The Homicide Detective/Seer are a bit more powerful than the Investigative Journalist. Yeah, yeah, blocks and godfathers, but those aren’t as big a deal as folks often worry they are. The big advantage of the Journalist is that the original died a little earlier, and if you’re going to take over such a role, you want to do so as quickly as possible, or at least quickly enough to not miss any investigations. So if you waited until both were available before choosing, I’d say that the mistake was in the waiting. If you didn’t wait, then it was the right play, because you had no way of knowing that you’d just miss another investigator role.
On who to target as a Detective, there are a few considerations. One, you get the most information from a player who’s as close to 50% likely to be Scum as possible. In the early game, since the default assumption is that everyone’s equally likely, the player closest to 50% is probably the same as the player with the highest likelihood of being Scum. But then the second consideration comes in: If there’s a consensus on who’s most likely to be Scum, then it does no good to confirm that that person’s Scum, because they’d probably get lynched anyway. The final consideration is how good a player is: There are some folks who are really good at passing as Town, so it’s good to not have to wonder about them. Similarly, if you’re going to confirm a Townie, it’s good to confirm one who’s a skilled Scum-hunter. Overall, I think I’ve come around to the idea that the last consideration is dominant: You should investigate players you consider strong first.
Meanwhile, this game has gotten me thinking more about Watchers and Trackers. Trackers are pretty clearly inferior to standard Detectives, because they can’t always tell a Town power role from a Scum, and won’t always catch a Scum if they happen not to have done anything. But Watchers are in some ways actually better, because they can potentially catch someone who wasn’t even on the player’s radar. All you need is an obvious “Player of Interest” who’s likely to get targeted by people, like septimus back on Day 1. And it’d be even more powerful if the existence of a Watcher was not public knowledge, so folks weren’t deliberately avoiding the Player of Interest.
Oh, and since nobody’s explicitly explained the reference in the thread yet: GLaDOS was the ultimate antagonist in Portal, but she mostly worked from a distance (right up until the very last room). One of her more common ways of trying to kill the player (aside from the old standbys like pits of acid and spiky crusher things) was turrets. Turrets are little tripod robots with an ergonomic design and friendly voice (voiced by the same actress as GLaDOS, actually) and a machine gun with lots and lots of bullets. When you moved within their field of view, they’d say (in that very friendly voice) “There you are”, right before showering you with lead (Here’s an example).
Scum vote on lynches, too. I assumed he meant that if people do drop out of the lynch as suggested, then scum will start pushing to lynch only the people that drop out, ignoring those who don’t.
People have been talking about roles with actions, as compared to those with just a confirmable name. But it occurs to me that, aside from possible third parties (which even we spoiled folks don’t know much more about than anyone else), there really aren’t any roles left with actions, on any of the three main teams. Or at least, no relevant actions: There are roles with actions left, but all of them only interact with other roles with actions. Or to put it another way, nobody has any reason to use any action, because nobody else has any reason to use any action.
By the way, I was somewhat surprised I died last Night given that Town still has protection powers left. It’s a somewhat safe protection given that the Outrider is now out of the game. If the decided not to protect me because he or she didn’t believe my claim, I guess I can understand.
Another reason I’m somewhat surprised I died? I think MHaye and his powers have been and will be way more useful to Town than mine would, even giving me another round to find someone. Right now, the only thing I’ve done is semi-confirm Lakai and Lightfoot. It means they’re not Mafia, but it does NOT mean they’re Town. Odds are good they are…but if they turn out to not be, my claim will really hamper Town’s likelihood of finding them. So I see my power as a double edged sword and one that might be useful for scum to keep around a tad longer.
I argue that Mafia should exclusively be your first favorite role choice.
I want Mafia to be something it’s not. I want power roles to confuse other power roles. Effectively, and essentially I want Mafia to play just like Magic: The Gathering … Or to use an obscure example, Dead Man’s Draw. I want the bulk of the game to be “combos” and set ups, and powers synergizing together, to make more than the sum of it’s parts.
And yes, I am sick and tired of watching everyone else get the cool toys. You know?
I’m also sick, because, I don’t get why Logic doesn’t work in these games. I do not get why Mafia can only exist where intelligence does not. I am sick and tired of a world where Snookie and professional atheletes make more money in a year than I will ever make period. I could continue, but suffice to say, yes, I feel entitled to more. With “more” simply being what everyone else has. I don’t want ““more”” as compared to,the next guy. I want equal.
I flat out so not get how and why the world can be this broken and still exist. I would say ““function”” in a certain sense, but I argue it doesn’t.
To be overly blatant… The theory behind why and how Trump … The world should have torn in half before that happened. There is a REAL and pure evil in the world and why it continues to exist… Just gets at me.
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All I’m saying is, I know I don’t ““get”” this game on a level I need to. But Damn me, it really is everyone else’s problem.
The game should be the powers. It shouldn’t be nit picking over how people say things. The former is Jack Bauer. The Latter … approaches MacGyver, on a good day.
You’re right, you do want mafia to be something it’s not. More importantly, for this game at least, you want it to be something that it can not be. I break the power roles in pretty much every game I work on. Intentionally. This game was not different. Trackers who can’t find the primary killer. Vigs who have to kill. Doctors who die if they are successful. These aren’t accidents. Power roles are there to generate discussion, because that’s what the game is about. It’s about the discussion. If you don’t like it you should stay away from all future games I have a role in designing. I’m the guy who thought it would be fun to design an all vanilla game and not tell anyone in advance that there were no power roles.
Mafia is a game of persuasion and deduction based on conversations. It’s not Jack Bauer, but it is sorta Sherlock Holmes. Maybe that’s not your bag. That’s cool. But, it sounds like you are trying to force it to be a game where persuasion doesn’t play a role and deduction takes a back seat to the game opening up for you. And if that’s the case, yeah, you are going to be frustrated because you are going to lose… A lot.
You have to haggle. You have to make judgements about who you can trust and then build coalitions. You have to work with your team towards a common good. If you are vanilla you probably have to die. I actually think that “that” game is one of the best games there is because the human element makes it infinitely unpredictable and repayable. Your version of the game quickly gets boring and frankly does suck for vanilla. But try my version sometime. It’s fun.
But logic does have a place in the game. That’s precisely what vanilla townies do. There’s no logic (or at least, not very interesting logic) in saying “I investigated that person as Scum, therefore they’re Scum”. It’s so much more interesting to have to actually build up a case without that crutch.
I can buy that theory. But how often do we convert ““impossible”” into your interesting?
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Also, by your same … Logic, if Logic has a, shall we say reserved role in Mafia, related to your investigation scenario above, you should be more anti mass claim than I am.
Our group is, and has been far too entrenched in Meta. The Meta of the game construct itself, the Meta of playsyles by players.
Someone up thread mentioned that Town for the immediate game was going to rely on Meta so much, that the lose the game because of it. … Agreed. I’m not sure we can escape that. … Didn’t another player have a similar take on this? For some reason, I want to say RoOsh … Or whatever name they are using now, but it was under the handle RoOsh that this was posted. IIRC.
But, it sounds like you are trying to force it to be a game where persuasion doesn’t play a role and deduction takes a back seat to the game opening up for you.
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The problem here, is that you are forcing the game to essentially test what we are outside of the game. In a real sense, this forces the game to be Meta. I was all set to say I want Mafia to be like all games, everyone comes to the table and “starts” the game as equals ((For Mafia, starting would be just before Roles are given.)) … But that’s wrong… Mafia, and games in general, should on one sense, not rely … Having on things from outside the game. I’m not asking for “perfect information” … But the way … Our games play… It requires a skill set that you are either born with or, are not. I’d rather not play a game that favors TYPE A personality and actual experience playing the game will not improve your skill.
Monkgate ““works”” because of how it “played” … But that takes a backseat to persuasion.
Persuasion strikes me as one person crafting something and giving it to one other person. A metric ton of internal work In crafting speech for others. A game is not played by being this internal and kept to self. Mafia needs to be played inside the screen not “that” inside the mind.
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I guess, it really does come down to Politics. Facts and truth be damned, I can speak better… Or rather, I can speak in a way to deceive you, or in a way that plays to your misguided delusions… I will win every time.
Experience should mean something in all games. Instead, in a near real sense, this game simply lets those with blue eyes* win every single time, brown eyes* lose every single time.
Obviously, I’m speaking to something that will ultimately prove to be genetic. Not eye color, but something… Some ability that you either have or don’t have. It’s probably an intangible, something you can’t detect unaided. It is psychological, on a basic sense. And that’s immutable. The psychological here, will be genetic (as I feel everything ultimately is)
Mafia preys on a sort of … Caste system of humanity… And if you aren’t on top, you are losing,period. At the very least, there should be some mechanism for mobility. But there isn’t. Those of us who aren’t there… Get tired of this, fast.
Meeko, I’ll have to remember to send a personal message to you the next time I run a game. My games tend to have no roles without powers. I’m not sure if you’d played any of mine, but from what you’re saying, you’d enjoy it.
My design philosophy is that, beyond voting for lynches, every player should have a choice to make each Day-Night cycle. Often that means actively targeting a player of their choice with a power. Sometimes that means deciding whether or not to use a one-off power. Rarely that means simply having a passive power that protects themself (so no choice, but some players do like the sense of relative security).
I agree that playing a role with nothing to do but the same post analysis and voting that everyone else gets to do is discouraging. But being vanilla is fun enough for me. It probably helps that I rarely survive more than a couple of Days–I get to enjoy the game without slogging through past the middle.
I prefer to have “open” rules sets, where all or almost all roles, rules and powers are fully disclosed to everyone before the game starts. I feel games with hidden setups hinder player actions. Instead of playing only against the other players, one has to also play against the designer, by considering what’s actually in that game. In another paradigm: open rules sets are PvP while hidden rules are PvE.
I consider the most important feature of a Mafia game design is that the only certain information/action is death. Powers could be blocked, redirected, confounded, etc, either by direct action or passive power of another player. (Die roles and coin flips are anathema to Mafia, in my opinion.) Players gain uncertain information in small slivers and cannot be sure of anything, except the alignment and role reveals made by the moderator about dead players. Winning the game requires making the best choice given incomplete and potentially unreliable information.
So players have something to do, besides voting and analyzing posts. The game needs to be decided by who made the best choices, both in terms of how they used their powers and who/what they decided to trust.
Perhaps the next game we run should just be a pure all-vanilla game. No powers, no hidden mechanics, just 19 Townsfolk trying to find 3 Scum (or maybe 8 Townsfolk and 2 Scum, depending on interest).
Interesting that there is so much speculation on why crys got killed and nobody seems to remember that she claimed to have a scum power switch Yesterday. Actually, it’s weird that of all the powers who have claimed so far, none of them seem to have ever been switched off.
Despite my crappy voting record, I’ll take some small shred of pride in being the presumed night kill.
I’m very glad somebody brought up the brewha switch wording discrepancy. I read that in the night thread and thought I had to run over to the Day 8 thread and bring it up. The first post shut that train of thought down.
I don’t trust Biotop this game. There’s not much behind that accusation but blueberries. I TexCat either. SNfaulkner continues to ping me off and on as well. Johnny Bravo is also reworking his way into my scum list.