Mafia #70: D&D

[Reticence]

I didn't see my QT in the mod link that Ret posted above, so it's here http://www.quicktopic.com/52/H/EaCneg8HP2f9 not very long of course.

Right you are. I will rectify this.

Hardly, I'd say its to suggest that its possible to have several townies of the same role so it cant be used against the scum that a townie of same role had already died. Not the other way around - mafia should be too small for multiple of the same roles in a RP game such as this.

Mod Setup Info Tidbits

All of the roles in this game were written as non-aligned/town-viable roles. Part of the game opening process involved randoming them both to players and to teams.

Slight modifications were made to the mafiosi killing roles to make them scum-viable, and Anakso was given his sword item to jump-start his Ki generation and make sure he could kill earlier in the game.

What this means:

• A character's class in no way indicates what team they are on. Any patterns that you thought you saw were completely coincidental.

• In an alternate universe, you could have gotten the same role you had this game, but been on another team.

• This game is reusable! I can make tweaks to roles based on feedback from this one and run this game in the future, and the team makeups will be different. Furthermore, 26 roles were used this time around, but 38 were written, and there's easily room for about 5 more. So if I do run this game again, you might see some familiar roles that may or may not have been tweaked from their previous versions, and you may see a bunch that you've never seen before.

[Senna1251]

@Danner while I was not aware of opportunity one, I was totally aware of opportunity two and was doing my best to avoid it, purely for the sake of helping my team. But I agree it would have been hilarious.

My goal last night was to hide behind who I thought was scum. I was right.

[Reticence]

I personally have to take my share of the blame. I even encouraged Reticence to remove some more killing roles from the setup. I mean, we already had 7 roles with a personal kill ability. Sure, some of those were on the scumteam, and some of those were thus limited from how to use it - but it was getting a bit out of hand! Shows what I know...

I'm not sure anyone expected Monkz to never get voted on more than once!

Personal favourite moment:

Dendrek, your idea to combine Largehorn's disadvantage and your seeming... wow. It took both me and Reticence off guard. Amazingly done. Play fo the game material, right there. You just can't design in fun like this!

This. This so much. Seeming + Recklessness was amazing.

On two occations, Senna was close to break the laws of physics with that arcane trickster role.

I was so hopeful, too.

[Senna1251]

And if you guys reuse this game, I would totally play again. Preferably without the foot stomping I did late game.

[Deleted]

Thanks for putting together such an interesting game, would definitely enjoy playing again preferably past day 2. Have to say I thought town was a complete train wreck though isn't to take away from a few really impressive town performances.

[Catta]

And if you guys reuse this game, I would totally play again. Preferably without the foot stomping I did late game.

Foot stomping is fine as long as you come back from it

You did well, i just had to tug you in another direction here in the end :P

[Razamith]

Once again thanks for the game guys. Grats to town for pulling it off even down and with some pretty bad play by some. But this is why you never just throw in the towel -- i had to help convince multiple people of that and they ended up being useful/having fun, and winning in some cases! I went back through all my D2/D3 reads/theories and ended up naming most of the scum with a few townies too. If i had ended up using my kill Uggor was my top target N3/N4 whatever it was (would have been triple tapped with kuri's poison vig) and my quivering palm; but the rest of my potential targets were scum -- i just never pulled the trigger and decided to try to be useful and annoying to mafia and eat some self-protect kills. Its why i put so much faith into the virothe claimed protects because i figured without more claims (especially further into game) my self protects were looking more likely in conjunction with his. Only partially correct but it worked out well.

Yes senna i didn't get any votes even during D1 crackle-a-thon. Its what gave me my heightened ki (2/night) to do all my protect actions. Its also why i couldn't believe Anakso's ki-gain claim (plus the whole 3-4 town vigs/kills thing, also evidence against allowyn)

I had fun for this return game, and am quite happy with my play all throughout. Only thing i really got burnt on was leaving robo for so long from the orb. I was just finding it hard to vote catta and hard to trust dendrek at the end, and my allowyn case was pretty solid (for when i died). Oh well was fun -- may be back for random games in the future but next handful of months is back to full work/travel. Good luck everyone!
[Also, see dead thread for lurker discussion (virothe/livers)]

[Catta]

The second is that it's never "To late" in a game for a lurker lynch and the very mindset of that is what allows for lurkers to be so successful at what they do. We could have lynched Robo any day this game and been fine for it. You could have lynched me at any point and been fine for it, Fuck sakes I got Crackle lynched which was a town lynch and we still managed to win and the majority of the reason Robo was found to be scummy was due to his lurking.

I disagree. In my opinion you should only be lynching lurkers if you don't have better targets. If there are people you have reason to believe are scum they are a higher priority target than someone who simply isnt there. Due to 1/3 rule theres a larger chance of them just being afk townies.

As you see, people voted you over Robo the day before. Why? Because you had done things that warranted suspicion making you are better target in their minds rather than the guy who just wasnt there.

Also his lurking hardly even factored into my vote on Robo.

[Danner]

Wait, I just realized. Did Razamith just win double AGAIN?

Someone stop that man! O.o

[Razamith]

Yes it was my goal to get "gold" win in both your games

[Catta]

Yes it was my goal to get "gold" win in both your games

guuuuuurlstar

[Virothe]

In my opinion you should only be lynching lurkers if you don't have better targets.

In a perfect world, but this world is far from perfect.

If the problem is big enough for you to be saying "It's fine to lynch someone for lurking in past games" Then even you can admit there is clearly a problem Catta.

Your entire train of thought is really messed up for me Catta, You're fine not lynching people in the current game because you have "Others" to focus on, coming off a game with 2 no-lynches because of lack of people around to vote. But you're dead set on the idea of "Hey you did it in a past game, let's lynch you in the current one" which holds no merit on how the current game might play out.

[listo95]

It seems whenever a double win appears I get the near impossible double win con! Last game: be last living member of my team and win. This game: use all 3 chargers on a fighter/paladin and avoid an ability with take flight.

[Dendrek]

Personal favourite moment:

Dendrek, your idea to combine Largehorn's disadvantage and your seeming... wow. It took both me and Reticence off guard. Amazingly done. Play fo the game material, right there. You just can't design in fun like this!

When I saw Seeming I was thinking "God this is such a terrible ab.... wait a minute... Oh shit!"

My great regret is that people didn't buy it and I ended up giving Arialla town credit. I knew it could happen but I had to try! If not for Arialla's double vote and Valyrian's confirmation, it might have worked.

[Rixis]

Ret kinda alluded to something like this happening.

I'd like to think I'd have thought to merge the abilities too, but having not found out about it until after the fact I couldn't say either way. At first glance it did seem the obvious thing to do though.

Hindsight/hints etc though, who can say.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Thank you very much for the game!

[Lysah]

All me tbh, you're welcome town for my expert and masterful play ez game

[Reticence]

Making the Game

Spoiler: 

For starters, I'm very similar to Uggor in that I prioritize the theme heavily. I saw an opportunity to do interesting things based on D&D, and considered that my first priority. To that end, everyone needed something interesting to do. This led to roles being classes. We ended up stumbling over the concept of core class identity about a quarter of the way through the role cards when I started writing Wizards and we realized spell memorization could totally be a core class mechanic. Danner came up with the Rogues' Caution mechanic, I countered with the Paladin's Fall/Temptation, and it just went from there. Warlocks have Boons, Bards have Inspiration, Barbarians have Rage, Clerics have Spontaneous Healing, Fighters take Leadership, etc.

But, in the end, I didn't want it to be a role madness game, as I ultimately wanted the game to be day-driven, not night-action driven. So I made each player's "something interesting" mean very little in the grand scheme of things. I needed mechanics that would reward clever plays (Arialla's framing) and accurate player reads (Xanjori's track that completely wrecked Arialla's framing), as anything less would render actions useless at best, or counterproductive at worst (such as if Senna had stolen Catta's Misty Escape).

Regarding "Reti's Style"

Spoiler: 

I saw this thrown around during the game (Dendrek already explained his usage, but I think there were others). I thought it was funny that my style could even be speculated on given that I haven't been primary mod before, but I know that it's half-predictive in this context. Regardless, I thought I would address it here to give some more insight into the making of this game.

I work in the games industry, and I'm always trying to make things better than they currently are. Sometimes this means iteration (prompting the reusable setup), and sometimes this means actively trying to break the current system. "Reti's style", in a nutshell, is to set up mechanics and environments that dissuade from or break metas that I think detract from the game.

To that end:

• Inactivity: Lurkers have been a thing, and it's always a hot topic when we discuss how to deal with them. Leaving it to the players to handle it hasn't worked historically, so I created Punishers. Kurenai was one; there was another that was not used. And then I accidentally limited them too much and rendered them useless. D'oh.

• Follow-The-Cop: Don't get me wrong. Cops are fun, and I love to play them. It's nice to be the hero, especially when you're right. But the problem with cops is it's easy for everything else to take a backseat to them. Townies stop trying the moment the cop is in play, and mafiosi stop talking until they know the cop results. I wanted to see what would happen if there weren't cops and everyone was forced to read intentions and motives on their own merit. That's not to say I won't ever use cops in any game I mod, or even in this game, of course. I just wanted to see what would happen if players couldn't rely on them.

• Dissect-the-Claim: It's never a bad idea to dissect a claim. It can be problematic/overly-rewarding in a themed game, though, as it turns into trying to predict what the mod would do, rather than dissecting what the player has done. It also encourages mass-claims, especially near the end, and you can sometimes catch otherwise-completely-trusted scum for no other reason than because their character claim doesn't add up. I wanted a claim to mean nothing in this game, and when everyone decided to mass-claim and it didn't do a damn thing, I felt I succeeded.

[Catta]

Wolf and pseudodragon da real mvps, yo

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But you're dead set on the idea of "Hey you did it in a past game, let's lynch you in the current one" which holds no merit on how the current game might play out.

If someone spent the two previous games lurking its a bloody indicator that its gonna be more of the same for the following. And I'd say thats much better reason for lynching someone on day 1 than whoever first gets a train going randomly. These games don't exist in a vacuum. We don't d1 lynch people who havent played in a while or died night1 last game either. But you're saying we should because its only about [current] game?

[Dendrek]

Ret, who in this game was assigned a role? *cough*

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Also:

"*fingers crossed the following don't happen: I don't get spell blocked, Allowyn and Large don't get melee blocked, Dupti doesn't have a vest, none of us dies!*"