Oh! I no-kill Night. I wonder which way the mob will go ToDay.
Theory number one is that Cookies is a Wolf. There is no Vig and Pollux Oil is a dead Vampire.
Cabal blocked Cookies under the fear that her Vig-ness would take out the last of the Cabal. But being a Wolf that was the only night kill.
I can’t think of any other explanations for how there could be a No Kill night. Only Witches can protect outright, and Cookies is claiming a block. Even if she were the Vig, the wolves should have killed someone… Cookies is looking like scum right about now.
I suppose Cookies could be a non-killing faction (Cabal) and is lying that she was blocked and the Cabal managed to block the real wolf doing the killing, but that makes Cookies scum anyway.
Oooh, unless the Town secret power is a protection. I’ll be interested in hearing what Omi No Kami has to say.
Indeed, that is exactly what she has now claimed. Interesting. Go take a look at her post #167 as she suggests in the game. That’s pretty funny, and ridiculously obvious when it’s pointed out (something about the formatting). But I certainly missed it the first time through. Of course, it doesn’t say anything about whether she’s telling the truth or not, but a neat breadcrumb regardless.
Well, I finnaly made it through this thread. No real comments at this point but I’m curious how this is going to wind up.
Gah!
Why is town so content to believe there was a mass block? A Mass Block at this stage of the game is a pro-town action and no townies are claiming to have enacted one. If a Mass Block were to have happened it would have to be a secret power. Gah! It makes no sense whatsoever.
The cleanest explanation is that Cabal blocked Koldanar, and Cookies doesn’t have a killing power. In other words, Cookies blocked Koldanar (which makes sense since he said he tried to investigate Cookies the previous night). This kind of doesn’t make sense since Cookies would paint herself into a corner needing to claim multiple blocks, but really, she wouldn’t have much other choice. If she didn’t block Koldanar there was the strong possibility of being found out.
Okay, maybe that’s not so clean. We would still need to account for a missing dead body. I suppose that could be explained by a protection on MHaye, but that’s getting to “out there” to easily explain what happened. But at the very least, Town needs to think of other possibilities other than “mass block” which is total supposition with no evidence.
Here’s the question. Of the three scum factions, which one would benefit from a mass block? Wolves? I don’t think so. drainbead wasn’t getting killed last night. A mass block only prevents wolves from reaching their win condition.
Undead? Again I don’t think so. The slight possibility is if NAF is a Vampire and needed to mass block to prevent Cookies from killing him (Vigs can kill Vampires at night). But that seems remote to me.
Cabal? Cabal already can block individuals so it both makes sense and is silly to give Cabal a mass block secret power. But for Cabal, a mass block might make strategic sense in preventing lies from being exposed, but if NAF were the Cabal, then blocking Cookies would have been sufficient. A mass block is not needed and is actually a detriment. If Cookies is Cabal, then blocking Koldanar is sufficent to explain what happened, no mass block necessary. I can’t think of anyone else who was in a situation where mass blocking would help themselves. I suppose Cabal might think preventing Town kills is helpful as a Living Townie prevents the other two scum teams from winning. But that seems… odd to me.
I’m thinking no Mass Block last night.
This is a sentiment that was expressed in the last game, but I still fail to see how (75/3)/25 isn’t fair to Town. IMHO, town is the strongest faction because, even though all the scum factions are working on their own behind the scenes, they still have to pretend to be pro town during the Day. Especially at endgame, Town has all the tools to parse false claims, and scummy or not, everybody’s got to go along with it, since there are only 1-2 people left in their faction, they can’t risk it.
Thought the first–peekercpa is my least favorite player still alive in this game because I can’t figure out/remember who is who in his stupid little nicknames. Who in the world is Sybil?
Thought the second–Thank You Mr. Rugger for finding this thread, so I didn’t have to–who knows how long it would have been before I got around to it?
Thought the third-- Mass Block? Not sold, seriously not sold.
Thought the fourth–I still can’t believe that 3 freemasons all successfully checked each other out. I mean, it’s not like I think there are enough scum left to co-ordinate such a role claim, or enough dead freemasons to make it unlikely, but I am suprised by the total number of still living mostly confirmed townies.
Thought the fifth–Zsofia’s behavior was really bugging me the other day, I’d about decided she was behaving much more stupid than scummy, when the light bulb went off, and I decided that maybe she was trying to be targeted so that she’d be a confirmed townie, given her roleclaim as a Scottsman.
Thought the sixth–I’ve spent way too much time trying to think of a reason for each scum group (whether or not they’ve plausibly got a nightkill) to choose not to kill that last Night, and keep coming up with the answer that there are too many living mostly confirmed townies for that to be likely. Unless I’m missing something–which is likely, especially since I can’t remember or be bothered to look up the Cabal’s win conditions.
Thought the seventh–I’m half convinced that NAF is telling the truth about being too busy until recently to pay much attention to this game, and half want to slap him for it, because he should have known he’d be too busy . . . But there’s still a part of me which found his complaint about people wanting to lynch him as soon as he opened his mouth to be funny, because I’ve been there, done that in a live game of very simple Mafia, where I was the last Mafia player, faced with 3 opponents–Clever, Clueless and Vocal. Killed Clever at Night, and then voted very quickly for Vocal, and tried to walk the line between trying to shush the Zombies too much and letting them agree too much with Vocal that I was acting out of character. Fortunately from my point of view, Clueless had no clue, and ended up picking at random, which resulted in a vote for Vocal, and I won the game.
Game design is a tricky thing. If a game truly were balanced 25-25-25-25 under the assumption that each team plays for itself, then had the scum all decided on a coalition to exterminate the Town, then Town would not win. The result would not be 75-25, it would be more like 99-1. In other words, the game is balanced with the assumption that all teams will try to win for themselves, which is what happened in this game and even in C1. In C1, scum didn’t try to gang up on the Town until Town was kicking butt and it was too late for scum to win any other way. The same is true for C2. I don’t see any scum trying to push a different scum’s win.
So in a sense peekercpa is correct. If on Day One, all Scum publicly roleclaimed as “Scum” Town would have a very difficult time winning. In fact, I believe Town would automatically lose. Of course, if such a thing were to occur, Town would have to also claim “scum”… blah blah blah.
But peekercpa is also incorrect since scum have not been coordinating against Town in the game at hand. They could have, but they did not.
I never have any clue what peekercpa is talking about…
Slightly Off-Topic:
Is there a list for new mafia games on the dope?
If so, I’m in the process of designing a relatively newbie-friendly game, and I’m looking for a co-mod (I’ve got JSexton reviewing the preliminary set-up now). PM me if you are interested, especially if you have some clue about how to set up secret boards and whatnot!
Re: absence of kills last night.
I wonder, if Drain Bead is the last Wolf, meaning that she is pretty much hosed, maybe she just is losing interest and forgot to kill anyone last Night? Or maybe she just decided to do the unexpected in a desperate play to shake things up?
But it also doesn’t seem too unlikely to me that MHaye was in fact targeted, being confirmed Town and powerless, hence unlikely to be protected.
OK, so now NAF has claimed to be the last Vampire, because he was tired of being called a Cabalist or something like that. And has claimed a sequence of targets which conveniently includes very few successful kills–including dotchan. I’m especially fascinated that he claims he attacked peeker the first night and thus knows that peeker is a vicar.
While it is theoretically possible that NAF is telling the truth in every respect, I kind of doubt it. But reading his claim really makes me want to know what kind of scum (assuming he was scum) Pollox Oil was.
I don’t believe that NAF is a vampire. I think he is more likely to be Cabal.
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If vampire there is no benefit to claiming. He is getting lynched. Claiming doesn’t help him, it doesn’t really hurt either, but there is no point. No reason to put out the effort of “look at me!” He could just move on to other things and die quietly.
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He said that Cookies can’t kill. This makes no sense. The only way Cookies could be lying about being a Vig AND can’t kill is that Cookies is Cabal. But NAF has no way of knowing Cookies can’t kill unless he is Cabal and in charge of blockages (i.e., he knows Cookies is lying about the block). NAF is making shit up, and the Vampire claim is just part of it.
I don’t want to say too much about NAF’s claim, since my knowledge or lack thereof might be considered spoilering (I learned my lesson, sach!), but I will say this: whether he is the Vampire or not, his screwing up the order of the kills doesn’t lend much credence to his claim.
On a more general theme, Town is really beginning to coordinate among the confirmed members, and that is bad news for Scum. For Scum to win, they need a more divided Town to work on, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to get it.
Yep–my reaction to the whole bit about “I don’t have all my PMs anymore, so I can’t check” was a distinct eyeroll. If I were playing a game which was due to last for months, even if I expected to wake up dead every morning, I’d still have a small document in Word or something (or a Post-it Note) stating facts that I knew that no one else might know. Like a list of my targets and the results. And probably some other stuff, too, now that I think of it, a cheatsheet of sorts for who is what in the game.
See, that’s why it bugs me when people whine about how it’s so unfair to town when scum work together. There’s, what, 4 scum and 5 town left? Something like that? And confirmed town can work together right in the open, why shouldn’t scum be able to, at endgame, when they have no hope of winning? **story’**s Monopoly example notwithstanding, I think it’s as valid a move as any. Also, had DrainBead wanted to let herself get mod killed? WHY NOT? Town has the number advantage, and scum working together can eliminate that advantage. There’s no reason a scum group shouldn’t be able to accept the help, and no reason they should feel bad about harming the group that has been trying to lynch them the entire game.
From a game design/balance standpoint, I’d have to say that a wolf suicide to ensure a Cabal win pretty much breaks the game. In Simpletown Town discovered a loophole where a mod-kill of town would win the game for the town. We have since designed games to discourage this, but at least in that case, town suicide led to a Town win. In the proposed scenario, a wolf suicide would lead to a Cabal win, which is a design problem.
Now if drainbead could suicide to help the wolves, I’d probably be okay with that, but to suicide simply to make a different team win is a bad design idea because who would want to play in such a game? At this point you could just have all vampires and ALL wolves suicide and Cabal would instantly win. Where is the fun in that?
Balancing multi-faction games is tricky. But at least in a game where all the factions and win conditions are up-front, the risk of game-breaking is minimal. If all the Wolves and Undead suicided and handed the game to the Cabal at the beginning, well, what game design can withstand 1/3 of the players going against their win conditions?
But in the case where one faction builds a lead, it’s good that the other factions team up against the leader. That’s maximizing their own chances of winning. (However, I am disappointed that it’s the Town that keeps getting to that situation in my games. I do believe that all the sides had an equal chance; the problem is the Town can withstand more mistakes than the others. Other teams have higher variability in outcome.)
In the case of 1 Wolf and 2 Cabal remaining, and the Town lynching one Cabalist while the Wolf suicides, the Cabal would win. It may seem unfair, but the Town knows the Cabal victory conditions. They should not have allowed their victory to depend on the actions of another faction. That is, they should have been more aggressive at eliminating the Cabal first (which is why the Wolves are the most numerous scum faction; to give the Town a larger buffer).
By the way, once this game is over, I will very much appreciate any commentary and critiques on the game rules and balancing. Either here or on my secret board.
In my opinion your example proves why suicide should not be allowed. Town made the right choice in your example (lynch cabal), yet they still lose. Had Town lynched the wolf, then town losing makes sense since they made the wrong choice. But in your example, town can’t do anything to win: lynch wolf= lose; lynch cabal= lose.
If your theoretical were to occur at this point in the game, then that would be phenomenally bad for the game. Town has mis-lynched ZERO times. Yet they could lose because one team decides to pack it in and suicide? That would be terrible!
My point is that suicide should not be allowed. I think that suicide is actually a POWER and needs to be treated as such. Furthermore, the idea that Town needs to be more aggressive at eliminating Cabal first is rather hollow. Throughout the game Town has been cognizant that they need to eliminate Cabal, they are being careful to do so, and they are being careful not to lynch or kill drainbead. What else could they possibly do? It’s too easy to say, “oh you should have lynched the cabal first,” but by what mechanism does town have the ability to do so? The only Cabal who gave himself away as being cabal was NBC way back on Night One. All other Cabal were killed for being scum, not for being cabal. There is very little town can do to id cabal as cabal save for town powers.
In this game, lynching only scum is not perfect lynching. The order of lynching is important. And, the Town does not have to lynch. And, as you say, the Town has powers it can use besides lynching (I won’t give more details in this thread).
But I understand your points about suicides. Even if I feel the game is balanced despite them, I can see the frustration it could cause players. That’s more important than a fair game, actually.
I could certainly go with no mod-kills. The problem then is players who don’t play (and post-editors). My rules are mostly resistant to non-responsive players (plurality to lynch, use Night powers, etc). Is it better to let non-players live and the the other players deal with it? I’m open to suggestions.