right, you guys knew you were looking for a spider, so it made sense. Town didn’t know that
You should run your program through Jabe Austen game that just finished on Giraffe
There’s no problem with that.
So Scum can figure something out. Town can’t. Oh well.
As Town, I don’t tend to get upset that Scum can NightKill and I can’t
Meeko, how can you ask this? We just played the game as VT and, as VT, we just won the game. Sure, we got some lucky breaks and some information from power roles… that’s what they’re there for. But this game came down to VT voting for the players they thought were scum. We could have lost this game by mislynching me and USCDiver, but we didn’t. We pressed the issue on Stickler and here we are. Vanilla did that. And not a damn one of us knew any more than anybody else.
Mafia is a game of asymmetric information. When you’re in the dark, that kind of sucks at first, but you forge ahead. You look for players who have more information than you to let that leak out. It’s inevitable. And if something happens that you don’t understand, you file it away. You will understand it at some point, even if it’s after game end. And if it really pisses you off? Start voting for people and see if you can’t flush out more information. It’s just part of the game.
Like Diver recommended (I think it was Diver), you might want to seek out open games. At least then you can dissect the roles and try to match them up. That might be more enjoyable for you.* I don’t know.
On the other hand, I don’t want you to think that it sucks to be VT. Personally, I don’t mind being VT and being totally in the dark. It provides a certain kind of freedom when posting. You can fire from the hip, joke, make wild accusations and guesses, and just generally go crazy. What’s the worst that could happen? You get mis-lynched? You get night-killed? Big Fucking Deal. All that does is provide more information for the remaining townies to go on.
- ETA: Although, if I remember correctly his “gastard mod” game had an open setup right?
Yeah, but there was no way I was going to vote Diver. I mean, I was completely honest when I thought I saw something. But when I actually looked, not only did my original suspicions disappear from the Day 3 vote analysis alone, but then I did a whole review of his posts and I saw what was quite possibly one of the best games I’ve seen a vanilla play as far as interactions with other players went. As I said, the only thing scummy I could see was his blase vote record, and yours was worse. I’ve only played about 10 games, but I’ve been a spoiled observer or moderated every game on this and Idle’s board that I didn’t play in since fluiddruid’s “The Mob Is Recruitng” on this board. (Arkham asylum was the first game I played in.) One thing I see happen a lot is town is afraid to vote because it can bring them heat. And admittedly, I played that way as town my first couple town games. But it ends up being an anti-town maneuver, because it doesn’t put pressure on people. It’s one thing I like about peeker’s style when he’s town. However, I feel he goes overboard on it and creates more noise than substance frequently. (No offense, peeker, you know I love you in a brotherly non-gay–not that there’s anything wrong with that–kind of love.)
So even had I gotten you lynched, stickler would have gone down at lylo. Meeko wanted him dead, and I wanted him dead above Diver.
Congratulations, Alliance-type folks!
I’m still a little pissed at myself for screwing up my fake PM. I read over it about 4 times before I posted it to make sure it looked right. I caught the missing hyphen in “Middleearth”, but completely missed the fact that there were still entire sections in the wrong order.
Yes, I know you were pretty solid on USC. Truth is, I was pretty solid on him being town as well.* But, I was already scheming how to sway you if Stickler had rolled Town (and therefore USC was likely the last scum). I didn’t think that was going to happen, but I was preparing. After your last post, I honestly felt like Town was fucked if Stickler didn’t come up scum (and USC was the last one). I also started having crazy paranoid thoughts that maybe you and USC were scum and you knew that you were about to win after a mislynch, and you were just throwing out a little congratulatory jab to your partner. I dismissed them, but I kept asking myself if we had made a mistake for letting you operate as semi-confirmed. All worked out though.
As for my voting patterns, since we’re just discussing it here (and you can’t vote for me anymore HA!)… It was really just a function of my real-life job. During the course of the game, my schedule changed from days to nights, my days off changed, and I was really just struggling to keep up at one point. I let Mahaloth know that my schedule might be an issue up front, but I think I managed it as well as I could. Sometimes it wasn’t very good though. My OAOW vote for example was just tossed out there, figuring I can at least tell the truth about not having time to focus on Mafia… versus not voting and letting scum have a (quasi-legitimate) reason to bus me. When I was on my days off, I was able to participate much more and develop my suspicions and vote earlier. Which is what you saw with Inner Stickler and my more timely vote.
- I mean, seriously, who would claim Gamling unless they were town and they had to?
Look at it like this: For the Suburban and Astral lynches, we were working entirely off of information that was available to vanillas. Natlaw, yes, was counterclaimed by Nanook, but there were already people voting him before that, and I think there’s a decent chance we would have lynched him without Nanook’s claim, so let’s say that credit for that one is shared between the vanillas and the power roles. And the vote to kill Stickler was decided by vanillas, but to be fair things were made easier by the large number of confirmeds we had in the endgame, so let’s say that the vanillas and powers share credit for that one, too. Only Drain’s death was entirely dependent on power roles. Put it all together, and vanillas get credit for two of the Scum kills, power roles get credit for one, and credit is shared on two of them… Which means that, all told, the vanillas did more of the work of winning the game than the power roles did.
Ed: Can you tell me the difference between the actions your second and third statements imply?
That’s my point.
It wasn’t Gastard at all. It was semi-open. Meaning there was a list of possible roles given out at the beginning and each one had the disclaimer that it may or may not be used. I just happened not to use any of the Town powers or the bogus Third Party recruiter!
Thanks! I know that the main job of the vanilla townie is to die in order to give information or to prevent the death of a Power role, but so many of our powers were outed and then killed based on the handshake I didn’t think my death by lynching would help much. Aside from my stupid handshake post at the beginning of Day 1, I tried to play as straight and narrow as I could. I felt like I was more or less as obvious a Vanilla Townie as I could be by the last few Days.
I honestly didn’t have much of a read on **Snickers **or Stickler, but I had an inkling of a Townie Vibe on Doctor Who. I was just working through the unconfirmeds at that point. I simply could NOT believe **Snickers **flipped Town when he had the obvious chance to save himself and end the game right there!
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I suffered from a certain level of paranoia in this game; it is truly said that just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean THEY aren’t out to get you.
This resulted in me putting a fair amount of thought into what weapons SAHM might have to find and kill me.
I rather thought SAHM would have someone with a Palantir, either Saruman or Denethor, looking out for me. While a full-on investigator was what they had, Natlaw’s claim of Tracker plus learning names would have worked to help find me; after all, I had no powers except hiding, and could only do that twice. And frankly, an investigator who looked and failed to find me might well conclude I was Frodo, so wearing the Ring or not I was spottable.
Another possibility was that there was at least one Minion who could see me while I wore the Ring. I’d have put the Witch-King into the game for just this purpose. As it was, one of the SAHM team did have the capacity to see into the spirit world - Sauron himself (or herself, as it turned out.) Sauron could have had the ability to look for a player wearing the Ring.
Finally, I played around a Daykill. I was really worried about the possibility, because I knew I had to survive until the start of Night 5. A Daykill, perhaps involving one of the SAHM openly attacking me (that is, required to post a statement that they attacked me during the Day), would not have been unreasonable.
However, I was surprised when Drain died, because I simply would not have made Sauron a player in the game. I would have given the minions a suite of powers that were lost if the Ring were destroyed and Sauron “killed.” Some things I considered.[ul][li]Recruitment. Sauron could cow the minds of lesser creatures and bend them to his will just by his overwhelming presence. Alternatively, the Witch-King could have had a Morgul-knife that lost its power if Sauron was destroyed.[/li][li]The ability to talk 24/7 in Barad-Dur. When the Ring was destroyed, the tower collapsed, and the Minions could no longer talk together in the Day.[/li]Give the Minions standard powers that they lose if Sauron “dies.”[/ul]All in all a fun game, although I felt a little sorry for killing Drain Bead.
Yes, I can.
I like to play softball recreationally. I’m on a team with some coworkers.
I play 3rd base. Travis is our pitcher. He gets to make a play on every single pitch. I only get to make a play on maybe 10% of the plays. I still contribute. I play my role and let others play their role.
When I was a child, I would play hide and seek with friends.
Only 1 person could be it. Only they could go and look for other people. If I wasn't 'it' I couldn't go and look for other people. I just kinda sat around and waited to be found or not.
Mafia is a game. Sometimes you get a role which has more information. Sometimes you don’t. You play the game with what you have.
You seem to want to play a game where everyone is on equal footing. This game is not for you then.
I do wish you’d stop complaining about it. If you feel like it’s not fair that you won’t always have the same information as everyone else, then please don’t play.
If you don’t like playing in a game where you have to use limited information to make educated guesses, then this game isn’t for you.
I basically agree with Ed. I like the complexity that differing levels of knowledge brings to the table. Because it’s not having the extra knowledge, it’s what you do with it that counts
Well said!
You aren’t going to be able to find an approximate best fit to Mafia. But ok, Let’s work with this.
Yes 3rd base getting 10% of the play is fine, and I Would say approximate, given that first base and second take disproportionate shares, compared to third.
Fine.
So, vanilla town is all third base. As such they get 10% of the play.
Still with me?
I have NO PROBLEM signing on to this. It is fully disclosed before game start that all Third Base players [Vanilla] get 10%. No exceptions. What you are told up-front [in one fashion or another] is what you get. You are Vanilla, and by virtue of the fact that you have no powers - what so ever - you can TAKE IT AS WORD OF MOD that you lot will not improve.
Mafia doesn’t do this.
This is as stated, no would should, or frankly can expect any different.
Then, lo and behold, some of the Third Basemen become “more equal than others”. They get 12% or 15% play. They eke out a change in contract terms. AFTER SIGNING
And it’s strictly worse than Pawn Promotion, because the chance for promotion is up to the pawn itself, not some high and mighty AND RANDOM mandate.
Quite seriously, I didn’t think Mafia could go past 90 degrees in terms of uphill battle for town.
Potatoes do this. Potatoes are the salt in the wound of playing Vanilla.
Playing vanilla sucks. And now we have a vanilla subset that can and will be treated less than vanilla.
For some of us, the added mystery of figuring out the mechanic of mystery objects makes the game MORE fun, not LESS. As I, and others, have said, you should only play in open setup games if this kind of thing really irks you. Much better to do that than keep playing in closed setup games and getting pissed off about it EVERY SINGLE TIME. You make the game less fun for others and, even worse, less fun for yourself.
I don’t understand why this upsets you so much.
So, what you’re saying, Meeko, is that you would have preferred to not be investigated by Nanook? Or you’d rather see a game with no Detective at all?
But it’s not random. Chronos picked someone to send a blank parchment to (it intended use might have been to send a watch result without exposing).
The snitch in Harry Potter was not random. Players got to pick who to give it to and if there ever was a tie and it’s function revealed it would be important to keep it in your teams hand.
In fact the snitch was there to avoid that a random flip of the coin would have to decide a tie (and thus possibly the game).
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Exactly. Chronos could have used it how he saw fit. His only restriction(and Gadarene’s) was that they could not reveal their member name.
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Yes, the snitch was there to add some minor game-play way to break the tied. I should have hinted about it in the opening color or something. It never came up, though.