I was a Jester once. The game was actually kind of ingenious. 7 or so players, no mafia, no night phases, a couple of power roles with impact on the votes. (I could break ties, myself.) I wound up winning with three or four players left due to some epic townie fail; they essentially allowed me to lynch myself.
I included a non-win-stealing jester once.
it was Idle Thoughts.
never again
In our mafia group, at least, they are considered unsporting, especially without advance moderator warning. I seriously doubt that there’s a jester in the game.
This third party stuff is a little confusing. I’ll just write my thoughts down and maybe that will clarify them.
Astral Rejection can supposedly tell if people are Alliance of Evil, but not their alignment. Assuming the alignments are
scum
town
3rd party
there could be people who are in the Alliance of Evil but are town, or some third party. Third parties may or may not be a threat to town, but if they are in the Alliance of Evil they probably are. I don’t really understand the significance of 3rd parties that are anti-town, but not scum, but OK.
I couldn’t understand before who Astral could know that he was town, but not know what the team name is. But if he is a cop, then he knows he is obviously town, and maybe just glossed over the long name. That sounds plausible to me.
Games have had scum cops before.
I finally had time to look over the thread on my actual desktop instead of my phone, and I did notice some things. First:
Red’s answer:
Here is Astral Rejection’s PM as posted:
See that name? R. Daneel Olivaw? Well, I had to Wiki it since I didn’t know who it was, and wanted to compare it to my own supplied name. Well, in the Wiki article R. Daneel Olivaw was a robot who was indistinguishable from humans, who was a murder detective. This character had a power to “read” the emotional content of people’s minds.
So, what do I get from that? First, Zeriel’s question has been answered, power roles do have a link between their powers and their name. Second, looks like Red did a good job finding good characters (even if I don’t know any of them it seems!) for his roles. Third, Astral is most likely telling the truth. If he just changed his alignment from scum to CARS he would probably have forgotten to change the name to a good guy as well (assuming cover roles were not given by Red, still waiting on the answer to that question). Fourth, since the character in question was a good guy, but couldn’t be distinguished from a human except under close scrutiny, it is still possible Astral might be some sort of 3rd party, but I still believe he is Pro-Town.
I want to hear from Special Ed why he voted for Astral after he claimed, but not before. While it looked like Ed had questions about Astral’s comments, he wasn’t suspicious enough to vote BEFORE Astral claimed, but as soon as he did, Ed voted for him. I find that weird, and scummy.
Yea, right. This might be only my 2nd game, but you claimed to be a “generic thundercat” in the last one, while being the godfather. You also claimed to be Vanilla town in Glasnost (the only other game I actually looked at) while being the scum roleblocker. And, if you are neither scum, nor vanilla, then that must make you a “power role”, and in one of the mafia guides I read said that claiming “power role” is an anti-town claim, being worse then worthless.
Mind explaining to us newbies what happened in Screamers Mafia, and what Alka Seltzer’s role and win condition was?
No, it means that in this particular instance, If Astral isn’t lying, the name and the role happened to match up.
Red’s a good enough GM with enough experience under his belt that I find it highly unlikely that we can determine anything specific about powers or alignment from people’s names.
Look up LOTR Mafia for an example of what can happen if the GM isn’t careful about such things.
Or third party. Or PFK. On the one hand claiming “power role” puts WiFoM in front of both Town and Scum – is he or isn’t he? – but…
But I will agree that he’s got that magic bag hanging out there, but it’s typical Pleonast play which makes it neither a Scum Tell nor a Town Tell. I hate it for reasons I’ve ranted about elsewhere (and others have ranted about far more eloquently than I ever could) but at least it gets us talking.
Oh, and I didn’t play in or read Screamers, so I can’t comment on that.
Screamers mafia had all kinds of strange roles that interacted in ways the mod didn’t expect. Alka’s role was that of basically a thief third party - he knew that there were four roles in the game (3 Town, 1 Scum) who carried berynium (the local version of unobtainium); he claimed to be a limited investigator, and in fact played roughly that way. In the course of the game he confirmed 2 Townies and discovered the hidden scum, then left the game with a victory (which he ultimately shared with Normal, who was a scum who was not in communication with the rest of her team).
I thought I was clear.
Obviously before Astral claimed I was pressing him hard based on what appeared to be mistakes made by a possible Scum.
After he claimed, I voted for him because his claim didn’t make sense.
- He didn’t immediately post his role PM
- He didn’t immediately post his PM conversations with the moderator
- He was adamant about there being no counter-claim. A Scum would want to at least out the Detective if they are going down.
- He knew, from his PM, that he could find the ALE member.
- Even after having a conversation about red regarding his PM, he forgot he was CARS.
but most damning of all…
- He posted earlier that he thought that the 3rd parties were all part of the ALE, and yet, his PM very clearly states that he can detect ALE members, so why would he think he could detect only Scum and not 3rd party?
No Comment.
I take offense at this since that was my game. I was careful in LOTR mafia. What was gained from any mistakes by me there? Nothing I can recollect. Scum had scummy names, but also had the backup claims of Pippin, Gimli, Haldir, and Denethor.
I want to know what you are referencing.
I believe there was a notorious game not here but on another site using LOTR color where a mass claim was called and because of how the roles broke down, scum were forced to claim things like “the sparrow that helped bilbo” and SC is referencing the other one.
Oh, my bad. I didn’t realize we’d had another LOTR mafia outside mine here.
Apologies all around.
I’m not even sure it was within our circle of mafia sites. I’m not even sure it actually existed. All I know is if someone tries to make a game without some mixing of characters or fake cover roles, everyone brings up the mafia game where every good character was townie and scum had no safe cover roles.
So, Hirka, please expound on how what I did was weird and scummy.
I mean, I questioned Astral pretty consistently. Yes, Eventually there was enough evidence for me to vote.
peeks at mahaloth
Lost
Yes, and lesson learned I should think. It was still a good game, though.
Yes, it was.
And no follow-up questions? I certainly would have followed up with: Is there a difference between their alignment and whether they are on the scum team? Cause that sounds like the same thing to me. Did Red really mean that a full cop investigates and determines their role?
My vote remains on Astral for the moment. I don’t like the claim that his wincon was different, and the fact that he mentioned the rule change in the same post, indicating he must have had least seen the new wincon. I don’t like the confusion about which team is which. I’m not believing the role-claim. I would have asked more questions about it had I received it. And I’m unconvinced that it led to the confusion over teams. Nevertheless, I still find it hard to believe that a scum or third party would announce that their wincon was different. Why would they do that?