I want to throw up the false mason claim in Seekham as one of my favorite mafia moments.
Mafia IV was the first offsite game (The pirates themed Hispaniola game) and my favorite of all the mafia games. A lot of strategies and behaviors we take for granted now were developed in that game.
It was also the first game that was (probably) broken by substitutions.
[QUOTE=Omi no Kami]
Autolycus’s unique strategy
[spoiler]As far as memorable gameplay goes, I remember that Autolycus had a unique strategy in the first few games that revolved around misunderstanding a small point in the rules. Also, I should note that I’m not trying to be hostile: this is intended as good-natured joshing after the fact. 
Anyway, the way the SDMB plays Mafia, you generally win if your faction wins, regardless of whether or not you are personally alive at the end of the game. However, this had gotten garbled during the mafia game, and Autolycus’s strategy was based on the idea that you only won if your faction won AND you were still alive during the endgame. I seem to recall that he was Town for both of the games where this happened, and his strategy was extremely reasonable given his version of the rules: essentially, he tried to toe the line between Town and Scum to such a degree that the townies would be hesitant to lynch him for fear of offing one of their own, while the scum would refrain from nightkilling him because he appeared to be taking the heat off of the real bad guys.
The only real issue was that the method he used to accomplish this was very, very annoying. Essentially, he took to posting exclusively in a setting-appropriate dialect, in this case an extremely heavy Godfather-esque dialect. This, combined with numerous posts that seemingly added little to the strategizing, ended up sending the signal-to-noise ratio through the roof and eventually resulted in a fairly intense debate among Town after he came out with his strategy.
I’m pretty sure he was Town, but had he been Scum it would’ve been a great strategy.[/spoiler]
[/QUOTE]
Oh! This pertains to one of my shining moments in mafia!
In the Pirates game I came up with the idea that Auto was unlynchable if he just acted strangely enough. We came up with the plan to have Auto be as odd as possible and to say everything in “pirate speak”. It worked for a long while too, until (if I remember correctly) a second Night killer decided that Auto was anoying enough to be killed anyway.
Seriously, I LOVED the pirates game. It was also the first instance of Idle
TALKING LIKE THIS!
to prove he was town. A tactic he used again in M5 when he was scum. A classic.
[QUOTE=Rysto]
NETA(because I missed the edit window):
A comment about Conspiracy:
As far as I know, Conspiracy was the first game in which the moderator allowed quoting of Role PMs. That’s why it hadn’t been done in previous games, I believe.
[/QUOTE]
Not only that, but I didn’t want to quote my role PM. I felt I was forced to by the Town. I was already getting heat for not revealing roles, so I felt it best to comply. But before posting it, I edited out parts of my role to conceal my real secret power, which was recruitment detection.
I was going to provide a digest of Idle Goes Ballistic in two parts, but (sadly) the Day 4 thread of Pirates has had the size changes excised, by and large, so most of the impact was lost.
In summary, zuma had claimed that he was Captain Steele. Captain Steele could either watch a player or guard them.
On day 4 he claimed that he had watched himself on Night 3, gambling that the Doctor would guard him, and that he was attacked that Night by Idle Thoughts.
Idle protested his innoncence in more and more strenuous terms, using the largest font size he could coax out of the system. This went on for two pages until ArizonaTeach asked Malacandra if Idle Thoughts “showed signs of a violent altercation.”
The answer was no, zumas lie was exposed and he was hung. But not before, in a closing speech, he outed the third Mason (who had been hiding) and showed that the Masons had lied collectively to us on Day 2; they falsely identified the Doctor-Mason as one of the two regular Masons.
Great play by zuma, but then Mad the Swine roasted the pirates.
Idle Goes Ballistic part II was also known as Monkgate. I’ll cover that one later; I was quite involved so I remember it well. Also, since it was played here, the passionate denials come over better. In size seven font…
Sekham Monkgate
[spoiler]Monkgate is difficult to describe. As I was a Monk I have a different perspective of the situation. (Monk == Mason).
Monkgate details start with the early lynch of Kat (scum). Idle Thoughts (scum) was the last minute swing vote that caught fellow scum Kat, which brought him much Townie credibility. Idle would save that credibility for Monkgate over a month later.
The state of the game was not good for Town. One Monk was dead (storyteller); one Monk was outted (zeriel) and two Monks remained hidden (cookies and me).
Monkgate also started while I was on vacation. I hadn’t expected to live so long and my trip to Europe was much more important. Anyway, I avoided a mod-kill with the unstated understanding that out-fellow Monk zeriel would be on hand to claim for me should people decide they wanted to kill me in my absence.
On the Night before my return, scum killed zeriel and Idle Thoughts claimed Monk and claimed zuma was the fourth monk.
This forced Cookies to counterclaim in my absence, which looked “convenient” at the time since I was missing. Luckily, my vacation ended as scheduled before the end of that Day and I could claim with Cookies, thus beginning the heart of Monkgate.
I recall NAF (scum) pointing out that Idle Thoughts was likely Town due to the Kat affair. I countered that Idle Thoughts gained a lot of credit with the Kat lynch and now was cashing in; but I only knew this since I knew Idle Thoughts was lying.
Two points made the Monkgate gambit fail.
What ensued was a long argument about how MHaye was recruited, I was the ‘godfather’ blah blah blah. But the argument was fundamentally convoluted. Which is a very good example of Occam’s Razor in mafia games. In order for Cookies and I to be false claiming Monk, several complex events would have had to have happened. For Idle Thoughts to have been lying required no such logical gymnastics.
The nail in the fake claim coffin was zuma’s simultaneous calling out of MHaye’s Apprentice claim and self Monk claim. The game mechanics did not support zuma both being a Monk and knowing MHaye was lying.
In the end, Town decided to lynch Idle Thoughts.
It is hard to say what would have happened if zuma hadn’t called out MHaye. I think there was enough evidence to demonstrate the truth, but I knew the truth a priori.
My personal feeling is that Monkgate was a bad move by scum. They were winning very much so at the time, and the false claims came from someone not under suspicion. I suppose that is part of the allure. Roleclaiming when not under pressure is more believable. However, the subsequent counter-claim also came from parties not under immediate threat.
[/spoiler]
[QUOTE=sachertorte]
Sekham Monkgate
[spoiler]Monkgate is difficult to describe. As I was a Monk I have a different perspective of the situation. (Monk == Mason).
Monkgate details start with the early lynch of Kat (scum). Idle Thoughts (scum) was the last minute swing vote that caught fellow scum Kat, which brought him much Townie credibility. Idle would save that credibility for Monkgate over a month later.
The state of the game was not good for Town. One Monk was dead (storyteller); one Monk was outted (zeriel) and two Monks remained hidden (cookies and me).
Monkgate also started while I was on vacation. I hadn’t expected to live so long and my trip to Europe was much more important. Anyway, I avoided a mod-kill with the unstated understanding that out-fellow Monk zeriel would be on hand to claim for me should people decide they wanted to kill me in my absence.
On the Night before my return, scum killed zeriel and Idle Thoughts claimed Monk and claimed zuma was the fourth monk.
This forced Cookies to counterclaim in my absence, which looked “convenient” at the time since I was missing. Luckily, my vacation ended as scheduled before the end of that Day and I could claim with Cookies, thus beginning the heart of Monkgate.
I recall NAF (scum) pointing out that Idle Thoughts was likely Town due to the Kat affair. I countered that Idle Thoughts gained a lot of credit with the Kat lynch and now was cashing in; but I only knew this since I knew Idle Thoughts was lying.
Two points made the Monkgate gambit fail.
What ensued was a long argument about how MHaye was recruited, I was the ‘godfather’ blah blah blah. But the argument was fundamentally convoluted. Which is a very good example of Occam’s Razor in mafia games. In order for Cookies and I to be false claiming Monk, several complex events would have had to have happened. For Idle Thoughts to have been lying required no such logical gymnastics.
The nail in the fake claim coffin was zuma’s simultaneous calling out of MHaye’s Apprentice claim and self Monk claim. The game mechanics did not support zuma both being a Monk and knowing MHaye was lying.
In the end, Town decided to lynch Idle Thoughts.
It is hard to say what would have happened if zuma hadn’t called out MHaye. I think there was enough evidence to demonstrate the truth, but I knew the truth a priori.
My personal feeling is that Monkgate was a bad move by scum. They were winning very much so at the time, and the false claims came from someone not under suspicion. I suppose that is part of the allure. Roleclaiming when not under pressure is more believable. However, the subsequent counter-claim also came from parties not under immediate threat.
[/spoiler]
[/QUOTE]
The thing that most people forget is that monkgate was the result of a major miscomunication on the part of the scum.
We had a plan set in place (zuma’s false claim) but had previously discussed having Idle claim instead. When the Day started Idle and zuma got their wires crossed and the claims went down very badly. If not for the miscommunication I think the play would have given the scum the game handily. As it was the false claim coupled with Pygmys post to the wrong board outting both him and myself killed the scum’s chances.
And while we’re on monkgate…
[spoiler]It might also have helped if I didn’t read MHaye’s investigation hastily and think he wanted to investigate sachetorte instead of whomever else (I don’t remember), in which he said he DIDN’T want to investigate him because he was sure he was town. So really, had I not misread, it might have worked too, since he wouldn’t have even been involved. :smack:
Oh, and Pygmy’s bad post was also in response to another mistake of mine as a Mod (in which I screwed up who the Avatar was).
Lesson learned: Don’t moderate a game of such high complexity without someone else assisting with moderating. At least they were honest mistakes. 
[/spoiler]
[QUOTE=Blaster Master]
Lesson learned: Don’t moderate a game of such high complexity without someone else assisting with moderating. At least they were honest mistakes. 
[/QUOTE]
And here I thought you did a great job. You got all the vote counts right.
Also, you had to deal with some of the hardest moderation decisions I can remember in these games.
I read the first two threads here on the boards and would like to play in the future. Can someone help me get started?
[spoiler]Something was jinxing my investigations of a particular player in MV. I tried twice to investigate Kyrie Eleison. The first time I got told what Sachertorte was instead, the second I got roleblocked.
As I understand it, the Cult wanted me to investigate Kyrie.
But that accident was the only reason I knew which of the Monk claimants was lying. DarkCookies and IdleThoughts were my lead candidates for Monk # 4 going into Day 9. When DarkCookies claimed, I was inclined to believe her. When IdleThoughts counterclaimed, I threw my tuppen’orth into the fray, and Idle’s reprise of his passionate denials from Pirates day 4 was on.
Even with that, and Santo Rugger’s shooting the Cult in the foot[sup]1[/sup] the Cult were in with a shout until the very end, when DarkCookies picked the right person to throw into the sacred well.
I think it remains my favourite of the games I’ve played here.
[sup]1[/sup]Really higher up, and more to the centreline.[/spoiler]
[QUOTE=Madd Maxx]
I read the first two threads here on the boards and would like to play in the future. Can someone help me get started?
[/QUOTE]
Sure thing. RoOsh and Dio are running a game off board right now. Shoot them a PM. Sach is running a game on site shoot him a PM too. You never know when a game will need a sub. Or, log into the offboard site, start an account and hang out playing some mini games and waiting for the offsite game to end.
If I can get off my lazy ass I am going to finish working on USCdivers game and start it up when Sach’s game is over, but I think I am going to only have it open to people who have played in 2 mafia games or more. Hopefully Hal will run his newbie game at the same time.
[QUOTE=NAF1138]
Sure thing. RoOsh and Dio are running a game off board right now. Shoot them a PM. Sach is running a game on site shoot him a PM too. You never know when a game will need a sub. Or, log into the offboard site, start an account and hang out playing some mini games and waiting for the offsite game to end.
If I can get off my lazy ass I am going to finish working on USCdivers game and start it up when Sach’s game is over, but I think I am going to only have it open to people who have played in 2 mafia games or more. Hopefully Hal will run his newbie game at the same time.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think Sach is accepting anymore subs. However, it’ll probably be a good game to watch since it’s pretty much back to the basics, so the strategy and all are pretty general and applicable to most of the rest of the games. I also seem to recall someone (was it Hal?) wanted to run a newbie game soon, so it would probably be a good place to start.
If Hal doesn’t do the newbie game, I’d be happy to run one, but I was holding off running because a) I was in sachertorte’s game and b) I didn’t want to think other folks couldn’t start their own games on the board.
Now that I’m dead, I’d be happy to run or play a new one.
I’ve also been working on another new role set, but I don’t know how good it will be for newbies. It will change the mechanics pretty substantially though so who knows…
[QUOTE=fluiddruid]
If Hal doesn’t do the newbie game, I’d be happy to run one, but I was holding off running because a) I was in sachertorte’s game and b) I didn’t want to think other folks couldn’t start their own games on the board.
Now that I’m dead, I’d be happy to run or play a new one.
I’ve also been working on another new role set, but I don’t know how good it will be for newbies. It will change the mechanics pretty substantially though so who knows…
[/QUOTE]
If you decide to run a new players only game do let me know. I would rather not run a vets only game unless there was a newbie game going on also. Unfortunatly I think the game USC created really has to be vet SDMB players only.
I’m a bad person who hasn’t gone back and reread much. Where can I find Rugger posting on the wrong board?
I’ve seen plenty of references to it, but I am intrigued.
[QUOTE=NAF1138]
If you decide to run a new players only game do let me know. I would rather not run a vets only game unless there was a newbie game going on also. Unfortunatly I think the game USC created really has to be vet SDMB players only.
[/QUOTE]
Is it that kooky? Open or closed setup?
[QUOTE=Darth Sensitive]
I’m a bad person who hasn’t gone back and reread much. Where can I find Rugger posting on the wrong board?
I’ve seen plenty of references to it, but I am intrigued.
[/QUOTE]
From Mafia V: The Cult of Sekham
**Santo Rugger’s ** misplaced post
and well spotted by FcoD. The content is gone, but this is why editing posts is forbidden.
[post=8932021]Post 3908[/post] was the actual post.
Santo Rugger was offering a suggestion to BlaM, and posted in the wrong forum. The post revealed the names of two cultists.
BlaM decided that because the post had been seen, he would just publish it and not modkill Santo Rugger.
He did so [post=8932846]in post 3934[/post], and let nature take its course. Unsurprisingly, they got burned over the next two Days.
It also happened in the Serenity game, but this time it was (iirc) DarkCookies betraying her true allegiance.
[QUOTE=storyteller0910]
Is it that kooky? Open or closed setup?
[/QUOTE]
Like M2, ultimately closed, but with a list of potential roles. I don’t know how kooky it is, but it is the sort of game that wouldn’t work right if there were people who weren’t involved in the group mafia culture here.
Glad to see you guys appreciated the Conspiracy game. I sometimes have second thoughts about it because of the sheer complexity of it. I’m still amazed I didn’t have any moderating snafus. I will be running it again, with a few tweaks, in the summer. No recruitment this time, but there will be secrets. 
Does anyone want to describe the Bladerunner catastrophe? Here’s my opinionated version: I was the titular character in the off-board Bladerunner game. I could investigate in the Day and kill at Night. And I was resistant to being killed at Night. Yes, that powerful. But I was not allowed to reveal any truthful information about my role. I hate, hate, hate those kind of rules (which is why I permit PM quoting).
Of course, being my usual clumsy self, I was under heat from multiple directions early in the game. I made a false claim. Very creative, if I may say so myself. The Town grudgingly let me live. But the Scum knew something was up and kept the pressure on me. After two Days they finally got me lynched. Stupid town and well-played scum. I’m still bitter about it.
The lesson learned was that motivation is the key, rather than specific strategies. Try to figure out why someone is doing something, rather than looking at their words at face value. It’s hard, but with it a skilled Townie can catch scum.