<snipped all to heck>
only if he is town.
He should have known so even if he were Scum.
Right, because a game of this posting volume is ramrod straight.
To say nothing of the “I’m sworn to secrecy” thing you guys got going on. That’s the hallmark of an as advertised all right angles game.
At what point do you learn that I am not the same player I was back in Crimson Glyph?
At what point do you learn that perhaps using phrases such as “At what point do you learn” is perhaps not the best way to go about things?
NETA :
Ed, to say nothing of the fact that a statement wrapped by OOG is essentially and virtually “meaningless”. The function of OOG and /OOG makes the meaninglessness self evident.
OK, fair enough. Then what does the game “going sideways” mean?
Does it mean that things don’t go the way you expect?
If it happens every time, then maybe you should start to expect the unexpected?
Does it mean that you don’t understand or have clarity on the game state? Because that’s normal in Mafia. It’s an integral part of the game.
Or dies it mean something else entirely? and if so, then what? because, as far as I can tell, each post is on top of the next post (or below if you don’t have it set to the most recent post first) and unless I tip my monitor over, the game does not go sideways.
look again at your “out of game” statement:
here’s a good chucnk of it
You may have said “out of game” but you were commenting on the game itself.
All that aside, then let’s take my question “out of game” and have you explain what exactly you meant about the game being sideways “out of game”
now that you mention it probably even more so.
I am a bit out of place with my thoughts here, I have spent some time on this and as a result I have literally moved entire paragraphs around to where I think they fit.
As a Result, I get redundant in a few places. Fair Warning.
You can summarize Mafia into a few sentences. Mafia can follow from Magic The Gathering and include a “If a mechanic would break these rules, the mechanic takes precedence.” However, even with that privilege, I still feel like the Mafia games of late have been less Mafia, more “Keep Away”. The older kids are stealing the ball, and are only passing it around to their friends. It begins to interfere with the the basic core game, on a level that if you aren’t on the inside, you might as well not play the game.
Instead, we have what amounts to a mason-member thread monopolizing the main game thread. Mason member roles are NOT told they are in the masonry, but they pollute the main board anyway. Once they find out the other members by dumb luck, they can take the game hostage, simply by accelerating the game to the best of their ability.
This “All mafia Roles are equal, just some roles are more equal than others.” is what makes Mafia, Mafia. I accept this.
Yet, once it hits “All mafia Players are equal, just some players are more equal than others” it becomes unfun, real fast. But, if all players can come out on the other side of the game with ““Enough”” experience, this issue becomes more and more palatable with each game played.
The issue at hand, is that there is some third level here, that on it’s current pace will ruin the entire Mafia game archetype in General, regardless of color.
Give access to this third level to a few vocal players, and the entire issue exacerbates.
This is the second game, in a row no less, where there has but an separate gimmick that I have had no clue about, at all. **There is some information that town does not get. At the same time, that information must maintain some given and FIXED ratio to information that IS given to town.
** Failing to do this unbalances the game beyond the “working” structure of Mafia.
I can’t go to a mafiascum wiki or some other resource and research “Mahaloths August 2010 LOTR SDMB Mafia Game”.
I can go to Mafiascum and find out how to get some fair distance in nearly every other mafia game.
That is the crux of the issue.
Harry Potter had the Golden Snitch. This game has vague references to “family”, and things that people can refer to, but then immediately say they can’t talk about it.
I just feel like there is more than one game being played here. Even if everyone had the same EXACT LEVEL of Skill, Strategy, and Experience, there is something, beyond role [powers] that is unbalancing this game. Not a JSexton points level, on a rushed and hurried, half-baked ““tangible”” that most players will never experience.
IMHO : The Golden Snitch, having NOT been disclosed in public before game start broke Harry Potter. For this game, it is the entire B.S. about “I have information that I can’t disclose, but I will keep it in my family” taking up space in the main thread here is the same issue, in a different dress.
**
How can people with out this information interact with it?** On it’s own off board thread, it’s fine, because everyone is equal over there. Yet here, the only arena where vanillas can post, those with less information feel disenfranchised. Hence, they don’t feel like they can add anything, and most often they won’t. Their play is halted, while other players, with the information continue on at the same pace. The naive players will never overcome an obstacle, and their entire game stops, making the game fun for no one. **No experience is gained, and the disenfranchising begins again, in a viscous downward spiral. **
In short, while I KNOW my play is improving with each game. But it is the perception that I am just “spinning my wheels” of late that is REALLY getting to me.
As we push the envelope on Color and canon, as we think outside the box, I believe it stretches the game. Good thing. However, the stretches of late have been unchecked. We risk breaking the body of Mafia if the starting point remains fixed in place. A compensation upgrade, if you will, needs to be made to vanilla roles if this stretching is to continue.
**
And I guess that totally outs me as a Vanilla in this game.** But then again, I made calculated moves last week to get night killed, with some of my posts. That being said, if I was that disenfranchised last week, I could care less this week.
I didn’t want to claim. But it would seem that the hang-ups I bring to the game box me in more than what the game gives me. Those boxes lead me to do things that other people hate me for later. Fuck it.
**
And while I know it’s luck of the draw, it has to be said that Telcontar can go a few games with out being a power role, and that would be ok with me. **
NETA: I have a few VERY preliminary ideas on a game based around Breakfast Cereal Mascots. - I have other ideas in line before this.
I considered calling that game “Cereal Killers”. At the same time, I knew I would have to ““Word of Mod”” mandate that there would be no Serial Killer / PFK role.
I just feel that there is a certain level of information that all players should get as a courtesy before Night 0.
I kinda thought that this was a universal idea.
uh, meeko take a chill pill.
a lot of what i have advanced has a certain metagame aspect to it. for goodness sakes ed has already come out publicly that he does not think he is a mason. but …
i also know that this game has grown much more sophisticated and complicated over the years. mods continue to challenge players to think out of the box. and as players we have, or at least i have, become just as challenged by what the game looks like as the game itself. kind of the game within a game that occurs naturally, at least for me.
all i have is the information that has been given me by the mods and that which i glean by reading the thread. and as a real mafia player you should be evaluating what you know and what you read and then deciding on it. i know what i know and i am connecting the dots as best i can. i would suggest that everyone be doing that. because everyone has snippets of information. how they go about leveraging that information is kind of playing the game.
for instance chronos has claimed that he knows who aragorn is. i don’t see that as “sideways”. pleo has claimed to be a power role that no one is allowed to talk about. i don’t see that as “sideways”. ed and the chupacabra have posted supposed niller pms. i don’t see that as “sideways”. i have posted a ton but as i have explained that is more a function of real life than anything else. i don’t see that as “sideways”.
and i think if you would ever plough through mazalan (plan on a weekend, at least) you will see that i purposely tried to engage the newer folks. and i would love to engage with discussion with some of the folks that i am not familiar with. but at this juncture of the game it feels like only a couple of folks really want to get in the ring with others content to watch the festivities.
[color=green]mod question: can we get a vote count, please.[color]
and crud if i could learn to code correctly or at least preview. :smack:
[color=green]mod question: can we get a vote count, please?
**Vote Count:
AstralRejection(1): Redskeezix,
SpecialEd(2): Chronos, Chipacabra,
Chipacabra(9): Hoopy, Gadarene, Drainbead, Nanook, Specialed, Cucuy, Oneandonly, Guiri, USCDiver,
Meeko(1): Pleonast
Hoopy(1): Peeker
Pleonast(1): Meeko
Day ends in 24 hours.**
Despite all of that, I think it is best for everyone, EVERYONE involved that I keep my posting to a minimum.
Meeko, I’d like a one or two sentence definition of what ‘sideways’ means to you with regards to this game. I see you use that term to describe Mafia a lot, but I don’t really know what it means. I think that’s what special_ed is after too.
We’ll just have to disagree on that point, because I think you’re wrong. And you’re doubly wrong for expecting others to come to the same conclusion as you.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Meeko, I’m not really sure what you’re going on about. Vote for the players you think are more likely to be scum. Tell us why you think so.
Trying to figure things out on a meta level is unproductive. And don’t forget that it’s in the scums’ interest to confuse things or do anything else that reduces the chance we vote for them.
That said, I hate hate hate post restrictions, too (at least, I think that’s what you may be complaining about). To the point that I’d probably get myself inadvertently mod-killed by pushing the limits.
In the broad sense, I guess you could call my issue, an issue with post restrictions. It was so broad, that I have yet to think of it in those terms.
And that’s kinda my point. There is some part of this game that was not reduced to simplest terms. Those terms were not published.
However, would it have hurt the game, to tell everyone, from the start, that some players had post restrictions?
Again, I just feel that there is a combination of factors in MAFIA that can go horribly right. That is to say, if the planets of play style, alignment, tempo, and restrictions align just right, they game would snafu instantly.
Well informed VT could prevent this. You can mention that one or more players have a restriction, and leave it at that.
Again, there seems to be some ratio that is needed here.** I am not calling this game gastard.** However, there is a reason why Mods must state that a gastard game is gastard, correct? Cycle that down a few cycles and you get close to what I’m trying to say here.
First of all, we don’t actually know that there are posting restrictions in place. We only have ed’s and possibly peeker’s word on that. Second, if there are posting restrictions in place, they probably weren’t a design feature of the game, but rather a correction of a mistake made by the mod.
How did the Golden Snitch break HP Mafia (I didn’t follow it to the end)? I did kinda propose the idea of it to Mahaloth (with the passing public and the effect unknown until the first tie).
Meeko seem to be again the frustrated-town-who-doesn’t-know-everything-so-only-thing-that-can-be-done-is-claim which he did as mason in Cecil Pond. Or he’s cleverly re-using it as scum - the big difference was that there he went on a voting spree while here he is mainly focused on one player (Pleonast).