Oh, I want to talk about individual role designs, since I think it will be good discussion and at bare minimum useful for anybody who wants to talk theory.
Niv-Mizzet: My mistake here was holding myself too strictly to the "keep all roles fully believable as town" thing that was a holdover from the first version. My nod to the scum nature of this role was that I gave it the "dummy" device ability. As I mentioned I maybe should have given him a roleblocker device or something. I will note that he has two very powerful abilities; namely, the double vote and the increased lynch threshold. However, neither of these are useful outside of very specific circumstances that may not come up in the average game.
Jarad: I stripped this ability down to be as weak as possible, pretty much, as revivers are so powerful. Also note that between the original version and the final version of the setup I changed how the guildmasters worked. I wanted to make sure that they all had the ability to impact the setup, so I gave them a basic ability that upgraded when they targeted their own guild. So Izzet get to use their devices immediately and Jarad gets a temp-revive that upgrades to perma-revive. I like how this role turned out, and the way it was used in the game was not what I was expecting, but still very clever.
Isperia: This one went through some revisions. Note that this is actually supposed to be the "main" investigative role, but that the Gambler is actually stronger. More on that later. This role actually originally was a watcher that got upgraded to cop. I realized that this was poor design. I thought back to KosaKosa's role in Ataghan (which was a watcher/doc/cop) and the fact that you wanted to be targeting different people with the three modes. I'll quote myself from the review QT: "The cop ability is somewhat tacked on to Isperia's ability and won't come up much, which I'm fine with, but it's the exact same scenario as with Kosa's ability in Ataghan: You're targeting people who you think are town. Either it tells you they are town, in which case you say "duh," or you are punishing somebody for playing well." From there I switched it to being a tracker/cop, which is more natural. When the Gambler got added, this changed to its current form (effectively a cop if you happen to catch an Azorius scum committing the NK).
Rakdos: I was sad that this one didn't get to do much! This is one guild leader that rewards concealment of guilds, as you don't want him to die before the other Rakdos. One crazy version of this role allowed him to "bank" up to three vigilante shots that could be used simultaneously. Ultimate cool factor. I might revisit that role in a future setup (I think Proph had a similar role in MGM though, now that I think of it).
Trostani: I like the idea that killing the one scum mason shuts off the rest of them. Other than that, not much else to say. Unfortunately, if the town modgmes that guild masters are likely to be scum, this is the one that is most obviously a candidate.
One thing that I tried hard to do was to make each guild master care about or relate to its guild members in a different way. Niv wants to target his guild members to enhance his devices. Jarad can be used as an insurance policy or as a power play to double confirm people, like we saw. Isperia I envisioned as primarily being a tracker that would have occasional upside. Rakdos (true to form) just wants people to die. Finally, Trostani takes the Selesnyan approach and is just trying to be a happy family. I am proud of this aspect of the setup as I think I did a good job of making each guild not only be mechanically unique, but also carry over some of the flavor and overall feel from their "real-life" incarnations.
Palisade Giant: This is the weakest PR in the game if only because there's good odds that you'll be protecting scum, and there's no option to fix that. However, the fact that it's optional is a bit of a trap, since the correct play is almost always going to be to use it, especially early game. dkingsland fell into the trap this game and made me smile big.
Stealer of Secrets: In my eyes this is the worst role of the setup from a design perspective purely because it's the most obviously scum. I've been proven wrong. Note that as the "neutral" version intended for town or scum, it only got role names and not abilities.
Ash Zealot: Obviously these "minor" PRs were all trying to utilize the semi-random nature of the guilds to add some variability to the setup. This role could range from being immune to all town actions (as it was this game) or completely untouchable by scum depending on the guild distribution. I thought it was a fun wildcard to include.
Tavern Swindler: This was the Skullclamp of this setup: A late addition that wasn't balanced properly. I moved away from the original guild-switching version fairly quickly (after talking it through with Wheat and trying to figure out how Vraska would work with a guild switched out from under her, I said screw it and scrapped the role). I then settled on a guild guessing role, which seemed fun. I looked at making it a motivator but settled on a cop. Looking back, I would have preferred the motivator. Lesson learned: Don't put cops into your setup last minute. Also, don't call them something totally unrelated in a low-reveal setup.
Vraska: This went from SK to Hitman so that I could add more guild-relevant roles to the game. Obviously the flavor here is her ultimate, where she gets three Assassin tokens... I thought it was cute.
Thank you for hosting, I really like the effort you put into flavor - roleplaying was a really good read and setup was just yummy! Jarad reanimating people? Trostani as a Selesnyan voice? Niv-Mizzet as a crazy inventor? Flavor was delicious.
Thanks. I don't really like writing flavor for scenes (cf. Presidential), but I load my role/setup designs with it. My goal is to be immersive. When you get your role PM I want you to feel like I handed you a coherent package that speaks to the character and makes you excited to play the game as that character. Obviously that doesn't always happen (mostly in the case of vanillas, but it's hard to make every single role a home run), but that is what I strive to do.
Regarding flavor scenes, I find that there's a huge disconnect between the game of mafia itself and the flavor of the games we layer on top of it, which mods solve in different ways. I started out trying too hard to integrate the gameplay with the story, which never feels right to me. Later on I ended up about-facing to do what I should have done from the start, which is providing a backstory running in parallel. Dagaen's win provided me with both a good launching point for that as well as the motivation to do so. I ended up planting the seeds for Gatecrash, but due to my late start that was about all I was able to get done.
I'll actually try and map out a general story arc for Gatecrash before that gets run (which, unless it materializes as an FTQ, won't be for a very long time) so that we have some more entertainment provided.
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 have to give scum MVP to Sir Karn for that gambit. I thought he was crazy, but through some absurd combination of luck and skill, he achieved victory. There were a lot of factors working for him, but he saw the opportunity and ran with it. Good job to him, even if we were flabbergasted that it worked. I think that Cantrip played well also—as Prophylaxis said in the spec chat, this was the best scum play from Cantrip basically ever. However, the direction of the game was definitely driven by Karn's gambit, so he deserves that recognition.
Town MVP is more difficult. My first inclination is masterplum, since he was the "most right" townie and was fighting to get Karn lynched pretty much the whole game. After reviewing the playerlist... I really don't have any alternatives. So there we go.
I would also like to mention Dagaen. He was universally townread, even by the scum (who knew that his role existed!) and he just silently plugged along, taking advantage of the town spilling their guild claims out there. Scarbo's slip was the most egregious (and unfortunately played directly into Dagaen's plan), but they just kept coming. This was a well-deserved win for him.
I do not find LVP awards to be sporting and I do not award them.
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 was playing a draft with some friends today when it clicked for me. By the time I took my phone to post the Karn vote, the game was already over.
Did you really figure it out in Winterfell? I didn't realise that
I really did. Sneaky's post was FINALLY giving me townvibes after that week-long browbeating, and your post was bad. Unfortunately I had left the game in Proph's hands and didn't step in. So ultimately I have to take responsibility.
But enough about other games. Let's talk about my game so that I feel important.
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
Maybe I will play in another game that doesn't have short deadlines, but I'm going to have a long talk with whoever is running it before the game starts about who is being let in the game and inactivity is going to be controlled. None of this oh wait I forgot to check for prods I should go do that stuff.
When in rome...
But I definitely felt the itch this game too and I think I'll handle deadlines and activity differently in my next game.
I generally avoid these sort of arguments (Hitman? No unlimited vig obv) Because speculating on role names doesn't always work well. We didn't know the specifics of the hitman (Or maybe just I didn't if hitman is a standardized role here)
Note also that there was only ever one extra kill.
Oh, speaking of which, I'll post this here so we have it all in one place:
Night One Actions:
AI gifts Dagaen the Cop device -> RESOLVED
Sir Karn investigates Archmage Eternal -> will succeed
Cantrip kills masterplum -> will fail
Jarad does not revive SNL.
Hunger tracks KoolKoal (normal) -> Will succeed; Learns that KK targeted Axelrod.
dkingsland does not protect scarbo.
KoolKoal cops Axelrod and guesses Selesnya -> Will succeed.
Dagaen shoots Scarbo -> Will succeed.
---
Night Two actions
Sir Karn investigates KK -> Will succeed; Learns that KK is a Rakdos Cop
Cantrip kills Hunger -> Will succeed.
Hunger targets Dagaen (normal) -> Will succeed; learns that Dagaen does nothing.
Archmage Eternal does nothing.
KoolKoal cops TK-421 and guesses Golgari -> Will succeed.
Dagaen does nothing.
---
Night Three actions
Sir Karn investigates masterplum -> Will succeed. Learns that masterplum is an Izzet iconoclast.
Cantrip kills KoolKoal -> Will succeed.
Archmage Eternal revives Rhand (enhanced) -> Will succeed.
KoolKoal cops Cyouni and guesses Azorius -> Will succeed, learns that Cyouni is town.
Dagaen kills KoolKoal -> Will succeed.
---
Night Four actions
Sir Karn investigates dkingsland -> Will succeed. Learns that dkingsland is a Rakdos Bodyguard.
Cantrip kills Axelrod -> Will Succeed.
Dagaen kills dkingsland -> Will succeed.
---
Night Five actions
Sir Karn investigates TK -> Will succeed. Learns that TK is a Golgari vanilla.
Cantrip kills AE -> Will Succeed.
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
There are a few things I don't like in mafia. One of those things is when a scum team has the classic "roleblocker, rolecop, goon" team in a complicated game where the town roles are more interesting and varied (and where there are few vanillas). It makes mass claims very difficult and the scum have not much in the way of wiggle room. Scum can still win these games, but it always frustrates me that the game comes down to the ability of the scum to fake claim rather than behavioral analysis.
Return to Ravnica was my answer to this problem. I was inspired by Zindabad's games where roles are fully randomized. I wanted to try and emulate him and designed a game where I could apply the same approach. I also had the idea of making a game based around Ravnica and its guilds (as we are MTG Salvation, after all).
My goal from the start was to keep this at Normal complexity, so the guild elements were kept down. However, this enabled me to create a setup that, even if fully known to all players, would have been "unbreakable" by a massclaim and impossible to modgame. Let me show you the very first iteration of the setup:
Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
_____ Guild Master
The identities of all living Izzet players are known to you, but not their alignment.
Firemind's Foresight: At night, you may choose Watch, Track, Follow, or Voyeur. You will perform the selected action on all other living Izzet players. You may only choose each option once. (Watch: See who targeted each of them, but not with what. Track: See who they targeted, but not what action. Follow: See what actions they performed, but not on whom. Voyeur: See what actions were performed on them, but not who performed them.)
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
_____ Guild Master
Jarad's Orders: Once, when a Golgari player dies, you may bring that player back to life. You may submit this ability any time during the phase immediately after the phase when the player died. For example, if they were lynched, you may submit the revive any time during the next Night, and if they were killed at Night you may submit the revive at any time during the next Day. The player will be returned to the game at the beginning of the phase after you used the ability.
You may also use this ability on yourself.
Isperia, Supreme Judge
_____ Guild Master
The identities of all living Azorius players are known to you, but not their alignment.
Isperia's Watch: At night, you may choose to jail all other living Azorius players. (They will be protected from the first kill that targets them that night as well as roleblocked.)
Rakdos, Lord of Riots
_____ Guild Master —
Rakdos's Return: At night, you may target a player and attempt to kill them. This ability can't be used until all other Rakdos players are dead. You have N shots, where N is the number of other Rakdos players in the game, or 1 if the game has no other Rakdos players.
Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
_____ Guild Master —
Call of the Conclave: At night, you may speak with the other living Selesnya players. No alignments are confirmed.
Palisade Giant
_____ Bodyguard — _____
At night, if your guild leader would be killed, you die instead.
Stealer of Secrets
_____ Guild Investigator — _____
At night, you may target a player. That player's role name and guild affiliation will be revealed to you.
Tavern Swindler
_____ Guild Recruiter — _____
Once, at night, you may target a player to switch their guild affiliation to yours.
Ash Zealot
_____ — _____
Oak Street Innkeeper
_____ Innkeeper — _____
At night, you may target a player. They will be protected from the first kill that targets them that night as well as roleblocked.
Fencing Ace
_____ Vanilla — _____
Crosstown Courier
_____ Vanilla — _____
Ogre Jailbreaker
_____ Vanilla — _____
Guttersnipe
_____ Vanilla — _____
Centaur's Herald
_____ Vanilla — _____
Angel of Serenity
Neutral Serial Killer — Guildless
The blanks were to be filled in by random.org.
A lot of the same elements are here: Jarad and Trostani did not change substantially through the design process, and Rakdos's original ability was at least in the ballpark of his final ability. Niv-Mizzet and Isperia went under a lot of changes.
You will note that the original game had a 5-5-5-1 structure. That is, 5 guild leaders, 5 "minor" power roles (each of which had a guild-related element to it), and 5 vanillas, plus the hitman. The game went from being fully randomized among roles to being partially randomized (one scum would come from each group of 5, plus a fourth "floater" that would go anywhere).
Sometime during review I realized that I'm not Zindabad and that this would be hellish to balance, so I scrapped the full randomization idea. I picked out roles that would make sense as scum, tweaked a few things, and ended up at the final setup. Since we never actually saw the full setup during the game thanks to the low-reveal nature, let me post everything here:
You are Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius, Mafia Guild Master "I'm far too intelligent to be wasting my time on this game."
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. You are a member of the mafia. As such, you can elect to perform the Night kill in place of using any other abilities. You may also communicate with your team mates ____ and ____ at Night in the following quicktopic: <link>.
3. Each Night, you may create and distribute a mizzium device to another player. You must choose to do so within the first 50% of the Night phase (so, for example, if Night is 72 hours, you must submit within the first 36). The options you have to choose from are listed below. The device won't be usable until the next Night. If you give a device to another Izzet player, they will be able to use it the night they receive it. You are immune to all effects of a mizzium devices. You may not give out the same device more than once.
1. Block all actions that target player would perform Tonight.
2. Learn what actions are performed by target player Tonight.
3. Form a quicktopic to speak with another target player Tonight. Please submit intent to use this ability ahead of the lynch scene. No alignments will be revealed.
4. Hide yourself from all actions that would otherwise be performed on you Tonight.
5. Protect another target player from the first kill that would target them Tonight.
6. Grant another target player a second vote Tomorrow.
7. Grant another target player +1 to lynch Tomorrow.
8. Learn another target player's alignment.
You may also create a "dummy" device that will always fail. You may invent any ability to attach to this device, which will be reworded to match my templating. You may create multiple dummy devices, but you must choose a different ability each time.
You are Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord, Town Guild Master "Better living through undeath."
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. Once during the game you may revive a player who has been lynched. You can only revive a player the Night after they were lynched. They will be returned to the game and mod-confirmed to be exactly as they were when they died. The player will return to the game the next Day, but leave permanently once that Day ends. You may revive yourself. If you revive a Golgari player (including yourself), the player will permanently be revived.
You are Isperia, Supreme Judge, Town Guild Master "Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's Pyroclasm."
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. Target another player at Night to learn who that player targets Tonight. If you target an Azorius player this way, you will also learn what action they take Tonight.
You are Rakdos, Lord of Riots, Town Guild Master "The best kind of party is a Rakdos party, 'cause a Rakdos party don't stop!"
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. Whenever another Rakdos player dies, you gain a 1-shot ability:
1 dead: You gain a 1-shot extra vote.
2 dead: You gain a single vigilante shot.
3 dead: You gain a second 1-shot extra vote.
Activate the extra votes simply by using them. Once activated, you will have an extra vote for the remainder of the Day. You may use both during the same Day if you have them.
Activate the vigilante shot during the Night. It is not a daykill.
You are Trostani, Selesnya's Voice, Mafia Guild Master "The grandest ideas grow from the smallest seeds."
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. You are a member of the mafia. As such, you can elect to perform the Night kill. You may also communicate with your team mates ____ and ____ at Night in the following quicktopic: <link>.
3. As long as you are alive, you and all other Selesnya players form an unconfirmed mason group. You may speak in the following quicktopic at Night: <link>.
You are Palisade Giant, Town Bodyguard "My arms are getting tired."
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. At Night, you may choose to die in the place of your guild leader should they die that Night. Indicate that you wish to use this ability. You don't need to know who your guild leader is for it to work. You are not guaranteed to die if you activate the ability; this will only happen if your guild leader is targeted to be killed the same Night.
You are Stealer of Secrets, Mafia Spy "You stole my heart."
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. You are a member of the mafia. As such, you can elect to perform the Night kill in place of using any other abilities. You may also communicate with your team mates ____ and ____ at Night in the following quicktopic: <link>.
3. At Night, target a player. You will learn that player's abilities and guild affiliation.
You are Ash Zealot, Town Iconoclast "Don't touch me!"
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. You can't be affected by any ability controlled by a player with a different guild from you.
You are Tavern Swindler, Town Gambler "Need a coin?"
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. At Night, choose another player and name a guild. If you correctly picked the chosen player's guild, you will learn that player's alignment.
You are Axebane Guardian, Citizen of Ravnica "I prefer shovels."
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
You are Crosstown Courier, Citizen of Ravnica "Regardless of the century, plane, or species, developing artificers always fail to invent the bicycle."
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
You are Ogre Jailbreaker, Citizen of Ravnica "Maybe they'd be able to keep me in if the walls weren't thinner than my fists."
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
You are Guttersnipe, Citizen of Ravnica "How's the weather up there?"
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
You are Centaur's Herald, Citizen of Ravnica "Eyyo, make way! Centaur comin' through!"
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
You are Oak Street Inkeeper, Citizen of Ravnica "Sorry, we don't have vacancies for creatures larger than ten feet tall."
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
You are Vraska the Unseen, Neutral Hitman "Be rude, be messy, get the job done."
Abilities:
1. You may vote.
2. You may safely claim to be an Armory Guard.
3. Target another player at Night to attempt to kill them. You may do this three times.
Win Condition:
You win and leave the game immediately when each member of the <guild> guild is dead.
There were a few intermediate steps I can talk about if anybody is interested, but this is where it all ended up.
Note that many of the same elements are here, but there are many changes. I removed one of the "minor" power roles to break up the 5-5-5 structure. I assigned alignments to every role. Guilds were still only assigned to the guildmasters, but I'll discuss that later.
The biggest change (IMO) was dropping from 4 scum to 3. I would have had a fourth scum (a goon from among the vanillas) in the earlier iterations. I was convinced to remove it when running the numbers, as Dagaen's extra kills/him leaving the game plus the potential extra kill from Rakdos made the game too easy to lose for the town. The town would still need to lynch correctly four times (or three times if Dagaen won), so I felt that this was ok.
However, it came to light that the town might have had too much power between AE's role and the cop and etc., which is why I decided to run the game as a no-reveal at the last minute. This may have been a mistake. I honestly don't know. Please give me your opinions.
The one thing I will say is that running a no-reveal is in keeping with my goal of disabling modgaming as an approach to breaking the game.
The next thing to talk about is guild assignments. I really did allow everybody to pick their own guild, and everybody got their first choices.
The way I did the assignments was as follows (spoilered in case you don't care):
The minimum number of players a guild needed was two. The maximum allowed was four. This would give variation and make it hard to draw conclusions from guild assignments.
I started with the following list:
Selesnya: Cantripmancer, LnGrrrR, selesnyanewlife, Axelrod
Azorius: Hunger, Cyouni
Izzet: AsianInvasion, Sir Karn, masterplum
Rakdos: Sarbo, dkingsland967, KoolKoal, Dagaen
Gogari: Archmage Eternal, Rhand, TK-421
The only balance-related item was the hitman. because I had only three scum, I wanted the hitman to have to kill three townies. This meant three townies all from the same guild. Because Trostani is locked into being a scum selesnyan, this meant that I would put the Hitman in Rakdos. I ran a randomizer on the full list and the first Rakdos name got pulled out as Vraska.
After that, the first name on the list from each guild became the guildmasters (the second Rakdos name became Rakdos). Then, with no other guild-dependent assignments left, I cut the used names from the list and re-ran the randomizer. All I did was run down the list and give each player their role in order (based on the order of the setup I posted above).
This produced a few interesting combinations. Of note:
The third scum (the rolecop) rolled Izzet, producing the strongest possible scum team as Niv-Mizzet could give devices to him. Niv-Mizzet has a double vote device, so the scum can actually gift this to the second Izzet scum and use it on the third scum that Night to gain a double vote out of nowhere. With only three scum in a 16-player game, this is not a HUGE deal, but it was something I was worried about in balancing the game.
The Iconoclast was Izzet, which was the weakest possible configuration as 2/3 scum could kill him. Amusingly, the time the scum tried to kill masterplum, they sent their Selesnyan scum to do the deed!
Both of the other minor PRs rolled Rakdos, which meant that Dagaen was shooting at three town PRs!
So that's that. Next, a few notes:
1. The scum should have had a roleblocker. Even if it was just a Mizzium device, not having the option to block any town actions kind of left them at the mercy of such. My reasoning for not including one was that the town didn't really have that many actions worth blocking. At this point I should mention that the cop was a late addition to the setup and I didn't really rebalance around it.
2. Choosing no-reveal the way I did was sloppy. I did so with good intentions: To fix the problem I outlined in the previous point, I gave the scum an edge. 2/3 of their roles were information roles, so being no-reveal would give them a serious edge (as we saw, it did). However, I did not retrofit the setup to account for this. The most egregious offense was KoolKoal's role. In my head he was the "town cop." I almost posted the NK scene with that as his role name. But it was not—he was the "town gambler." This oversight allowed the scum role cop to skate by unimpeded. I don't think going no-reveal was wrong, but I did it poorly in this case.
3. I am not sold on the shorter deadlines. Activity still remained slow. In theory I like them… but I'm not sure. Thoughts?
4. Switching gears, I was extraordinarily pleased with how the guild system impacted gameplay. As I hoped, when the town let themselves get bogged down in it, they got nowhere. I think I accomplished my goal with this aspect of the game.
Overall, I was pleased with the game. I think I accomplished the goals I set out to accomplish at the beginning, and with a few tweaks I could have had a really great game. As it is, I had a good game that was really very exciting to watch (if a bit frustrating due to low activity), but had a few critical flaws that I wish I had addressed before I ran it. I hope you all had fun too!
Oh, and just in case you forgot… there's a sequel to this game coming. I highly recommend playing in that one.
The word never once left my mind during my return to the streets of Ravnica. I had been wracking my brain to figure out what it meant. To my knowledge there was no district, street, or even corner store by the name of Lazav.
As I stepped back onto the surface, I was greeted by an unwelcome sight. The Azorius Senate building, prominently visible from the alley I emerged from, was on fire. The Boros lawmages had been scrambled were in full damage control mode.
I grimaced. The unknown enemy had clearly achieved a great coup. Without the power of the Azorius to uphold the laws of the Guildpact, I feared for the safety of the Plane.
My enemies were moving quickly. My time was short.
I had to find Lazav before it ran out.
--- masterplum has been lynched.
masterplum was Ash Zealot, Town Iconoclast
The scum have achieved their victory condition and have won the game!
TK-421 was Centaur's Herald, Citizen of Ravinca
Rhand was still Axebane Guardian, Citizen of Ravnica
Sir Karn was Stealer of Secrets, Mafia Spy
Cantripmancer was Trostani, Selesnya's Voice, Mafia Guild Master
Congratulations to Sir Karn, Cantripmancer, AsianInvasion, and Dagaen for winning Return to Ravnica Mafia!
Postgame thoughts and chat links to follow.
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
Niv-Mizzet: My mistake here was holding myself too strictly to the "keep all roles fully believable as town" thing that was a holdover from the first version. My nod to the scum nature of this role was that I gave it the "dummy" device ability. As I mentioned I maybe should have given him a roleblocker device or something. I will note that he has two very powerful abilities; namely, the double vote and the increased lynch threshold. However, neither of these are useful outside of very specific circumstances that may not come up in the average game.
Jarad: I stripped this ability down to be as weak as possible, pretty much, as revivers are so powerful. Also note that between the original version and the final version of the setup I changed how the guildmasters worked. I wanted to make sure that they all had the ability to impact the setup, so I gave them a basic ability that upgraded when they targeted their own guild. So Izzet get to use their devices immediately and Jarad gets a temp-revive that upgrades to perma-revive. I like how this role turned out, and the way it was used in the game was not what I was expecting, but still very clever.
Isperia: This one went through some revisions. Note that this is actually supposed to be the "main" investigative role, but that the Gambler is actually stronger. More on that later. This role actually originally was a watcher that got upgraded to cop. I realized that this was poor design. I thought back to KosaKosa's role in Ataghan (which was a watcher/doc/cop) and the fact that you wanted to be targeting different people with the three modes. I'll quote myself from the review QT: "The cop ability is somewhat tacked on to Isperia's ability and won't come up much, which I'm fine with, but it's the exact same scenario as with Kosa's ability in Ataghan: You're targeting people who you think are town. Either it tells you they are town, in which case you say "duh," or you are punishing somebody for playing well." From there I switched it to being a tracker/cop, which is more natural. When the Gambler got added, this changed to its current form (effectively a cop if you happen to catch an Azorius scum committing the NK).
Rakdos: I was sad that this one didn't get to do much! This is one guild leader that rewards concealment of guilds, as you don't want him to die before the other Rakdos. One crazy version of this role allowed him to "bank" up to three vigilante shots that could be used simultaneously. Ultimate cool factor. I might revisit that role in a future setup (I think Proph had a similar role in MGM though, now that I think of it).
Trostani: I like the idea that killing the one scum mason shuts off the rest of them. Other than that, not much else to say. Unfortunately, if the town modgmes that guild masters are likely to be scum, this is the one that is most obviously a candidate.
One thing that I tried hard to do was to make each guild master care about or relate to its guild members in a different way. Niv wants to target his guild members to enhance his devices. Jarad can be used as an insurance policy or as a power play to double confirm people, like we saw. Isperia I envisioned as primarily being a tracker that would have occasional upside. Rakdos (true to form) just wants people to die. Finally, Trostani takes the Selesnyan approach and is just trying to be a happy family. I am proud of this aspect of the setup as I think I did a good job of making each guild not only be mechanically unique, but also carry over some of the flavor and overall feel from their "real-life" incarnations.
Palisade Giant: This is the weakest PR in the game if only because there's good odds that you'll be protecting scum, and there's no option to fix that. However, the fact that it's optional is a bit of a trap, since the correct play is almost always going to be to use it, especially early game. dkingsland fell into the trap this game and made me smile big.
Stealer of Secrets: In my eyes this is the worst role of the setup from a design perspective purely because it's the most obviously scum. I've been proven wrong. Note that as the "neutral" version intended for town or scum, it only got role names and not abilities.
Ash Zealot: Obviously these "minor" PRs were all trying to utilize the semi-random nature of the guilds to add some variability to the setup. This role could range from being immune to all town actions (as it was this game) or completely untouchable by scum depending on the guild distribution. I thought it was a fun wildcard to include.
Tavern Swindler: This was the Skullclamp of this setup: A late addition that wasn't balanced properly. I moved away from the original guild-switching version fairly quickly (after talking it through with Wheat and trying to figure out how Vraska would work with a guild switched out from under her, I said screw it and scrapped the role). I then settled on a guild guessing role, which seemed fun. I looked at making it a motivator but settled on a cop. Looking back, I would have preferred the motivator. Lesson learned: Don't put cops into your setup last minute. Also, don't call them something totally unrelated in a low-reveal setup.
Vraska: This went from SK to Hitman so that I could add more guild-relevant roles to the game. Obviously the flavor here is her ultimate, where she gets three Assassin tokens... I thought it was cute.
Regarding flavor scenes, I find that there's a huge disconnect between the game of mafia itself and the flavor of the games we layer on top of it, which mods solve in different ways. I started out trying too hard to integrate the gameplay with the story, which never feels right to me. Later on I ended up about-facing to do what I should have done from the start, which is providing a backstory running in parallel. Dagaen's win provided me with both a good launching point for that as well as the motivation to do so. I ended up planting the seeds for Gatecrash, but due to my late start that was about all I was able to get done.
I'll actually try and map out a general story arc for Gatecrash before that gets run (which, unless it materializes as an FTQ, won't be for a very long time) so that we have some more entertainment provided.
*passes buck to AI*
I have to give scum MVP to Sir Karn for that gambit. I thought he was crazy, but through some absurd combination of luck and skill, he achieved victory. There were a lot of factors working for him, but he saw the opportunity and ran with it. Good job to him, even if we were flabbergasted that it worked. I think that Cantrip played well also—as Prophylaxis said in the spec chat, this was the best scum play from Cantrip basically ever. However, the direction of the game was definitely driven by Karn's gambit, so he deserves that recognition.
Town MVP is more difficult. My first inclination is masterplum, since he was the "most right" townie and was fighting to get Karn lynched pretty much the whole game. After reviewing the playerlist... I really don't have any alternatives. So there we go.
I would also like to mention Dagaen. He was universally townread, even by the scum (who knew that his role existed!) and he just silently plugged along, taking advantage of the town spilling their guild claims out there. Scarbo's slip was the most egregious (and unfortunately played directly into Dagaen's plan), but they just kept coming. This was a well-deserved win for him.
I do not find LVP awards to be sporting and I do not award them.
I really did. Sneaky's post was FINALLY giving me townvibes after that week-long browbeating, and your post was bad. Unfortunately I had left the game in Proph's hands and didn't step in. So ultimately I have to take responsibility.
But enough about other games. Let's talk about my game so that I feel important.
Get pumped. This setup was but a small taste of the potential of the Guilds.
When Gatecrash runs (sometime in 2016 based on the specialty queue), we'll make it a good one.
But I definitely felt the itch this game too and I think I'll handle deadlines and activity differently in my next game.
Note also that there was only ever one extra kill.
Oh, speaking of which, I'll post this here so we have it all in one place:
Night One Actions:
AI gifts Dagaen the Cop device -> RESOLVED
Sir Karn investigates Archmage Eternal -> will succeed
Cantrip kills masterplum -> will fail
Jarad does not revive SNL.
Hunger tracks KoolKoal (normal) -> Will succeed; Learns that KK targeted Axelrod.
dkingsland does not protect scarbo.
KoolKoal cops Axelrod and guesses Selesnya -> Will succeed.
Dagaen shoots Scarbo -> Will succeed.
---
Night Two actions
Sir Karn investigates KK -> Will succeed; Learns that KK is a Rakdos Cop
Cantrip kills Hunger -> Will succeed.
Hunger targets Dagaen (normal) -> Will succeed; learns that Dagaen does nothing.
Archmage Eternal does nothing.
KoolKoal cops TK-421 and guesses Golgari -> Will succeed.
Dagaen does nothing.
---
Night Three actions
Sir Karn investigates masterplum -> Will succeed. Learns that masterplum is an Izzet iconoclast.
Cantrip kills KoolKoal -> Will succeed.
Archmage Eternal revives Rhand (enhanced) -> Will succeed.
KoolKoal cops Cyouni and guesses Azorius -> Will succeed, learns that Cyouni is town.
Dagaen kills KoolKoal -> Will succeed.
---
Night Four actions
Sir Karn investigates dkingsland -> Will succeed. Learns that dkingsland is a Rakdos Bodyguard.
Cantrip kills Axelrod -> Will Succeed.
Dagaen kills dkingsland -> Will succeed.
---
Night Five actions
Sir Karn investigates TK -> Will succeed. Learns that TK is a Golgari vanilla.
Cantrip kills AE -> Will Succeed.
Return to Ravnica was my answer to this problem. I was inspired by Zindabad's games where roles are fully randomized. I wanted to try and emulate him and designed a game where I could apply the same approach. I also had the idea of making a game based around Ravnica and its guilds (as we are MTG Salvation, after all).
My goal from the start was to keep this at Normal complexity, so the guild elements were kept down. However, this enabled me to create a setup that, even if fully known to all players, would have been "unbreakable" by a massclaim and impossible to modgame. Let me show you the very first iteration of the setup:
_____ Guild Master
The identities of all living Izzet players are known to you, but not their alignment.
Firemind's Foresight: At night, you may choose Watch, Track, Follow, or Voyeur. You will perform the selected action on all other living Izzet players. You may only choose each option once. (Watch: See who targeted each of them, but not with what. Track: See who they targeted, but not what action. Follow: See what actions they performed, but not on whom. Voyeur: See what actions were performed on them, but not who performed them.)
Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
_____ Guild Master
Jarad's Orders: Once, when a Golgari player dies, you may bring that player back to life. You may submit this ability any time during the phase immediately after the phase when the player died. For example, if they were lynched, you may submit the revive any time during the next Night, and if they were killed at Night you may submit the revive at any time during the next Day. The player will be returned to the game at the beginning of the phase after you used the ability.
You may also use this ability on yourself.
Isperia, Supreme Judge
_____ Guild Master
The identities of all living Azorius players are known to you, but not their alignment.
Isperia's Watch: At night, you may choose to jail all other living Azorius players. (They will be protected from the first kill that targets them that night as well as roleblocked.)
Rakdos, Lord of Riots
_____ Guild Master —
Rakdos's Return: At night, you may target a player and attempt to kill them. This ability can't be used until all other Rakdos players are dead. You have N shots, where N is the number of other Rakdos players in the game, or 1 if the game has no other Rakdos players.
Trostani, Selesnya's Voice
_____ Guild Master —
Call of the Conclave: At night, you may speak with the other living Selesnya players. No alignments are confirmed.
Palisade Giant
_____ Bodyguard — _____
At night, if your guild leader would be killed, you die instead.
Stealer of Secrets
_____ Guild Investigator — _____
At night, you may target a player. That player's role name and guild affiliation will be revealed to you.
Tavern Swindler
_____ Guild Recruiter — _____
Once, at night, you may target a player to switch their guild affiliation to yours.
Ash Zealot
_____ — _____
Oak Street Innkeeper
_____ Innkeeper — _____
At night, you may target a player. They will be protected from the first kill that targets them that night as well as roleblocked.
Fencing Ace
_____ Vanilla — _____
Crosstown Courier
_____ Vanilla — _____
Ogre Jailbreaker
_____ Vanilla — _____
Guttersnipe
_____ Vanilla — _____
Centaur's Herald
_____ Vanilla — _____
Angel of Serenity
Neutral Serial Killer — Guildless
A lot of the same elements are here: Jarad and Trostani did not change substantially through the design process, and Rakdos's original ability was at least in the ballpark of his final ability. Niv-Mizzet and Isperia went under a lot of changes.
You will note that the original game had a 5-5-5-1 structure. That is, 5 guild leaders, 5 "minor" power roles (each of which had a guild-related element to it), and 5 vanillas, plus the hitman. The game went from being fully randomized among roles to being partially randomized (one scum would come from each group of 5, plus a fourth "floater" that would go anywhere).
Sometime during review I realized that I'm not Zindabad and that this would be hellish to balance, so I scrapped the full randomization idea. I picked out roles that would make sense as scum, tweaked a few things, and ended up at the final setup. Since we never actually saw the full setup during the game thanks to the low-reveal nature, let me post everything here:
Note that many of the same elements are here, but there are many changes. I removed one of the "minor" power roles to break up the 5-5-5 structure. I assigned alignments to every role. Guilds were still only assigned to the guildmasters, but I'll discuss that later.
The biggest change (IMO) was dropping from 4 scum to 3. I would have had a fourth scum (a goon from among the vanillas) in the earlier iterations. I was convinced to remove it when running the numbers, as Dagaen's extra kills/him leaving the game plus the potential extra kill from Rakdos made the game too easy to lose for the town. The town would still need to lynch correctly four times (or three times if Dagaen won), so I felt that this was ok.
However, it came to light that the town might have had too much power between AE's role and the cop and etc., which is why I decided to run the game as a no-reveal at the last minute. This may have been a mistake. I honestly don't know. Please give me your opinions.
The one thing I will say is that running a no-reveal is in keeping with my goal of disabling modgaming as an approach to breaking the game.
The next thing to talk about is guild assignments. I really did allow everybody to pick their own guild, and everybody got their first choices.
The way I did the assignments was as follows (spoilered in case you don't care):
I started with the following list:
Selesnya: Cantripmancer, LnGrrrR, selesnyanewlife, Axelrod
Azorius: Hunger, Cyouni
Izzet: AsianInvasion, Sir Karn, masterplum
Rakdos: Sarbo, dkingsland967, KoolKoal, Dagaen
Gogari: Archmage Eternal, Rhand, TK-421
The only balance-related item was the hitman. because I had only three scum, I wanted the hitman to have to kill three townies. This meant three townies all from the same guild. Because Trostani is locked into being a scum selesnyan, this meant that I would put the Hitman in Rakdos. I ran a randomizer on the full list and the first Rakdos name got pulled out as Vraska.
After that, the first name on the list from each guild became the guildmasters (the second Rakdos name became Rakdos). Then, with no other guild-dependent assignments left, I cut the used names from the list and re-ran the randomizer. All I did was run down the list and give each player their role in order (based on the order of the setup I posted above).
This produced a few interesting combinations. Of note:
The third scum (the rolecop) rolled Izzet, producing the strongest possible scum team as Niv-Mizzet could give devices to him. Niv-Mizzet has a double vote device, so the scum can actually gift this to the second Izzet scum and use it on the third scum that Night to gain a double vote out of nowhere. With only three scum in a 16-player game, this is not a HUGE deal, but it was something I was worried about in balancing the game.
The Iconoclast was Izzet, which was the weakest possible configuration as 2/3 scum could kill him. Amusingly, the time the scum tried to kill masterplum, they sent their Selesnyan scum to do the deed!
Both of the other minor PRs rolled Rakdos, which meant that Dagaen was shooting at three town PRs!
So that's that. Next, a few notes:
1. The scum should have had a roleblocker. Even if it was just a Mizzium device, not having the option to block any town actions kind of left them at the mercy of such. My reasoning for not including one was that the town didn't really have that many actions worth blocking. At this point I should mention that the cop was a late addition to the setup and I didn't really rebalance around it.
2. Choosing no-reveal the way I did was sloppy. I did so with good intentions: To fix the problem I outlined in the previous point, I gave the scum an edge. 2/3 of their roles were information roles, so being no-reveal would give them a serious edge (as we saw, it did). However, I did not retrofit the setup to account for this. The most egregious offense was KoolKoal's role. In my head he was the "town cop." I almost posted the NK scene with that as his role name. But it was not—he was the "town gambler." This oversight allowed the scum role cop to skate by unimpeded. I don't think going no-reveal was wrong, but I did it poorly in this case.
3. I am not sold on the shorter deadlines. Activity still remained slow. In theory I like them… but I'm not sure. Thoughts?
4. Switching gears, I was extraordinarily pleased with how the guild system impacted gameplay. As I hoped, when the town let themselves get bogged down in it, they got nowhere. I think I accomplished my goal with this aspect of the game.
Overall, I was pleased with the game. I think I accomplished the goals I set out to accomplish at the beginning, and with a few tweaks I could have had a really great game. As it is, I had a good game that was really very exciting to watch (if a bit frustrating due to low activity), but had a few critical flaws that I wish I had addressed before I ran it. I hope you all had fun too!
Oh, and just in case you forgot… there's a sequel to this game coming. I highly recommend playing in that one.
Spec Chat: http://www.quicktopic.com/50/H/qk7n7yJxui4rY
Scum Chat: http://quicktopic.com/50/H/GWbYaXHR7ySA
Selesnya Chat: http://quicktopic.com/50/H/cVNg8v4aCPMeh
The word never once left my mind during my return to the streets of Ravnica. I had been wracking my brain to figure out what it meant. To my knowledge there was no district, street, or even corner store by the name of Lazav.
As I stepped back onto the surface, I was greeted by an unwelcome sight. The Azorius Senate building, prominently visible from the alley I emerged from, was on fire. The Boros lawmages had been scrambled were in full damage control mode.
I grimaced. The unknown enemy had clearly achieved a great coup. Without the power of the Azorius to uphold the laws of the Guildpact, I feared for the safety of the Plane.
My enemies were moving quickly. My time was short.
I had to find Lazav before it ran out.
---
masterplum has been lynched.
TK-421 was Centaur's Herald, Citizen of Ravinca
Rhand was still Axebane Guardian, Citizen of Ravnica
Sir Karn was Stealer of Secrets, Mafia Spy
Cantripmancer was Trostani, Selesnya's Voice, Mafia Guild Master
Congratulations to Sir Karn, Cantripmancer, AsianInvasion, and Dagaen for winning Return to Ravnica Mafia!
Postgame thoughts and chat links to follow.
I'll get this moving along now. I've got a date at the arboretum in a little while so I need to get moving.
Sir Karn (1): masterplum
masterplum (1): Sir Karn
3 to lynch.
Deadline is still Wednesday at 11:59 PM EST.
Post more! Avoid modkills!