Re: wolves pooling vitality I don't think that was a huge problem on its own, but when looking at the roles it feels like e.g. the Roleblocker was meant to be shot-limited like most of the town roles and allowing the vit thief to steal a vit every night and turn that into a roleblock essentially removes the shot limit at no real opportunity cost
By itself this isn't a problem; as I said on Discord I tend to favor wolf sided night actions because absent extra killing power the "worst" that can happen is the game becomes mountainous. But combined with the extra killing power the vit steal and factional poison gave I think it was a little too much to have a full roleblocker on top, yes
Re: vitality in general, I don't think this design space is exhausted quite yet, but! I think a game like this needs some inbuilt way for players to generate vitality (for example, if you do not take an action at night you gain 1V) and also "if you reach 0V you die" isn't as interesting as designers usually think it is. Instead of doing that just have death effects like normal and the penalty for having 0V is you can't use your abilities
I'd point to a fairly old now but well received example of this type of mechanic in Star Trek MU IV; a handful of roles in that game had a money mechanic and had a weak ability that generated money and one or two stronger abilities that spent it (e.g. +1: motion detector, -2: full track, -3: full watch as an investigative role). It creates a similar amount of tension between saving and expending resources while giving players something to do while they're "charging up".
Re: chat design space, I think making the Skill once per phase and not cost Vitality would have helped; when Skill shots and your role shots are connected to the same resource it feels pretty bad to spend it sending a message when you can save it to try to get a vig shot or another doctor shot (or not die to the vit pinger). This obv. would have required some retooling of roles whose entire purpose was to use the Skill for free, but it would also have resolved the "wolves need to pool vit to use the skill and still have low enough vit to not be bulletproof" which accidentally turns into "oh the wolves can just use the roleblock forever" and gives you more control over which roles actually die to the vit pinger (it seemed obvious to me that you wanted me to be vulnerable to the vit pinger but also able to use the Skill, otherwise you would have given me 3
or 4 vit or 1 vit instead of exactly 2... but maybe I'm mistaken)
I would like to say for the record though, I wouldn't account this game a mechanical failure at all; almost everything was fine, very good even, I don't want my criticism to overshadow the stuff that worked. I just like to take games apart to see what makes them tick and put them back together again lol.
Azrael and Anak's roles were very good, Cuth's role... isn't something I'm as fond of as you are lol but it worked pretty well. My role, Bur's and Tammy's were safe designs but very solid and functional.
99% of the game was great, 8/10 would play again, and I'd also like to thank you for hosting again.
I guess I should also say in my Official Capacity as Mafia Councilor I'd want to consult Councilors not in the game before doing anything to/about/around CropCircles; it is likely a moot point given we're probably changing sites and the Council/our probation-black lists will be dissolved/nullified anyway
I think my only major factional balancing concern was that wolves could spend each other's vit and had two ways to cause vit loss on top of the factional kill
A lot of the village's abilities were effectively 1- or 2- shot given how few ways to actually gain vit seem to be present, but that's not necessarily a problem just a thing to notice
I felt the comment you made about Highroller's role and being more concerned with the flavor than the play experience in a few other places; for example, the game is loaded up with a bunch of roles that change/alter/deny/spy on (very bastard btw but it is a specialty) private chats but because The Skill cost vitality I was literally never going to use it because I suspected a vit pinger and wasn't going to risk dying to send a short message
The tracker being 1-shot is another example of that; I don't think given how many targeted abilities are flying around it really needed a vit cost, and basically, Town's best odds were to hold their roles that cost vit until they were sure they had a good target and just play the game as a mountainous one
I ~think that's most of my set up thoughts tbh, I had more but I've forgotten them I think
Gg all I don't really want to comment on individual play more than I already have in spec chat, you can vanity search there's some (hopefully funny) stuff in there
Re: wolves pooling vitality I don't think that was a huge problem on its own, but when looking at the roles it feels like e.g. the Roleblocker was meant to be shot-limited like most of the town roles and allowing the vit thief to steal a vit every night and turn that into a roleblock essentially removes the shot limit at no real opportunity cost
By itself this isn't a problem; as I said on Discord I tend to favor wolf sided night actions because absent extra killing power the "worst" that can happen is the game becomes mountainous. But combined with the extra killing power the vit steal and factional poison gave I think it was a little too much to have a full roleblocker on top, yes
Re: vitality in general, I don't think this design space is exhausted quite yet, but! I think a game like this needs some inbuilt way for players to generate vitality (for example, if you do not take an action at night you gain 1V) and also "if you reach 0V you die" isn't as interesting as designers usually think it is. Instead of doing that just have death effects like normal and the penalty for having 0V is you can't use your abilities
I'd point to a fairly old now but well received example of this type of mechanic in Star Trek MU IV; a handful of roles in that game had a money mechanic and had a weak ability that generated money and one or two stronger abilities that spent it (e.g. +1: motion detector, -2: full track, -3: full watch as an investigative role). It creates a similar amount of tension between saving and expending resources while giving players something to do while they're "charging up".
Re: chat design space, I think making the Skill once per phase and not cost Vitality would have helped; when Skill shots and your role shots are connected to the same resource it feels pretty bad to spend it sending a message when you can save it to try to get a vig shot or another doctor shot (or not die to the vit pinger). This obv. would have required some retooling of roles whose entire purpose was to use the Skill for free, but it would also have resolved the "wolves need to pool vit to use the skill and still have low enough vit to not be bulletproof" which accidentally turns into "oh the wolves can just use the roleblock forever" and gives you more control over which roles actually die to the vit pinger (it seemed obvious to me that you wanted me to be vulnerable to the vit pinger but also able to use the Skill, otherwise you would have given me 3
or 4 vit or 1 vit instead of exactly 2... but maybe I'm mistaken)
I would like to say for the record though, I wouldn't account this game a mechanical failure at all; almost everything was fine, very good even, I don't want my criticism to overshadow the stuff that worked. I just like to take games apart to see what makes them tick and put them back together again lol.
Azrael and Anak's roles were very good, Cuth's role... isn't something I'm as fond of as you are lol but it worked pretty well. My role, Bur's and Tammy's were safe designs but very solid and functional.
99% of the game was great, 8/10 would play again, and I'd also like to thank you for hosting again.
Gg everyone, hope to see you in the next one!
BoomFrog was a wolf and wasn't actually drained
I think my only major factional balancing concern was that wolves could spend each other's vit and had two ways to cause vit loss on top of the factional kill
A lot of the village's abilities were effectively 1- or 2- shot given how few ways to actually gain vit seem to be present, but that's not necessarily a problem just a thing to notice
I felt the comment you made about Highroller's role and being more concerned with the flavor than the play experience in a few other places; for example, the game is loaded up with a bunch of roles that change/alter/deny/spy on (very bastard btw but it is a specialty) private chats but because The Skill cost vitality I was literally never going to use it because I suspected a vit pinger and wasn't going to risk dying to send a short message
The tracker being 1-shot is another example of that; I don't think given how many targeted abilities are flying around it really needed a vit cost, and basically, Town's best odds were to hold their roles that cost vit until they were sure they had a good target and just play the game as a mountainous one
I ~think that's most of my set up thoughts tbh, I had more but I've forgotten them I think
Gg all I don't really want to comment on individual play more than I already have in spec chat, you can vanity search there's some (hopefully funny) stuff in there
Why
(Gg though)
If he's already given up regardless of his alignment and we're just going to exile him tomorrow anyway...
At least Azrael is posting, if he's a wolf he's leaving a longer paper trail
vote: Tubba
Still, no I don't think flavor is related to alignment
When I ran Matter I gave safe claims and half of them were from the four main protagonists to prevent flavor gaming
No I don't think flavor is related to alignment