KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
On the final day the town decide to that Killjoy must be the traitor. As killjoy breaths his last breath the seasons change for the final time, as the traitors had won. Prophylaxis suddenly reveals himself to be the traitor as he kills both Lastwhisper and Asta
Killjoy has been lynched by majority vote. They were Nameless -Town Changeling
Nameless - Town Changeling
Ability - Mimic Each Night, you may target another player. If that player used a seasonal ability this Night, gain a one-shot of that ability.
Lastwhisper has been endgamed they were Morpheus -Town Dreaming God
Morpheus -Town Dreaming God
You are a god of slumber. Each Night, including Night 0, you must pick one of the following dreams which will have an effect on the game. After that dream is picked, you may no longer select that dream.
You may pick from the following dreams.
Past
Tranquility
Revenge
Friendship
Leadership
Prophecy
Asta has been endgamed they were Oberon -Town King
Oberon -Town King Summer Day Ability - King of aos sí
You have two votes when this ability is in season. When Summer ends, this ability will move to Spring. When Spring ends, this ability will move to Summer.
Winter Day Ability - Benevolent King
Once during the Day in Winter, you may target another player. That player’s lynch Threshold is increased by one for the rest of this Day
Prophylaxis was Prospero- Mafia Enchanter
Prospero- Mafia Enchanter Spring Ability- Color of Spring
Each Night in Spring, you may give another target player a Green Orb.
Summer Ability- Color of Summer
Each Night in Summer, you may give another target player a Yellow Orb.
Fall Ability - Color of Fall
Each Night in Fall, you may give another target player an Orange Orb.
Winter Ability- Color of Winter
Each Night in Winter, you may give another target player a Blue Orb.
Day Ability - Friendly Gift
Twice per game during the Day, you may give another target player an Orb of a color of your choice. This ability may only be used once per day.
These rules govern the Orbs.
Whenever a player with a Green Orb targets a player that has any Orb, their ability is redirected to the next player on the player list below their target that doesn’t have an orb. If all players have an orb, then the ability will be redirected to the next player on the list that does not have a Green Orb.
Whenever a player with a Yellow Orb targets a player that has any Orb, their ability name is told to the player they are targeting.
Whenever a player with a Blue Orb targets a player with a Green or Blue Orb, the actions of the targeting player with the Blue Orb are prevented.
Orbs stay in effect after death.
When you die, Orbs start to disappear at a rate of two per season, with the most recent orbs disappearing first .
Prophylaxis has achieved victory along with the rest of the scum team of Fulcrum, DK, and Rhand.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
Hell is watching an endgame where all of the villagers are behaviorally super disgustingly obvious, but they collectively decide to clear the last mafia and tunnel each other.
Hell is watching an endgame where all of the villagers are behaviorally super disgustingly obvious, but they collectively decide to clear the last mafia and tunnel each other.
I tried, again my wim was mostly gone, and I was super busy, do you really think I would've convinced Killjoy?
First and foremost I think the most pertinent topic to address. Fulcrum's role/mod decisions surrounding it. This role existed largely due to my own fault in mod review, out of all of the roles that existed I saw fulcrums as being the most benign in the game, it did exactly what it said and I didn't spend enough time thinking about the wording of the role in conjuncture with other roles. I found my notes on the role and I funnily enough thought fulcrum's ability New Direction ability was the most problematic with Vaimes's role. I simply missed the cop interaction and that is entirely on me.
When I realized the cop interaction was there I moved as rapidly as I could to neutralize the problem I feel that if I hadn't missed it the first time with the trade and simply put a stop to it there the outcry over what transpired wouldn't exist. Unfortunately I did not catch it. When I did realize the mistake I immediately thought that allowing cop shots to exist in a game where we hadn't determined cop shots to be a problem. In my effort to fix the problem I tried to move as quickly as I could to remove the issue.
This created a situation in which there were some problems. First, my Osie who I talked to the issue didn't fully understand all of what I wanted to do with the role mid-game due to my own poor communication. I think if I had done a better job, with his co-counsel the issue might not have grown to what it was. Secondly in my efforts to be slightly cagey with the mafia team in order to not share fully why I was making this decision(IE not explaining that there was no cop) I did a poor job of communicating with them on exactly what I was offering to do as well. For this I'm incredibly sorry.
There was also the issue from the town side of creating a “Cop shot” looking ability. I understand this critique, but also feel that if the abilities had existed as is the narrative could also have been “All cop abilities so town”. I feel that no matter what happened here this was subject to mod gaming. That being said I fully understand why players feel that way and the ability should never have gone out the door with the wording that it had.
After reflection I agree with Grapefruit21 that the issue wasn't as big as I thought it was and that likely nothing needed to be done, and I agree that in hindsight this was the best decision.
Overall this mistake rests solely on me, and I'm sorry that it happened at all and players have my deepest apologies for not only missing the mistake before the game launched but also for how it was handled during the game.
Alright onto my thoughts on the rest of the game. I talked about this in the spectator chat, but to me there were multiple other slight issues in this game design.
First, the issue of variety was an issue that seemed to plague the town. The town felt that there was too much going on for too little payout.
It was in my opinion a mistake to focus as much as I did on making each night “Unique” with each role having unique options. This lead to two problems, first fundamentally weaker abilities and also significantly more info for the town to sort through and having to keep track of. The word random was used and I agree, that this made it harder than was intended for the town. If I was to do redesign I would focus less on uniqueness and more on rotating abilities.
Additionally, with the power level was purposefully scaled down, slightly as a precaution by me to make sure I understood the rotating abilities and partially due to the sheer amount of abilities flying around. Additionally this was due to me pushing this sort of design space in order to test abilities for future games. If anything this has taken me away from some of the design ideas I had due to me feeling that there simply is too much information overload for players.
Another issue I saw in this game was the use of day abilities, I felt with the limited info the town was getting these were fine and were made so that the town had to make “decisions” pre-lynch. Ultimately I think this was a failure of design and while interesting in concept ultimately did nothing and were a detriment to both teams.
Finally there was the power level of the calendar of the mafia. Overall, I think the power level of the abilities was fine, the mafia did not have control over most of the abilities, but they also had the potential to be very powerful. I actually am of the opinion that this was fine on its own, but that the addition of the Seasonal Control ability in conjuncture with the calendar was too much power in the end game for the mafia team.
The purpose of the calendar was to provide some consistent power for the mafia team, that also avoided mass claim scenarios or to even allow the scum team to cobble together a fake claim. I feel that that combined with the seasonal control which was a tool against mass claim lead to too much power specifically on the next two seasons after the cycle in which the mafia could double up on abilities, IE winter into winter again. Additionally, even though it didn't come up I feel that the power of these when combined together were stronger than intended in lylo situations.
Overall, I think that the mafia team got very lucky when it came how their calendar played out and that the power level might have needed a slight nerf, but on the whole it was close to how I envisioned the power level. I do not think this will be the last time I try and push a mechanic into factional abilities for the mafia to give them some consistent power.
Game summary
I think it would be hard to argue that day one was anything but in the favor of the mafia team. When designing this game I didn't anticipate that Nacho's role would be used day one. This lead to the mafia getting a day one daykill randomly on the doctor of all people which enforced DK's fake claim of the bodyguard. On top of that the town had two players decide not to lynch, which ultimately left the game 3-1 in the final day. This additionally, removed information from the town in the form of lynch info and allowed for the mafia to use their calendar ability to fake send a message to Asta(Which I don't think I as a mod can say “This isn't a mod confirmed message” unless a player asks). See what I mean incredibly lucky, the only thing that could have gone better for the mafia on this day one is if fulcrum hadn't been roleblocked.
Day two was a blur for me since it was a king election and I was taking finals over those two weeks. I was surprised town didn't try and enforce some sort of their own voting system or try and makes cases. I was also surprised by the Nacho lynch, since I think suspecting him of publicly giving scum access to a day kill to be a suspect play to say the least. Specifically from a player of his caliber.
Day three Rhand got run up, the two surprises were that Rhand A) only got lynched with his scummates help and B) That town instantly decided his claim was a scum claim.
DK once again was only really lynched by his scum mates due to their pushes on him. Proph's iso should have been a clue at this point since his only real pushes were on two scum and he wasn't using his ability in anyway that made sense from a town perspective, on top of this he wasn't actively ever trying to really find a fourth scum.
KCC's dichotomy that lead to their lynch wasn't intended in the setup, but I guess any town equity for having been wagoned as many times as they had by this point had worn itself out.
Day Seven, I think if Proph and fulcrum had made a collective effort for a case on Silver/Last KJ would have gone with them and the game would have been over here.
Day Eight, town didn't do any analysis. There really isn't anyway around that. KJ was stuck on a Last tunnel for most the game despite the entire game telling him Last was town. KJ's primary case can be boiled down to some weird “Rule of 5 vote count analysis” which I hope never sees the light of day ever again. On top of that with a thought that “Last must have the missing abilities” which would mean that last had a total of 6 dreams plus the missing abilities for a total of 10 effects/abilities. In theory the only role as claimed that had space for the abilities was asta, but that still made asta a double voter, with multiple other very powerful abilities in their arsenal.
Last at one point made the comical comment of “Asta can't be scum because we would have lost already and KJ doesn't seem scum” and then never took that to the logical step of “Oh it must be proph”.
Proph day eight continued to play the town win con suggesting that people should be suspecting him, but nobody ever did.
To be honest I don't think either alignment played particularly well. The mafia team in my opinion slow rolled this win to an extent/fpsed themselves out of a much faster day 5ish win. With all of the busing that went on for example DK went from a position that should never die to well being dead. A powerwolf instead of pure bussing would likely have benefited the mafia in a massive way, then again perhaps I'm wrong on how the game would have played out with that different varriable.
That all being said, I think town played particularly worse in the early game. The no lynch was pushed by two players Axel and Silver. Axel held the game hostage so that he could use his public watcher shot and Silver held the game hostage because he didn't have a spring ability and he sure wanted to get off his ability. How either of those two abilities outweigh the power of a flip I'm unsure. To be clear by unsure I mean there isn't any sensible reason to do this, and I understood Tom's rage at the beginning of day two.
Additionally day two was an incredibly questionable lynch to me and I don't understand how people could be ok with what happened, since from my quick skim it doesn't appear that there was much if any outcry of the lynch.
I'm also unsure of how town never tried to test Proph's role, since that seems to be an easy thing to test for but town just bought the role with all of the wording ambiguities and I think silver's analysis was that it “Was too complex” to be scum.
Closing Thoughts
I think that my biggest takeaway from this game is that I need to spend more time considering how the town deals with information. The town spent a lot of time trying to play this game mechanically, but simply missed important interactions or spent too much time being bogged down in things that didn't matter.
For example Silver made the comment that KJ was always the correct lynch since he was the most likely to be the originator of the bus drive from the calendar that the town was trying to solve. This missed three points of key information. First KCC acquired the bus drives during day and the bus drives themselves were not seasonal abilities meaning KJ as claimed(And as in design) couldn't have copied the bus drive. Secondly, KJ had claimed to be bus driven from Axel to Nacho night one due to the bus drive, and Night Two to have targeted Axel. Third, KJ's Axel target was proven with his exchange with Vaimes.
These are three key interactions that were missed by a player that claimed in thread they were a mechanical player. So how/why does this happen? Its almost certainly somewhat bad play, but I also think in this case its the design of the game as well. Its easy to get lost in. I think players got list in the sheer amount of information of the roles themselves.
Another key example of this was that players commented that there were a lot of roleblocks in the game. The reality is that there was oneish roleblock a night spread out over many roles. Players didn't look at the game from the birds eye view.
My plan going forward is to try and make much more concise roles that are not as hard to track what they do. This may be difficult since I have a specific fixation on changing game environments. However, I think this sort of design can help sculpt player conversation in game and moderators should try and make the game as concise to understand for players.
Okay but like. How tf did mafia send me that message? Did we just not work that one out? I thought fulcrum hadn't gotten the message ability until Night 4 but maybe I missed something.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
Tranquility - If a Town player would be lynched, instead the vote count will be reset. This effect will happen once and will not be announced. Extended based on mod preference.
Revenge - During the following Day, if not in XyLO and a player is lynched, their alignment will not be revealed. They will become a restless spirit for one Day and will start that Day voting for Morpheus. Alignment is revealed at the end of that Day.
Friendship - A Neighborhood of Morpheus, another random Town member, and one random Mafia player will be created at the start of the Day. It will last for one Day and one Night.
Past - If a player is killed during this Night (Or during the following night if chosen N0), that player survives until the end of the following Day, and is told at the beginning of that Day that they will die at the end of that Day.
Leadership - During the following Day, if not in XyLO, players will elect a King in the first 72 hours of the Day.
Prophecy - During the following Day, if not in XyLO, the lynch threshold is equal to the number of living Town players.
Mafia Factional Abilities
Collective Ability - Calendar of Fate
At the beginning of the game, the Mafia are given four passive abilities which they will then assign to corresponding seasons:
During this season, the actions of the lowest poster of the day are prevented.
During this season, the last two players to vote on the lynch will be bus driven.
During this season at Night, Mafia may send a PM from the Seelie Court to a player. Additionally, this will show as being from the Seelie Court if observed.
During this season, the player who uses the Mafia factional kill will also learn which players targeted their target.
Collective Ability - Seasonal Control
After the first season cycle has passed, the Mafia may choose the order of the seasons for the duration of the following cycle. Following that cycle, the seasons will return to normal.
E.g. They could be ordered Winter, Summer, Spring, Fall.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
Okay but like. How tf did mafia send me that message? Did we just not work that one out? I thought fulcrum hadn't gotten the message ability until Night 4 but maybe I missed something.
lmao... a game of seasons, where cycles last upwards of days phases, you decided it was ok to allow Mafia to just move the full cycle in any way they wanted...
Yeah the only one that never did anything was the day one one and that was due to the town no lynching. There was some thought by myself of swapping that ability with the past ability, due to me not wanting a day one riot on my hands since I figured town would hate the game if that day one went any longer.
Endgame pressure sucks. But it's also the time for completely resetting and trying to see the big picture.
I told you not to tunnel Last.
god damn man he was stressing the ***** out of me while I was at work, like he was reaching so hard, and I just had the hardest time seeing the towniness in that
Ehh. All things considered, while there was bad play to go around, I think you were more than a little overly aggressive here. At least some percentage of that bad play was more forgivable than you give it credit.
I think that my biggest takeaway from this game is that I need to spend more time considering how the town deals with information. The town spent a lot of time trying to play this game mechanically, but simply missed important interactions or spent too much time being bogged down in things that didn't matter.
YES. I cannot count the number of times as a reviewer that I've tried to steer people away from massive information fountains or as a host that I've been steered away from them myself. Obfuscating the game with useless information can be one of the worst things in a specialty and it happens all too often.
My plan going forward is to try and make much more concise roles that are not as hard to track what they do. This may be difficult since I have a specific fixation on changing game environments. However, I think this sort of design can help sculpt player conversation in game and moderators should try and make the game as concise to understand for players.
I'm thinking that there is a trade-off. Lowering impact and swing is important, as anybody who has designed with Proph will tell you, but the answer is to balance that impact and swing more on a macro scale than on a micro scale. You have a lot of solid design both from a going-wide perspective and on a going-deep perspective, now you just need to find that balance on both to really hammer out the issues. In that vein, I think both this game and Arkham ran into this issue where they got rushed at the end and real serious macro-analysis didn't get as much time as it should have gotten. I don't think that either needed to be rushed like that, though. Keeping the patience up to finish polishing a setup allows for the difference between a great setup and an amazing setup.
Yeah it's always tricky because the dead town was only working on the same information everyone else was working on.
However, if you know the dead town player is competent and generally has good reads, I'd say go for it.
If y'all followed tom on his suspicion of me then we would have been buried a lot quicker. Honestly, I was hoping to just play for a couple of days and get lynched, but noooooooooo.
You can say "This is a message from another player" or similar.
I agree I can and I did.
You were visited by a fairy from the Seelie Court who relayed this message to you:
You have no reason to fear death now. Queen Titania has devoted herself to you and will protect you with her life
imagine me only lynching wolf DK because of his reaction to his wolf partner, that looked so wolfy, and forgetting that I thought that interaction made them both a wolf, because of the way DK had shaded me
Some other thoughts, Prophylaxis's role felt strong in theory in the endgame but it did very little in the end. In fact Proph's role only had the ability to day gift added to it in the final few review passes.
Okay. @KJ, @Vaimes, let’s set the record straight. This post on numbers game started with me and Silver in the spec chat of I think disinheritance, but definitely a game spec chat on QT years ago.
Bye.
I tried :sob:
It was with a lot of luck that I was able to survive to endgame and ham it up then.
I called it!
Ability - Mimic
Each Night, you may target another player. If that player used a seasonal ability this Night, gain a one-shot of that ability.
Lastwhisper has been endgamed they were Morpheus -Town Dreaming God
You are a god of slumber. Each Night, including Night 0, you must pick one of the following dreams which will have an effect on the game. After that dream is picked, you may no longer select that dream.
You may pick from the following dreams.
Past
Tranquility
Revenge
Friendship
Leadership
Prophecy
Asta has been endgamed they were Oberon -Town King
Summer Day Ability - King of aos sí
You have two votes when this ability is in season. When Summer ends, this ability will move to Spring. When Spring ends, this ability will move to Summer.
Winter Day Ability - Benevolent King
Once during the Day in Winter, you may target another player. That player’s lynch Threshold is increased by one for the rest of this Day
Spring Ability- Color of Spring
Each Night in Spring, you may give another target player a Green Orb.
Summer Ability- Color of Summer
Each Night in Summer, you may give another target player a Yellow Orb.
Fall Ability - Color of Fall
Each Night in Fall, you may give another target player an Orange Orb.
Winter Ability- Color of Winter
Each Night in Winter, you may give another target player a Blue Orb.
Day Ability - Friendly Gift
Twice per game during the Day, you may give another target player an Orb of a color of your choice. This ability may only be used once per day.
These rules govern the Orbs.
Whenever a player with a Green Orb targets a player that has any Orb, their ability is redirected to the next player on the player list below their target that doesn’t have an orb. If all players have an orb, then the ability will be redirected to the next player on the list that does not have a Green Orb.
Whenever a player with a Yellow Orb targets a player that has any Orb, their ability name is told to the player they are targeting.
Whenever a player with a Blue Orb targets a player with a Green or Blue Orb, the actions of the targeting player with the Blue Orb are prevented.
Orbs stay in effect after death.
When you die, Orbs start to disappear at a rate of two per season, with the most recent orbs disappearing first .
Invite to Mason Discord https://discord.gg/gK4Hab
KJ, this loss isn't on you, but next time when every living player tells you someone is town, consider it.
When I realized the cop interaction was there I moved as rapidly as I could to neutralize the problem I feel that if I hadn't missed it the first time with the trade and simply put a stop to it there the outcry over what transpired wouldn't exist. Unfortunately I did not catch it. When I did realize the mistake I immediately thought that allowing cop shots to exist in a game where we hadn't determined cop shots to be a problem. In my effort to fix the problem I tried to move as quickly as I could to remove the issue.
This created a situation in which there were some problems. First, my Osie who I talked to the issue didn't fully understand all of what I wanted to do with the role mid-game due to my own poor communication. I think if I had done a better job, with his co-counsel the issue might not have grown to what it was. Secondly in my efforts to be slightly cagey with the mafia team in order to not share fully why I was making this decision(IE not explaining that there was no cop) I did a poor job of communicating with them on exactly what I was offering to do as well. For this I'm incredibly sorry.
There was also the issue from the town side of creating a “Cop shot” looking ability. I understand this critique, but also feel that if the abilities had existed as is the narrative could also have been “All cop abilities so town”. I feel that no matter what happened here this was subject to mod gaming. That being said I fully understand why players feel that way and the ability should never have gone out the door with the wording that it had.
After reflection I agree with Grapefruit21 that the issue wasn't as big as I thought it was and that likely nothing needed to be done, and I agree that in hindsight this was the best decision.
Overall this mistake rests solely on me, and I'm sorry that it happened at all and players have my deepest apologies for not only missing the mistake before the game launched but also for how it was handled during the game.
Alright onto my thoughts on the rest of the game. I talked about this in the spectator chat, but to me there were multiple other slight issues in this game design.
First, the issue of variety was an issue that seemed to plague the town. The town felt that there was too much going on for too little payout.
It was in my opinion a mistake to focus as much as I did on making each night “Unique” with each role having unique options. This lead to two problems, first fundamentally weaker abilities and also significantly more info for the town to sort through and having to keep track of. The word random was used and I agree, that this made it harder than was intended for the town. If I was to do redesign I would focus less on uniqueness and more on rotating abilities.
Additionally, with the power level was purposefully scaled down, slightly as a precaution by me to make sure I understood the rotating abilities and partially due to the sheer amount of abilities flying around. Additionally this was due to me pushing this sort of design space in order to test abilities for future games. If anything this has taken me away from some of the design ideas I had due to me feeling that there simply is too much information overload for players.
Another issue I saw in this game was the use of day abilities, I felt with the limited info the town was getting these were fine and were made so that the town had to make “decisions” pre-lynch. Ultimately I think this was a failure of design and while interesting in concept ultimately did nothing and were a detriment to both teams.
Finally there was the power level of the calendar of the mafia. Overall, I think the power level of the abilities was fine, the mafia did not have control over most of the abilities, but they also had the potential to be very powerful. I actually am of the opinion that this was fine on its own, but that the addition of the Seasonal Control ability in conjuncture with the calendar was too much power in the end game for the mafia team.
The purpose of the calendar was to provide some consistent power for the mafia team, that also avoided mass claim scenarios or to even allow the scum team to cobble together a fake claim. I feel that that combined with the seasonal control which was a tool against mass claim lead to too much power specifically on the next two seasons after the cycle in which the mafia could double up on abilities, IE winter into winter again. Additionally, even though it didn't come up I feel that the power of these when combined together were stronger than intended in lylo situations.
Overall, I think that the mafia team got very lucky when it came how their calendar played out and that the power level might have needed a slight nerf, but on the whole it was close to how I envisioned the power level. I do not think this will be the last time I try and push a mechanic into factional abilities for the mafia to give them some consistent power.
Day two was a blur for me since it was a king election and I was taking finals over those two weeks. I was surprised town didn't try and enforce some sort of their own voting system or try and makes cases. I was also surprised by the Nacho lynch, since I think suspecting him of publicly giving scum access to a day kill to be a suspect play to say the least. Specifically from a player of his caliber.
Day three Rhand got run up, the two surprises were that Rhand A) only got lynched with his scummates help and B) That town instantly decided his claim was a scum claim.
DK once again was only really lynched by his scum mates due to their pushes on him. Proph's iso should have been a clue at this point since his only real pushes were on two scum and he wasn't using his ability in anyway that made sense from a town perspective, on top of this he wasn't actively ever trying to really find a fourth scum.
KCC's dichotomy that lead to their lynch wasn't intended in the setup, but I guess any town equity for having been wagoned as many times as they had by this point had worn itself out.
Day Seven, I think if Proph and fulcrum had made a collective effort for a case on Silver/Last KJ would have gone with them and the game would have been over here.
Day Eight, town didn't do any analysis. There really isn't anyway around that. KJ was stuck on a Last tunnel for most the game despite the entire game telling him Last was town. KJ's primary case can be boiled down to some weird “Rule of 5 vote count analysis” which I hope never sees the light of day ever again. On top of that with a thought that “Last must have the missing abilities” which would mean that last had a total of 6 dreams plus the missing abilities for a total of 10 effects/abilities. In theory the only role as claimed that had space for the abilities was asta, but that still made asta a double voter, with multiple other very powerful abilities in their arsenal.
Last at one point made the comical comment of “Asta can't be scum because we would have lost already and KJ doesn't seem scum” and then never took that to the logical step of “Oh it must be proph”.
Proph day eight continued to play the town win con suggesting that people should be suspecting him, but nobody ever did.
To be honest I don't think either alignment played particularly well. The mafia team in my opinion slow rolled this win to an extent/fpsed themselves out of a much faster day 5ish win. With all of the busing that went on for example DK went from a position that should never die to well being dead. A powerwolf instead of pure bussing would likely have benefited the mafia in a massive way, then again perhaps I'm wrong on how the game would have played out with that different varriable.
That all being said, I think town played particularly worse in the early game. The no lynch was pushed by two players Axel and Silver. Axel held the game hostage so that he could use his public watcher shot and Silver held the game hostage because he didn't have a spring ability and he sure wanted to get off his ability. How either of those two abilities outweigh the power of a flip I'm unsure. To be clear by unsure I mean there isn't any sensible reason to do this, and I understood Tom's rage at the beginning of day two.
Additionally day two was an incredibly questionable lynch to me and I don't understand how people could be ok with what happened, since from my quick skim it doesn't appear that there was much if any outcry of the lynch.
I'm also unsure of how town never tried to test Proph's role, since that seems to be an easy thing to test for but town just bought the role with all of the wording ambiguities and I think silver's analysis was that it “Was too complex” to be scum.
For example Silver made the comment that KJ was always the correct lynch since he was the most likely to be the originator of the bus drive from the calendar that the town was trying to solve. This missed three points of key information. First KCC acquired the bus drives during day and the bus drives themselves were not seasonal abilities meaning KJ as claimed(And as in design) couldn't have copied the bus drive. Secondly, KJ had claimed to be bus driven from Axel to Nacho night one due to the bus drive, and Night Two to have targeted Axel. Third, KJ's Axel target was proven with his exchange with Vaimes.
These are three key interactions that were missed by a player that claimed in thread they were a mechanical player. So how/why does this happen? Its almost certainly somewhat bad play, but I also think in this case its the design of the game as well. Its easy to get lost in. I think players got list in the sheer amount of information of the roles themselves.
Another key example of this was that players commented that there were a lot of roleblocks in the game. The reality is that there was oneish roleblock a night spread out over many roles. Players didn't look at the game from the birds eye view.
My plan going forward is to try and make much more concise roles that are not as hard to track what they do. This may be difficult since I have a specific fixation on changing game environments. However, I think this sort of design can help sculpt player conversation in game and moderators should try and make the game as concise to understand for players.
I don't know where this metaphor was going, but...
Also sorry to scum for not catching the alignment-specific role earlier.
Thank you fulcrum, dkings, Rhand for being great teammates.
Everyone in the town was also excellent to play with. Believe me, I wanted to replace into a town slot.
I'll write more about this game later, but I have a bunch of HW due because I wasted a lot of time today writing up those cases
Tranquility - If a Town player would be lynched, instead the vote count will be reset. This effect will happen once and will not be announced. Extended based on mod preference.
Revenge - During the following Day, if not in XyLO and a player is lynched, their alignment will not be revealed. They will become a restless spirit for one Day and will start that Day voting for Morpheus. Alignment is revealed at the end of that Day.
Friendship - A Neighborhood of Morpheus, another random Town member, and one random Mafia player will be created at the start of the Day. It will last for one Day and one Night.
Past - If a player is killed during this Night (Or during the following night if chosen N0), that player survives until the end of the following Day, and is told at the beginning of that Day that they will die at the end of that Day.
Leadership - During the following Day, if not in XyLO, players will elect a King in the first 72 hours of the Day.
Prophecy - During the following Day, if not in XyLO, the lynch threshold is equal to the number of living Town players.
Mafia Factional Abilities
At the beginning of the game, the Mafia are given four passive abilities which they will then assign to corresponding seasons:
During this season, the actions of the lowest poster of the day are prevented.
During this season, the last two players to vote on the lynch will be bus driven.
During this season at Night, Mafia may send a PM from the Seelie Court to a player. Additionally, this will show as being from the Seelie Court if observed.
During this season, the player who uses the Mafia factional kill will also learn which players targeted their target.
After the first season cycle has passed, the Mafia may choose the order of the seasons for the duration of the following cycle. Following that cycle, the seasons will return to normal.
E.g. They could be ordered Winter, Summer, Spring, Fall.
Yeah the only one that never did anything was the day one one and that was due to the town no lynching. There was some thought by myself of swapping that ability with the past ability, due to me not wanting a day one riot on my hands since I figured town would hate the game if that day one went any longer.
I told you not to tunnel Last.
you live and you learn
But tbh I just think KJ was the correct lunch with the info we had, 9/10 games there are no factional abilities and he's the wolf
GG all, wolves especially
You can say "This is a message from another player" or similar.
Ehh. All things considered, while there was bad play to go around, I think you were more than a little overly aggressive here. At least some percentage of that bad play was more forgivable than you give it credit.
YES. I cannot count the number of times as a reviewer that I've tried to steer people away from massive information fountains or as a host that I've been steered away from them myself. Obfuscating the game with useless information can be one of the worst things in a specialty and it happens all too often.
I'm thinking that there is a trade-off. Lowering impact and swing is important, as anybody who has designed with Proph will tell you, but the answer is to balance that impact and swing more on a macro scale than on a micro scale. You have a lot of solid design both from a going-wide perspective and on a going-deep perspective, now you just need to find that balance on both to really hammer out the issues. In that vein, I think both this game and Arkham ran into this issue where they got rushed at the end and real serious macro-analysis didn't get as much time as it should have gotten. I don't think that either needed to be rushed like that, though. Keeping the patience up to finish polishing a setup allows for the difference between a great setup and an amazing setup.
However, if you know the dead town player is competent and generally has good reads, I'd say go for it.
If y'all followed tom on his suspicion of me then we would have been buried a lot quicker. Honestly, I was hoping to just play for a couple of days and get lynched, but noooooooooo.
I agree I can and I did.
That was the exact message I gave.
*Dying inside*
Probably means I've spent too much time *****posting on this website
so ya, thats fun
Also chats are in the EOD post.
Thanks for having me! I'm sorry I couldn't do more.