Dante's Action Hero Mafia

I said this as scum, but it’s still true: town has a terrible, terrible habit of immediately forgetting the dead’s suspicions. Of course, as scum, I wasn’t going to be the one to remind them!

These games are fun because, for all your planning and posting and logic, a lot of it still hinges on dumb luck. WF Tomba had to die at some point, because he was unlynchable. We almost chose to kill the detective on Day 1, but I talked my teammates out of it. Switch around a few lucky breaks, and we get stomped on by town before the game even gets going.

To be fair, I was doing a terrible job of explaining why I was so sure you were scum. It all really boiled down to “this freakin’ guy is twisting everything I say!” But I think it just came across as hysterical ranting.

Also, for some behind-the-scenes musing: Prof. P, was it suspicious to you at all that I didn’t post on the final day? I had some rebuttals typed up for HookerChemical’s points, but I considered it wiser to sit tight and see where you were leaning before pushing my luck. I was worried about making a last-minute error, or triggering something in your memory that pushed you back toward me as the lynch, and second-guessed myself into inaction. Don’t want to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, after all!

My defense for Hooker’s color-point (that the color clearly says Karl was blocked, and that Karl peformed the night kill each night - which was true), would have been to say something like

“Prof P, your power does not have any mechanism by which you learn the identity or the role or the power of the people you commute. For Hooker to be right, Dante would have to be saying “heeeeeeeyyy Prof, guess who you commuted? It’s scum killer KAAAAAARL!,” which he doesn’t do for any subsequent commute. That’s clearly nonsense.”

Which is funny, because that’s exactly what happened. I would have basically pointed to the exact turn of events in the game, concluded that they were unbelievable, and hoped you bought it. I think it’s probably for the best that I sat quietly and waited. :smiley:

Even as town, I think I would have voted for you for that weird first vote thingie you did. Can you explain your thought process a little better now that the game is over?

On the other hand, I’m positive I would have switched from you and stuck with Sangfroid all the way through the end of the day, and hit him hard in subsequent days for his inaction. That stuff is a huuuuuge scum tell, and I only dropped off for the obvious reasons!

I have to admit I was pretty bummed when I got the night info for Plumpudding / John McClane death. I even talked with another online friend of mine who was more experienced in mafia than I was to see if Tombas PGO ability was or was not usable since he was targeted on Night 1. He assured me that since the Scum kill never happened on Night 1 the PGO ability should still be usable.

It sucked that McClane was killed so soon.

Nah, it was the weekend. Posting is always light on the weekend.

Good work, scum.

Well played scum. Your comments are an interesting read. I thought it funny you considered me so confident in my speculation, when I wasn’t at all. I felt sure the case against Astral was a slam dunk. I should have been prepared to take the offense, rather than defending the last day.

I don’t think what I did on day 1 was all that weird. I made the flimsiest of flimsy accusations (as all of them were bound to be on day 1), and the flimsy reasoning turned out to be completely wrong. That doesn’t mean SP was likely to be town (or at least, any likelier than anyone else) and by that time I had a lynch train on me. I had no reason to switch my vote off SP.

The “fall on my sword-ism” you pointed out and leaned so heavily on was just a stupid off-the-cuff remark I made to admit that it would seem scummy if we lynched SP and it turned out he was town. I just had a really hard time using words and stuff to express what I was thinking. Is there an opposite to “eloquent?” Because that’s a good way to describe me this game.

That makes a lot of sense.

BTW, saying you were showing “fall-on-your-swordism” was just me as scum going for an easy vote on you, and attributing it to something that happened in a previous game. It was an easy thing to hit you with, and there’s really no fair defense you could mount against it. So I wouldn’t take that as an actual attack on your play, and more as me just looking for a cheap justification for my vote that holds up on further review.

Damn! We almost had 'em dead to rights!

Seriously, good game, Astral.

I can’t believe I fingered all the scum in one post. :smiley:

If Dante hadn’t discouraged claiming, I might have openly claimed and explained my power on Day 1 or 2.

Tomba, as scum, that one post gave me some serious indigestion.

My first reaction was, “WTF - How did (s)he nail us like that?!”

Then I dialed it back and hoped it was just guessing, albeit very good guessing…

I just wanted to say thank you again, everyone, for playing in this game and making it fun for me. You guys were awesome and I can’t wait to do another one.

You were so VERY, VERY close to winning the game here. You were exactly on target and Astral was probably staring intently at his fingernails, willing them to grow so he could bite them some more. There was something subtle that could have put you over the top. This game has roleblockers in it.

Roleblocks work IFF there is a designated scum doing the dirty work on any given night.

It HAD to be option #2.

Enjoy,
Steven

OK, so, I have to ask this question. What are the usual Dope mafia games like? I mean you guys seemed to be thrown off by my style, especially in the narratives, in regards to the character namesbeing in the story and what not. So am I correct in thinking that your narratives have basic story with no names and your roles are all just Town or Scum with some of you getting power roles?

Please explain more what was so different and please critique if you like. What was bad what was good?

Keep in mind I’ve never played on SDMB or anywhere else prior to this game, so salt to taste.

The narratives and names were definitely a factor in gameplay. They weren’t a problem because it was pretty clear from the start how they’d work, and they make an interesting piece of information that had to be factored in.

I think the shorter days were too short. 2 days can overlap a weekend too perfectly. I’ll reiterate that I think a three 72 hour game day might be a little better. I also don’t think it’s fair to end them early due to overwhelming lynch unless the target waives the rest of the day. Even then, I’d hesitate unless that was the rule explained in the beginning. I would have objected in game but I was afraid it would have been seen as scummy. As seen on Day One and Day Two, last minute changes of heart and late reveals happen. It also gives a chance for people to make throw away votes or object to a lynch on record when they might not have the opportunity if the day ends early. I don’t think it impacted game play, but I think it has that potential.

While that happened to be the case in this game, the fact that the role blocking role was also a protector makes the conclusion you posit not a 100% given. It is possible to have a protector role with role blocking as a negative side effect of that protection for balance. In those cases, the doctor could block the cop and prevent death, but the cop would not be able to act at night either.
If I read the game correctly, the role wasn’t a pure role blocker, but a block/protect composite. Therefore, it is feasible, though less likely, that scum had a group kill.
(I’d argue against the group kill based on numbers. 3 scum in 10 players strongly favors scum. The main thing that balanced out the skewed numbers was the free information given by the moderator about roles.)

The paranoid gun owner was also a super swingy role. The game pretty much hinged on who the gun owner shot. Given so many Town Powers, it was more likely to sink Town than help, which it apparently did.

That was a real minefield for scum, and I’m still surprised we pulled it off. A detective, another detective in case we got the first one, a town doc/blocker, a town follower, AND a dude who kills us if we target him for anything? Things could have gone very, very poorly for us. :smiley:

Things in our scummy favor: the short days favor scum, because town’s votes will necessarily be swingy. As Sache said, the likelihood of town hitting WF Tomba’s power first was pretty high. The small pool of players also helps - if a player is passed over for lynch despite playing a clean, pro-town game, it’s easier to say “well, he must be scum.” In this game, everything happened far too fast for town to notice.

Overall, pretty balanced. It came down to the final lynch, which is always exciting, and it could have been anybody’s game. I’m glad I chose to fight it out, because it was less hopeless than I thought. I’m glad it came down to Hooker or me, because I had been sitting on those scummy-sounding posts to hit him with.

To answer your question, Dante, I think naming town in the color makes them essentially one-person Mason teams, because scum can’t counter-claim those players without losing, and town will never lynch them because they’ve been moderator-confirmed. Not necessarily a bad thing, but very different from how we normally play. Philosophically, the game really is a game of bodies versus information, and town didn’t have to trade in any bodies to get that information. Just different, is all!

A normal game here involves roles and names, but the moderator usually provides the scum team with cover names for claiming with, because claims are common here. Once the game gets set in motion, the moderator doesn’t confirm any information in-game, and it’s up to the players (both town and scum) to convince each other of the veracity of their claims. Most games here are NOT open games, so we don’t generally know what roles or powers are involved until circumstantial evidence reveals them.

Once again I apologize to Town for my errors, and to Hooker in particular.

There were four roles in the game which had to directly access not just meta-information(alignment) about a player, but what they were doing as an individual at a point in time. A scum roleblocker, a town transporter(combination commuter/roleblocker), a follower, and the Paranoid Gun Owner. Even if we assume the scum roleblocker would never target scum(fairly safe) there are still three other places where a group-based kill for scum would cause ambiguity/problems. While I will freely admit the use of the formal logic “IFF” construct was overkill, it’s not 100% certain roleblocker presence = individual scum killer, it’s much more probable than the alternative with the setup that existed in this game.

Astral Projection was right that this was a minefield for scum as well. This was a very high-powered town, and a high powered scum group as well. The game could have gone either way, and if you played this setup thousands of times I’d expect them to all be pretty unique, with some going the distance(as this one did) and some ending pretty quickly(mislynch day 1, PGO takes out town on Night 1, Scum kill on night 1) now you’re at lylo on day 2. It could go the other way too. Lucky lynch on Day 1, Assassin finds Paranoid Gun Owner, cop or follower finds third scum, it’s over on Day 2.

Prof. Pepperwinkle, please don’t be too hard on yourself. IIRC this is your second game of Mafia. You’re doing great. Much better than I did in my second game.

Enjoy,
Steven