Evil Dead Mafia Forbidden Thread - The Cabin in the Woods

The Game Room
161

I’m not spoiled yet, but based on my feel of how things are going, I can see this being the case. If I’m right about JSexton, the scum are in a good position. He’s in a place where a lot of the more analytical competition is out of it. As he stated in the post-game analysis for the SDMB game, everything he’s done is pro-town, even if it’s all also been pro-scum and, much like I felt where I was near the end of the SDMB game, in the position he’s in, he’s reasonably close to being unlynchable, because while more intuitive players can probably figure out who is scum better, they aren’t good at making a case that will convince the other players, especially if they don’t have the same read, and a more analytical player can often argue their ways out of lynches or convince people to lynch others.

Even worse, NAF’s death, while it does confirm some information, doesn’t really give anything that people weren’t pretty much already depending on being true anyway. So the town has lost a lot of power roles, and the primary power roles left, it seems, are probably a Vig and a Doctor. And if I were to take a WAG, I’d imagine the doctor is the one that is baffling storyteller, which means the scum can, and probably will, generally be able to outplay him. At this point, if there is a Vig, he probably needs to take a close look and take some chances at nabbing people that he thinks are scum, but unlikely to be lynched. I think it probably only takes a couple of mislynches to put the game right back at even, and I think mislynches are pretty darn likely over the next couple of Days.

162

The problem I see with leaving known third parties alive is that you can never be sure of their motivations. Sure, they can kill scum, but there’s no reason to expect they’ll try to.

For example, take my play as the Vigilante in the SDMB mafia game. Was I a net plus or minus to the Town? I killed three Townies, 1 Third Party, and 1 Scum. I think I was a small net positive, but I know a case could be made that I was a negative. And I was killing as pro-Town as I could try. Do players really want to trust enough a non-Town player would too? Seems iffy.

For me, trusting a player who has admitted victory conditions different than me is too great a risk. Basically, a third party needs to make a strong case of what they’ll do for me Now, or be killed. This goes if I’m Town or Scum–Third Parties are too risky from either point of view.

163

Eh. I don’t know the full set-up so I can’t really discuss this with you. We’ll see.

From my perspective the only ways for scum to have a “cleanup hitter” is if

  1. Town allowed a scum to become “confirmed town”
  2. Scum have superpowers

From what I see the only confirmed town are pedescribe (mason), Cookies (investigated by NAF), and Total Lost (via Cookies). If Cookies is some sort of un-nightkillable Godfather role then yes, Town is screwed and the game is pretty much over already. But that would be a pretty bad role to put in, which I don’t think storyteller did.

Scum having superpowers to make up the deficit is a possibility as well. I don’t know what’s going on in that possible front, so I don’t know. Town certainly had a bunch of power roles (Three big ones are dead already) so scum having powers should be expected. But scum powerroles shouldn’t enable scum to kill extra townies beyond a reasonable small number. So scum still have to get mislynches on the board.

164

Also, I agree with this pretty strongly, and I think you did a better job of stating it than my attempts. Catching scum is always a plus, but it’s important that the town not let that distract them. While the game is technically won or lost on lynches, the real thing that matters is information. Lynching scum, but not getting information is often pretty much neutral. Imagine a game at 5-4, but where 4 of those town are confirmed or mostly confirmed (ie, won’t be lynched, so if they’re scum, you’ve already lost anyway), you’re probably in a better situation than if it’s 6-3, but having 2 or fewer confirmed.

The game really is mostly won or lost in the mid-game. So, while lynching a PFK is not necessarily a mislynch, in this case, it’s a net negative for the town because killing me didn’t help their town to scum ratio, and didn’t net them any usable information.

165

Agreed, but I think it’s a matter of timing when you make that kill. You don’t HAVE to lynch a player right away. Kill them eventually, but at the moment all they can possibly do is help town and hurt scum, or worst case hurt town as much as they hurt scum. So why not wait until town is at a point when killing them is no longer a net neutral?

This is particularly true if a vig is still in the game. Really that is the reason why vigs are in the game, so town doesn’t have to waste lynches on that sort of thing. You bring up your play as Vig in SDMB, but I don’t think you hurt town as much as I think you think you did. You took out a distracting player early (this is good play for the vig, town didn’t waste the lynch) and you killed other people you found suspicious. None of that was bad, town just didn’t do anything with it to make it usefull.

So the SK might kill town. Too bad. The SK wasn’t going to kill me since I had claimed and outlined my plan. I wasn’t going to cause them any trouble, neither was Diggit. If they killed another power role that would hurt, but the odds were greated that they were going to kill vanilla or that they were going to kill scum.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying don’t kill third party, I am just saying pick the time. Peekers lynch was a good lynch, for example, because it answered a lot of question about game set up and Night actions and happened early enough in the game that it wasn’t a lynch that could have been better placed elsewhere. BlaM’s lynch gained the town no real information (and it was obvious it wouldn’t before he was lynched) and it took away the towns chance of lynching someone who would get them information. The timing for it was wrong.

166

This is where I think you blew it. You were counting on a more nuanced analysis, whereas the general reaction (rightly, IMO) was: “Blaster’s squirming like a worm on the hook.” If you act dodgy and untrustworthy, don’t expect a lot of friends.

I’m kinda bummed to see you go, though, as you had a lot of really cool powers I would have liked to see in action :cool:

167

I’m not sure if that is entirely the case. Prior to your speaking up, I was thinking JSexton was scum. During your lynch I thought JSexton was mostly pro-Town. But when you turned up non-Town and non-Scum, that put JSexton back into play (in my mind). Your alignment does give town information; especially once Town knows the alignment of Hal Briston (your competitor for lynch).

168

If we’re talking straight serial killer, you may be right, but BlaM was not that. Knowing what BlaM’s powers were, though, he had the potential to cause a LOT of confusion (among other things) on top of just the kills themselves, so IMO they may have done the right thing, without knowing it. Sorry if I’m dangling fruit you can’t reach, but you may want to re-examine your position on this in light of his actual powers.

169

Actually, BLAM, Shadow Facts’ latest post reminds me: I was very surprised that you took the approach you did with your role. You attempted to use only your most direct powers, even though many of the others had a better chance of winning. You could have used the power to create a Bomb on either NAF or Diggit, and have been rewarded with a posthumous kill of a Scum player, for instance. And I’m especially surprised you didn’t use power #10 right at the beginning of the game.

170

Oh, I had some REALLY nifty powers that I couldn’t wait to get into play. In fact, chances are that my powers would have been a net gain for the town since I was outted, because I’d at least have to try to look like I was acting pro-town until I got my points above peeker’s. Then again, I find it more regretable that I didn’t get the kill on Cookies because, if it had gone through, and she was worth what I thought she was, then I had a completely different plan I would have put into motion, and I’m sure the resulting chaos would have been an enormous amount of fun for everyone watching.

And, since I hinted at it, I expected that Cookies was one of the “special” players worth three points, which would have meant if it went through, and she was worth that, I’d have won right there. So, unless storyteller would have removed me from the game, I was planning on probably doing a mostly true claim, and then pretty much playing by whatever whim fit me. My resultant claim wasn’t completely put together because I expected it to be a low probability. I still can’t, for the life of me, figure out why anyone would want to protect her, town or scum. I suppose I’ll get that answer when I get spoiled.

171

…too spoilery, will redit and repost…

172

I had given a lot of thought to the utility of various powers, and I actually gave a lot of thought to using #10 right away. The thing is, if I chose wrong, I essentially wasted the Night, and if I waited too long, I would never get to use it. I didn’t trust my reads right away, so I decided not to use it. I was planning on using it Last Night but, obviously, I didn’t quite make it that far.

As for Night Two, I considered using a power to take advantage of the suspicion of Chucara (#2). I was fairly certain that she would get lynched, but I was also worried that her suspicion of me would make that backfire. On further thought, I probably should have used #5 on her and, but I was rushed when I was making my decision and, because I was behind and worried my lurking would be coming up, I figured getting points on the board was more important. Problem was, there was no good reason for me to suspect that my alternate target inelligble. I am slightly bitter about that, for reasons I can’t go into here. :wink:

I didn’t use the bomb power because, I actually thought the reciprocal kill wouldn’t work against scum, so it didn’t seem like a very useful power to me. Plus, I figured Cookies was one of the special targets worth 3 points, was very unlikely to be protected, and would probably win me the game right there, especially with my low life expectancy, I figured I really didn’t have much of a choice but to make sure I got credit for her death.

So, I dunno. Part of the problem with having a role as complicated as the one that I had was that it’s highly unlikely to be played like expected, so it’s difficult to balance, and the obvious problem that, with the complexity, there was stuff I had a wrong idea about, but didn’t have an inkling that I had it wrong, so had no reason to ask for clarification.
I hope I got out all of the potential spoiler information.

173

I’m with you there. In the business it’s called emergent properties and comes from having simple rules that combine to create complexity rather than using bulky complex properties from the start.

Not that emergent properties would be easy to balance either, but I find it more fascinating.

174

Hmm… that’s a concept I hadn’t considered applying to Mafia before, and you’d think I would have, what, with all of my obnoxious math posts. BTW, to what business are you refering exactly?

And, don’t get me wrong, I loved the role, and I wish I’d really had time to really play it out to it’s potential. I’d really like to see something similar in a future game.

175

Thanks for remembering that game. :slight_smile:

I’ve actually got another one coming up soon on the Off-board threads, and I’m hoping you’ll come over and join us for that one (that invitation goes to the whole lot of you guys actually. I hope it’s a fun game, but it’s going to be a really… interesting game. More Storyteller playing style than Rooshian in mind of how I am making the stuff go around (Storyteller games are Logical, Rooshian Games are Batman- Lots of haphazardly pieced together things, with lots of emphasis on luck).
We’ll see how it goes.
And to the one who mentioned it before: Yeah, I just came up with the phrase PFK to describe anyone who wasn’t Town or Scum or included in that win condition. There was a big discussion at the end of Batman for it, because I believe one of the survivors was labeled by me a PFK, and it was back and forth should a Survivor be called a PFK or not and the implications of that.

For reference now, I view PFK as anyone who can win by another means other than by Town or Scum. I realized that a Survivor can just be called a Survivor, but in this day and age of powers, games within a game, and hidden win conditions and stuff, I like overlaps… so I’m not sure how I’d label it in the future, but I liked Town/Scum/PFK with PFK’s being benign or malicious but I just keep it as a way to say “other” however the Town does have a HUGELY negative reaction to a PFK… which is why I think lying CAN be pro-town in some ways. If you’re a survivor or you’re trying to act like one, the best thing sometimes to do is just lie about your win conditions.

Unfortunately, BlaM your abilities and claim of Freddy Kreuger kinda made it hard to take you seriously as anything else but well… freddy Kreuger the Serial killer. Freddy the Vig just wouldn’t have felt right I think. And that whole bit with the bad dreams was just unlucky. I think that’s what hurt the most for ya.

176

I don’t like the term “PFK” and I don’t use it. I play for keeps no matter what side I’m on. I prefer the term “third party” for a player who does not have the scum or town victory conditions. “Survivor” would be a type of third party that wins if they’ve survived to the end of the game.

177

Personally I have come to use PFK only to describe roles that are solo game stealers. To me, when I say PFK I mean a role that wins on it’s own and take the win away from everyone else. This is more precise than the way many others use it, so I generally use Third Party as my descriptor and explain what I mean by PFK when I use it.

Unless I don’t want to for some reason.

178

I used to do research in Complex Adaptive Systems. I don’t anymore. It’s kind of a crap field when not done correctly.

Emergent properties in Mafia would be quite difficult. Especially with two main factions. The confusion and complexity would strongly lean towards scum’s favor since they could compare notes in a secure setting.
Pleonast’s Conspiracy games are probably the closest thing we have to emergence as there are multiple factions with simple night actions that could interact in unexpected ways.

I’ve got some ideas for crazy mafia game setups along these lines, but I haven’t thought them through completely yet.

I think the issue is that the phrase “playing for keeps” implies exclusive win condition. If they are innocuous, then they aren’t really playing for keeps are they? Innocuous third parties can share!

And the PFK situation in Batman was mainly about labeling dotchan PFK and having her investigate as such while being an innocuous survivor. From the Town perspective this is not so terrible. From Dotchan’s perspective, I thought it was hugely sucky since she was essentially a miller-survivor. Needs to live to the end of the game, does not hurt the Town, but investigates as PFK. Not a whole lot she can do.

179

Yeah, I do tend to do that though… i like screwing over certain roles. =(

I view it as the game truly is a random assortment, where getting to be vanilla isn’t always a bad thing, you could get something WORSE than vanilla just as much as you could get something BETTER than vanilla… So I like sometimes making roles where it’s just really hard to win (Almost all the PFKs in the Batman game had some sort of thing like that actually… That’s why there were so many of them each on their own, it would have been insane if one of them actually won. Make’s Rysto’s SK win all the more impressive (as there was another player out there in that game who knew his alignment, and he had to deal with that the whole game).

So that’s my warning usually- sometimes the game roless are designed to suck and not because I didn’t think about it. There’s gotta be a challenge in there sometimes!

180

I use PFK in much the same way the NAF does and, frankly, I like having a term liek that because it is concise, describes something fairly complex in only three characters, and it’s something that adds flavor to our particular set of mafia games. In a way, we’re making up some of the rules as we’re going along, and it is part of what makes it an engrossing experience.

My main issue with the PFK situation in Batman was that the town, and by extension Dotchan, really had no way of knowing what PFK meant. Because of the ordering of the deaths, it was clear to town that PFK meant win stealer; thus, anyone who was PFK needed to be eliminated. Dotchan, however, didn’t know anything about the other PFKs, they they weren’t harmless, and thus wasn’t able to prepare for it and had no game mechanic to help prove her point. It’s one thing if she knew she was some kind of miller sort of role, but not even knowing that for sure is rough. Then again, it’s forgivable because it was a Gastardly game, so balance and all that stuff can be a negative in that sort of situation.

It’s like when I was reading about the miller role and read of some variations where a miller doesn’t even know he investigates as scum, he just thinks he’s vanilla town. Imagine the utter chaos when he thinks the investigator is lying, but gets lynched, they find out he’s town, and then the investigator gets lynched, and then the town is utterly baffled. I’m sure it’s great fun to see, and great for, as Ro0sh so elloquently put it, Rooshian type games, but the lack of a game mechanic to handle it, even if it’s just that role knowing how he’d investigate, just doesn’t fit with the epic battle of wits that I see mafia to be.
Speaking of which, I have some nifty ideas for a game, and I’d probably be able to run one on here in the next cycle or two, but I think I need some help with balance, and probably with running the game since my schedule often doesn’t afford me the opportunity to be around. Wasn’t someone working on an all-star game?