game can't end if Claire sends in a NK

also, the vengeances and PBO kills don't succeed on every player (I have the lists of who doesn't get killed if anyone wants to see them)

but yeah, I wrote in a lot of killing into the game, I wanted it that way for multiple reasons, and figured out a way that I thought would still give it good balance regardless of it all

can someone give me some real feedback on how I handled Sarah's DK that was intended to mimic a day-vig. shot?

to me it still looks exactly like a day-vig, not any sort of mod-confirming anything, and I am not seeing RW's issue with it as much as I'm trying

VIG. types in the thread: "KILL PLAYER"

everyone in the thread sees it

mod. comes in and executes the KILL on PLAYER

PLAYER flips scum

everyone in thread goes "well then, VIG is most likely town and is off the table" - it's not a mod confirming anything! it's just how the game goes when that happens, and I can't see any difference between that and what I did with Sarah on the Nathan kill

A) A standard in mafia games is that a given player can only take one action on a given night.
B) A general rule of thumb is that mafia generally does NOT get extra vig shots. They already have one each night, and adding more kills just lets them shrink the town numbers by Days, which really hurts town.
C) A general rule of thumb is that mafia aren't going to spend their kills on their teammates. It reduces the number of mafia, when it could be used much more profitably to reduce the number of townies. As an off-the-wall example, imagine if Dessimu had spent his lynch vengence to kill a teammate (yes, I know it doesn't correlate directly, since Dessimu would still be dead; don't get stuck on semantics. Pretend he had 1x lynchproof to go with it or something).

From above, if a player Dayvigs a wolf then they are almost certainly NOT on that wolf's team because you are spending (theoretically limited) resources to actively hurt your team; actively hurting your team is not good play. This is why a public day vig can pretty reliably be assumed to NOT be on the wolf victim's team (though it might be on a different wolf team). The killer may be neutral, but are more likely town. A neutral typically wants to survive, and ticking off the wolves by killing wolves isn't a good way to survive; if the wolves think you are a major threat (such as if you can unilaterally kill them off), then they'll kill you, and you lose.

-----
So. Tammytown was basically confirmed pro-town because 1) She had been active during the Day, which tends to be pro-town, 2) She publicly killed a wolf (see (B) and (C) above), and 3) Per (A) above, she wasn't behind either of the wolf kills.

Look at the game Drealmer! She was lock Town after you confirmed her. Because you announced publicly she did it, she became an Innocent Child. Even if her target was a Townie, it proves she cannot be a wolf or a SK.

I don't care what you intended. The truth is you confirmed her.

And people can call it "swingy" all you want, but that is just utter bullshit. You had two basically unkillable confirmed Town for endgame in Bler and Tammy that no one was going to touch. No wolf is going to attack Bler in a one-for-one trade off and Tammy was Bulletproof. Which means 3 wolves have to live to endgame which is just unrealistic and impossible.

Here's the target list when you drop Ixam, Babark, Bler and Tammy off the kill list for Night 1...

Yogs, Stan, Christie, Trent, Quad
vs the 5 wolves.

So Tammy had a 50/50 shot. Bler would have a 50/50 shot. Christie better than that at 5 in 9. If it were entirely random chance which it's not. These Vig shots are always going to be used on people that are deemed more likely than not to be scum.

It wasn't just bad luck or good reads. The game setup and balance stunk to high heaven.

And we haven't gotten into all the protective roles (wards, doctor, bodyguard) which makes it highly likely wolf kills will bounce or get misdirected...or how the tracker can track any of 4 wolves when the Alpha makes a kill or any of the other messed up mechanics which made this game ridiculously unbalanced.

Town had more night kills than the wolves and all the power roles. That isn't a balanced game. Just because Vig shots "can" hit Town, doesn't make them "balanced" nor "ignorable" for balancing purposes.

And forget the so-called neutrals. They were not neutrals. Any player whose win condition wins with town are town for balancing purposes. But the mod didn't count them because "they can swing either way" which is far from true...No neutral survivor starts a game siding with the bad guys. It doesn't happen.

But hey, if you think a neutral survivor who can kill two people and ward another in the first day of the game is fair and balanced, on top of all the other town roles, I really don't want to play in any game any of you crazy people come up with.

Neutrals generally start the game more town aligned, because that's where the power lies. As numbers shift, neutral survivors will tend to align more and more with wolves (assuming the wolves aren't sunk). In this instance, there was virtually no incentive to shift away from town with so many wolves dead so early (also didn't help that the Tammy had the OP neutral role and decided right from the outset to firmly align with town for outside reasons; I'm not sure if Cristi decided to just run as if town right from the start).

Bler busted his tail playing a strong Day game to get town confirmed. Yogsloth and I both had some PM related shenanigans, yet neither of us were strongly town confirmed.

Since the setup isn't being released in full, I'm not planning to get too much more involved in commentary on it. There are too many concealed things, and I'm not interested in trying to figure out the right way to ask the right questions only to end up with a picture I don't trust.

The point is that neutrals who are not anti-Town and their powers count toward town for game balancing just like anti-Town neutrals are balanced with scum.

Just as one usually takes away a scum team player when adding a SK, roles which win for town have their powers added to town when considering balance.

Your PM shenanigans did not confirm you or Yogsloth because you didn't have power roles. All it did was make both of you more suspicious.

The shenanigans I speak of are the people with roles talking about how they were not clearly defined and had their names changed. No scum can make up such roles such as Compulsive "Unknown investigative" role aka Snoop. Or Paranoid Barn Owner and talk about the vagueness of roles before any other role had been revealed.

There is a big difference between Bler being considered leaning town for a day 1 and confirming himself with details from his PM's which cannot be reasonably made up. The talk of vagueness and the bizarre role is what confirmed him. His play of day 1 just made him an unlikely day 1 lynch candidate which would be revisited in later days. Didn't confirm anything at all.

He was beyond suspect with that reveal just as Tammy was confirmed.

The irony is I thought I was bullshitting the 'paranoid barn owner' thing, since there was no mention it was a "role" just flavor, hoping I could stash my vig shot for later in the game where I would have a higher % chance. Like wyrm I was making a "role" out of my flavor, it just so happens drealmer was ...bold enough to make me an actual PGO (without telling me) with a dayvig to boot.

Which is both a mess and not particularly balanced in the sense that it's incredibly misleading at best.

So I don't actually agree with your core points as regards me. You're right that the D3 night action share probably helped me, but I think I would have looked pretty strong town there just in regards to play.

Anyway, I kinda assumed D1 I'd be lynch bait if I did get investigated on subsequent nights but that I'd have my "real" role (dayvig) to bail me out.

And then drealmer pulled that rug out by taking away the vig shot D2 (because we no lynched b/c someone's vote didn't count b/c of vote restriction?).

I actually asked him if I could at least have my dayvig back to shoot myself while I was on final warning for modkill.

I agree with wyrm, fwiw.

The other thing that's interesting to me is how much the ambiguity on WTF was happening both hurt and helped town. nacho invested a lot in his busing strategy, but it ended up not helping him any b/c the sheer number of kills made it look like multi-ball, so looking potential w/w with you weighed more (imo) than the fact that he "couldn't" be w/w with Lift.

Also ironic that one of his own teammates was the one pushing hardest on the multiball theory :)

Anyway, I suggest we close the door and move on.

While I agree with a number of your points I think whichever team lost this game was going to be pretty frustrated with a number of things that were unfair or confusing or seemed not fun, and with some legitimate reasons. It was probably too ambitious a setup and flavor expedition, particularly for a first effort.

I find it funny how so many of you make it sound as if the game was close, when there was not a single mislynch and the town bloc outnumbered scum by 5 or more at all times meaning scum were always 3 mislynches short.

None of the ambiguity actually hurt town. You didn't mislynch. You ended up targeting what you'd target in any game, the small pool of wolf suspects. While a couple town were in that group (notably Trent and Yogs) which might have bought a mislynch or two, but not enough to turn the game for scum. It was well in hand despite all the confusion.

This is why flavor and game mechanics should not go together. It makes it exceedingly impossible for scum to false claim when they need to because their claims will just sound enough off (because the mod didn't write it) that they get caught. Just like how Lift's Commuter claim fell flat because it did not match his flavor.

Thanks for the game! It was fun. I enjoyed playing with you guys. :)

It was a bit unbalanced and swingy, but it's not as dramatic as RW is making it out. I'm super busy right now, so I'll make a full comment later.

But scum had an extra member. Four scum is typical for a 17 player game. You had an extra scum member. One of your scummates had a role, which he should have told you guys about, and that player had the potential to make an extra kill. You also had a vengefull member that would have gotten an extra kill on town if he were lynched.

It's not a given that neutrals are going to be pro-town.

It's definitely not as dire or as certain that the wolves would have lost.

Thanks for the game, drealmer. The flavour was awesome. But the rules still need work. I think it was somewhat unbalanced. As Tammy said, not as dramatically as RWare said, but still Town feels quite overpowered to me, which is why it isn't surprising that it was over so quickly (after N1 that, by chance, went amazingly bad for scum)

But most of all I didn't like the penalty system at all, after it was revealed. It didn't really work as deterrant (since no one knew the consequences) and it screwed with the game. Visible votes influence the voting behaviour of players and if some of those votes are not valid, the players are basing their voting on a false assumption. I.e. the official vote counts lie to the players, since they list votes that are invalid in the same way as the valid votes. Please don't use that mechanic ever again!

And another thing to take away for myself: I don't really like large games. There were just too many players and therefore too much to read on Day 1. Day 1 is always tedious. With so many players even more so. So I think in a game with so many players, Day 1 should be significantly shorter to get the game going.

+1 What I appreciated the most in he game was the emotional weight it had :)

I also agree the penalties were ineffective. They were hidden, and therefore had no value in preventing further misbehavior. Maybe you tell the player his vote is nullified, but he can't say anything otherwise he loses the vote another day, or something...

Please do, I think you tipped the scale towards town all on your own. :) Dess obviously, your interaction with RW probly played a part in Cristi going at him, and Nacho to clinch it.

Taking the opportunity, I couldn''t - I was restricted. Havng to hide something from literally everyone was quite stressful.


I agree and disagree with this. I wanted to tell you all to go for mechanically ambiguous fakeclaims. But how to justify that knowlefge was tricky. And Lift's claim was brilliant. It was just the weight of inertia, D1 linakages, fear of no lynch that pushed Lift over the edge.

Not ironic - multiball made sense: town|Brasas does not know there is a 5 strong wolf team. Multiball helped put Tammy and you in play for a mislynch. Otherwise not at all...

The game just ended too fast - with less flips / less death further on multiball would stop making sense. I was all set to walk it back D3 - maybe suggest the two team targetted same person, or one of them decided to lay low - and start working on mislynching Yogs, Trent, Cristi or you. Basically it was inevitable that theory would have to fall by the side, but it was good while it lasted.

And I think Nacho was done in by being observed by Tammy, and by not trying a more ambitious fakeclaim. Also, come on, if I was live and Nacho buys it I would be in a pretty good place. I was not happy with the inertia of my D1 attacking Nacho after Dess and RW bought it, and Lift was at risk... but I couldn't just turn on a dime, and there was an upside either way.

What was ironic was me feeling guilty for being on Dess and Lift wagons', and actually my vote not counting ever. Of course with Lift that makes it even worse that I campaigned for a safety margin on the lynch... that was a real pity.

Yup

I think mod confirming Tammy did the kill was best avoided in this case. The others are right Vigs are normally not scum, you are right Vigs are not necessarily town. It's not different from the comparison you make. A vig doing that and hitting scum with zero flavor would likewise be town read.

A few things from the last horse to cross the finish line!

1) Sorry for the lackluster performance this game! I felt kind of lost and informationless this game; I had absolutely no idea what was going on with the nightkills, and my strength as scum is typically making a plan and getting it done and I didn't really feel I was able to do this here as effectively as I could have. When I lurked, I didn't lurk intentionally but whenever I lurk in games it can sometimes snowball effect into me not posting as much as I should be posting because I have so much to catch up on and bleh, but scum not bringing their best lowers the quality of the game and I am sorry to the town and my partners for that bit.

2) Brasas, why did you say you were vanilla scum?

3) RW, I don't think this game was horribly balanced against scum. If Brasas lived that final night, there would be 8 alive with 2 scum and 2 neutral survivors, meaning, if we pushed yogsloth and then decided to swing onto Cristi and then she decided to claim neutral survivor and Tammy did as well, I'd probably be able to convince Tammy to win for my sake (friendship!) and Cristi would probably take the instant win if we threatened to grudge-kill her and force her to lose otherwise. What I think this game was was a bit swingy; neutral survivors are an interesting role but they are hard to balance when they can side with either team (and you can't really predict who will choose what side; Tammy as neutral will usually side with town unless she likes people on the scumteam and I as neutral will usually side with scum unless I am particularly enamored with the townies). As a whole, I thought it as probably swingy towards the town but I come from meta where 5 scum in 17p is too much and the killing utility with Brasas's role and Dessimu's kill (RIP) made us a lot stronger as a whole.

4) I loved the flavor. I am in love with the flavor. I have a couple things in drafts lying around (Fergie's nightmares, Fergie running with his wife) that I will still post in the QT when I finally have time; I've never played with a moderator that made me so excited about the role that I got and I'm really sorry for not following it up as much as I wanted (but I'm sure I will in the future). You did an amazing job creating a world that I could get invested in; it speaks volumes to your skill as a writer when a grown man is pleading for his pretend kids and his pretend wife and his appeal is genuine.

5) Brasas, I didn't mean to be condescending with my posts towards you in thread; I loved your play, and I thought it was freaking great. I'm sorry for abandoning you in the last night but I was working longer days than I was used to in that stretch of time and it was very sincerely kicking my butt.

Overall I really enjoyed this game. I'd love to play in the near future if you lot would have me!

OHHHH JUST READING BRASAS COULDN'T TELL US ABOUT HIS ROLE OHHHHHHHH
that makes so much more sense

I still owe everybody a full write-up myself - sorry drealmer!!! I've just been swamped at work and still de-compressing.

Probably by the time I get to it nobody will care anymore, but I'll try and put some thoughts down this weekend. :)

As a general rule of thumb I don't when moderators tell me I can't claim things or say things about my role as the truth; it feels like artificial limitation as a player where you should be free to pursue whatever path to strategy that you want and that the moderator should help facilitate it instead of limit it; if you think something is only balanced when people can't say anything about it, it's probably not balanced in general.

In this particular situation though, I think it made for some interesting events like Tammy saying she was a normal girl who just murdered people with magical trees and me freaking out at the weird unaccounted for kill the entire game and thinking yogsloth was a deep SK as a result (wouldn't have suspected him that much normally, not even as an SK, but thinking that other people were scum just seemed ridiculous but I thought there had to be one more).
i'll still care yogsloth
and i hope you get a game running so i can get real revenge soon

and can I say how freeing it is to post without worrying about the 10 minute rule?
it's freeing

Yeah, mod restriction was hard to live with...

And the whole condescension thing was BS, but I sure went all in on it heh :D
Not sure I would again though, holding on to fake emotions is draining...


The bottom line for me is that the kind of modding Drealmer went for I think requires more manipulation than he was willing to exert. He was trying to direct a theater play of sorts, but ultimately relying on the actors to improv a lot based on the stage and each other. Not everyone is the improv type... so apart from an editor of sorts to help remove some of the unintended ambiguities (and help reinforce the intended ones) I would recommend a sort of reverse audition, where via 1:1 with the mod each player gets a bit more literal "direction" about their characters' motivations and what they may try in the game before it starts. That's assuming another game in this type, with all the modWIFOM, heavy flavor, etc... :)

Anyway will be fun to play again. And can you elaborate the comment about Yogs playstyle now you saw GOG meta?

Ping so you read the above. Also, I am curious about what LW encounters could be with everyone pretty much. But maybe let me ask only about the few I actually considered more seriously: Yogs (Eric), Trent (Emily), Stan (Justin)... and Bler (Marie).

And by the way, the D1 mess was great for us I think. No lynch even? Bloody perfect. In a different world without Tammy the mislynch potential D2 even assuming we lose RW to Cristi was huge.


Also - oh yes, I still want Yogs and Tammy's thoughts - and anyone else that's willing. For example, did Cristi say why RW? And Stan, somewhere into D1 looked to me you kind of switched style, to more laconic / sniping one, was that conscious?