AMAZING this game. He was mostly meh for me D1 and he pulled off great "give-up" posts that read very genuinely. If not for his night actions (should have killed hawk -> zinda, not Rhand) then I 100% believe he would have pulled a kpaca. The town lategame was really bad and he capitalized on it with ease. scarbo should be obvious for scum MVP.
Town MVP (in all seriousness) shouldn't be awarded this game. The town pulled through on the final Day with a combination of teamwork and by having the most brains operating at the right time. The town's play this game was.. they had occasional moments of brilliance but were mostly durdling the entire time.
Also - Rhand - I've noticed that early game we're fine... it's late-mid to late game where I always end up scum reading you... and it never fails. I can't quite pin point it yet but I think I'm getting closer and hopefully soon.
Town Win % = 75%
Mafia Win % = 75%
Overall Win % = 75%
Completed Game Log
2014: Best Mafia Performance (Group)
2014: Most Improved Player
2014: Best Town Player
2014: Best Overall Player
Now that I've blasted my teammates, let's look at the scum - ZDS was OK but was definitely making it obvious by the end of D1, Taredas was abominable, killjoy not too much better, and scarbo was good but had no options left by the end.
The setup was fine if a little low-powered and minimalistic for my taste. It ended up being a durdle-fest between two poor teams, settled by some mechanical strokes of luck along the way - KK copping ZDS, me killing killjoy.
You probably read this post and were like "why'd he say he enjoyed the game?" but I really did. Maybe it was just because it had been so long since I last played, and because I traditionally do badly in endgame situations, but it was a nice mix of characters and not too much flavor or setup gaming. And I got to kill Seppel. So there's that.
"...a talisman against all evil, so long as you obey me."
I enjoyed it for the most part, end game distractions and frustrations notwithstanding. I just don't understand why nobody else sees things like me. Seriously, DCIII, why you couldn't see why I wouldn't spill (1) your name, and (2) the fact you claimed unkillable out into the thread was beyond me. You should want the scum thinking you are being controlled by an actual player in the game (or at least, have them wondering about it). And, being unkillable, you should hope that they waste a NK shot on you. I mean, that's why I said it the way I said it. I even said exactly the thing you apparently thought I should have said - which was it doesn't make a lot of sense for scum Obzedat to finger Az to me in a message the same night they are killing him. But apparently you didn't like the way I presented it?
Scarbo, I thought you played really well right up until you WIFOM'd yourself out of the game by killing Rhand. Yes, it caused confusion, but it also left you sticking out there like a sore thumb. I wasn't enthusiastic about it, but you were just the most logical choice at that moment. You needed a few things to go your way, and you probably killed your easiest mislynch (I can't imagine I would have changed my position very easily, esp. after Atog flipped Town) - someone who was even supporting you at the end. And I suspect that would have been much easier to chain into the last mislynch you would have needed. I think you feared the Bomb a little too much.
I think it's good in a way though that no one was 100% right about anything this game. It either speaks well of the set-up or of the player/scum in general. It's personally depressing to be picking between two people (Rhand/Scarbo) and pick so wrong so close to the end, but I'll get over it. I'm okay with the rest of how I played for the most part, when I had the time/energy to put into it.
The really painful thing about the endgame that kept throwing me all over was people's insistence that either Hawk or AE could be scum when both behaviorally and role wise it didn't make any sense at all. AE put forth way too little effort to be scum, as sad as that is to say, he'd have had more self-preservation. It's like anger with his play overruled reason surrounding his play. And Hawk was just very behaviorally towny... plus, another scum in that guild would have left KA and one town in the protective slot with two scum and a neutral.
So it was hard to sift through the bad focus on them with the desperate scum focus on them.
Town Win % = 75%
Mafia Win % = 75%
Overall Win % = 75%
Completed Game Log
2014: Best Mafia Performance (Group)
2014: Most Improved Player
2014: Best Town Player
2014: Best Overall Player
I thought the game was pretty well designed. I didn't like how there was one scum in each guild and the mechanics almost lent themselves to such a level of modgaming that we saw a bit of. My biggest frustration was that after KJ died I was under some pretty heavy suspicion, so I just assumed I was at an autoloss. But then town started playing SO POORLY, I mean so poorly that I had a glimmer of hope of winning, then I felt like everyone was getting lazy. In hindsight I should have jumped on the AE wagon earlier or whoever it was.
The scum team did not coordinate well at all. There was some early resentment with me and the way ZDS and Taredas decided to bus me out the gate. You can see this in the scum chat. That escalated into a severe lack of coordination. It started to work out when Rhand decided Taredas's attacks couldn't have been a bus, but I felt I had to kill him.
All in all, pretty good game. Frustrating as hell, but challenging and interesting, as any mafia game should be. Congrats to town for the win.
Axel - I wanted my name in thread because I was hoping that if people knew it was me that they'd be more likely to listen to my reads than some random entity they knew nothing about.
I wanted them to know that I couldn't be killed because I didn't want people wasting time trying to lynch my slot or, worse, vigging me/use Zinds role on me (which almost happened) and I really didn't think it was likely that scum would waste a kill on the slot of a hidden player who could barely communicate anyway.
That wasn't the biggest thing, though, that was more of a factor later when they were talking about PoEing me out with Zind and you weren't saying anything. The biggest issue I had with your communication was the way you presented my reads with the "obviously not infallible" line - it felt like you were trying to discredit them in the wake of Az's flip. Then, as the game progressed, there was so much flailing and lack of reasoning being used in a lot of places, while you were calm, cool and collected but, other than Rhand, you didn't really seem to have a push or a direction, and you were talking about how AE wasn't a bad lynch and I'd think you'd have known better.
And it was also a bit of a "how is Axel still alive considering some of the kill selections" piece AND a mod gaming piece where I really though there were likely to be two scum Orzhov because of how the mechanics were designed.
So, that was kind of all of it together.
Town Win % = 75%
Mafia Win % = 75%
Overall Win % = 75%
Completed Game Log
2014: Best Mafia Performance (Group)
2014: Most Improved Player
2014: Best Town Player
2014: Best Overall Player
Eh.
Town Win % = 75%
Mafia Win % = 75%
Overall Win % = 75%
Completed Game Log
2014: Best Mafia Performance (Group)
2014: Most Improved Player
2014: Best Town Player
2014: Best Overall Player
Well, first, there were 6 Boros, not 5. It could have been 3 Town, 2 Scum + a Neutral. While lopsided, that definitely wouldn't have been impossible. It's wasn't ever the thing I thought most likely, but you would be stupid to dismiss anything out of hand. And the idea that "AE put forth way too little effort to be scum" is just absurd.
About 95% of the spec chat comes from a position of knowledge where everything is obvious and the idiots still playing who can't see it are morons. That's all fine, but, they really should remember that it looks a little different from the other side when you don't already have all the answers. It's not like they haven't all been there themselves.
I disagree - I find that most people who are scum who aren't just completely new and paralyzed by the situation aren't willing to just be complete non-entities. It draws way too much attention - and those who are willing to do that are players with established metas of basically always playing like that so that people don't know how to read them.
There are scum lurkers who "post just enough" but AE wasn't doing that at all... he wasn't even remotely trying to seem like he was contributing which read as much more likely to be disengaged/disinterested Town who felt cleared based on role than scum who decided that the best strategy was to play like that, and then adding the role piece, I had a hard time seeing how either he or Hawk kept being put on the table.
Plus, I've played with lurker scum AE before and he'd certainly make an effort to look like he was trying to do stuff when he posted, albeit rarely, which isn't really relevant to the initial discussion above, but was also another factor.
Town Win % = 75%
Mafia Win % = 75%
Overall Win % = 75%
Completed Game Log
2014: Best Mafia Performance (Group)
2014: Most Improved Player
2014: Best Town Player
2014: Best Overall Player
This is true.
Town Win % = 75%
Mafia Win % = 75%
Overall Win % = 75%
Completed Game Log
2014: Best Mafia Performance (Group)
2014: Most Improved Player
2014: Best Town Player
2014: Best Overall Player
Outdated Mafia Stats
Again it just felt off to see you guys shot me over Gruul since zinda's ability clearly needed nerfing.
Draft my cube! (630 cards)
Yeah but basically everyone but zinda was lynchable and we felt zinda would be protected.
Ged was extremely concerned about the simple and easy distribution. I fought for it because I knew that the town would not and could not afford to just make that assumption. It was a gamble, but I think it worked out.
Yes, dkings did not have to kill Obzedat. This was a bit of a "haha I'm so clever" moment and not actually good for gameplay. I was treating Obzedat as a mystery element and not explaining anything about it.
Ghosts are scary.
Well, except Mort, I've learned. He's a fun time.
(Not being able to influence the game much was frustrating but the obz chat was one of the more fun experiences I've had in mafia in a while).
Town Win % = 75%
Mafia Win % = 75%
Overall Win % = 75%
Completed Game Log
2014: Best Mafia Performance (Group)
2014: Most Improved Player
2014: Best Town Player
2014: Best Overall Player