Damn! I didn’t get a chance to play zombie cheerleader. 
lol Don’t you know? When you’re scum, it’s going to be with me, regardless.
Actually diomedes, I think it might go something like this. Assume Idle Thoughts self protected
The vampire curse overrides **Idle Thoughts ** self protect, so regardless of his actions he would be a vampire.
**dotchan’s ** bless would nullify my curse, meaning that **Idle Thoughts ** self protect kicks in.
ie. **Idle Thoughts ** would have returned as the Witch Doctor if he had self protected, despite **sachertorte ** saying he was a vampire. 
I really could not wait for the next day, up until I learned he had protected **diomedes ** instead. :dubious:
Is that right Pleonast?
More scummy logic from you, Cat! The Vicar’s blessing is nullified by the Witch Doctor’s juju. So he’d return as a vamp.
Any chance of a Mod ruling on this one Pleonast?
Thanks for the compliment, but my play wasn’t quite flawless.
My biggest mistake was of course the entire Idle Thoughts thing. I was forunate that the Town kept a cool head and didn’t lynch Idle on Day Two. By Day Three I had cooled down enough not to pursue Idle Thoughts, but on Day Two I really wanted him lynched. I played the recruitment exists card too early on Day Two. What I should have done was sit on my recruitment information until after Idle Thoughts put forward his full roleclaim. Had I done that, believing his secret power would have been easier. I was so convinced that Idle was trying to use recruitment to look like a Witchdoctor that I got needlessly careless. It all worked itself out, but Day Two would have been much cleaner if I had just shut up. I blame the insomnia 
.
My second mistake was believing Santo Rugger’s Freemason claim. He really had me fooled, and if the Witches hadn’t investigated DiggitCamara and if Santo Rugger hadn’t overplayed his claim, I would have vocally defended Santo Rugger (which I had already begun to do). :smack:
And you all aren’t aware of all the silly things I was thinking and contemplating as the game progressed. Thankfully I ended up not doing these really dumb ideas, but there were plenty of dumb ideas kicking around in the background!
Also, I think kudos should go out to Hockey Monkey for using the Detective role effectively. While outing MHaye as a Werewolf was nice, telling the Town how many Wolves there were was a critical piece of information, and I think the timing of her roleclaim was perfect.
Secret Powers cannot be blocked and override everything else, unless a specific counter is described in the Secret Power itself. So a Vampire’s curse cancels out a Witchdoctor’s blessing. A Vicar’s blessing cancels the Vampire’s curse. The Witchdoctor’s enchantment is already canceled; it can’t come back. So it didn’t matter who Idle had enchanted that Night.
That’s how I would’ve ruled. Although, having Idle come back as Town despite sach’s dire warning would’ve been fun! And very bastardly.
Some asked about how I choose which Roles went into the game. Here was my logic.
3 Witches: I really like their mechanic–distributed investigation and protection. Powerful, yet can be slowly neutralized.
3 Cabalists: to match the 3 Witches.
1 Necromancer: to put a Zombie threat on everyone–slowly building pressure.
1 Vicar: needed to balance the Necromancer.
4 Wolves: that’s about 1/5 of the players. Any fewer and they’ll be crimped.
1 Detective and 1 Vampire: gives the Town a chance against the Wolves, and gives the Wolves a chance against the Detective.
3 Freemasons: like their searching mechanic. Matches number of Witches and Cabalists. Close to vanilla Townies.
That left 3 more Townies to choose to make 20 players total. I chose
1 Coroner: gives the Town a chance to get info early.
1 Scotsman: I like the Role. It seems weak, but gives the Town an instant reveal of an attacker.
1 Witchdoctor: gives cover for scum recruitment.
I didn’t include a Vigilante, Magician, or Warlock. These Roles are mostly cover for scum. 
They’re only marginally useful to the Town.
When I ended up with 22 players signed up, I put in an extra Freemason and Wolf. I think it kept the balance more or less correct. I’m glad I did put in the extra wolf though, since they needed it. Expect the next version to weaken the Town, and strengthen the Cabal and Wolves.
What about strengthening us poor undead
There was only two of us.
I liked the Role, too, even though I didn’t get to use my powers. Getting one free pass on getting killed allows you to play more freely.
I’m wondering if any of the players or watchers suspected me of being the Scotsman. Dio speculated at one point near the end that he did not believe there was a Scotsman (thanks, Dio!) Did anyone have my number?
I would caution against balancing simply based on the events of the game. Wolves were unlucky and made a few questionable choices:
- recruiting someone not recruitable was both a bad choice and unlucky
- killing Hockey Monkey before killing a second witch was a tactical misstep, though a very understandable one
Cabal were spectacularly unlucky so assessing their power levels is difficult. Though the 3 witch plus 9 town vs 3 cabal is a pretty good indicator that there is an imbalance there.
I’d also assert that trying to make the win probablities 25% per faction may not be the best game approach.
One thing that I think should have been in the game but was not would be augmenting the undead and wolf win conditions so that for undead to win, all the wolves need to be dead, and for the wolves to win, all the undead need to be dead-er (?). That way, the notion of collaboration becomes much harder to swallow.
Nope, from my notes I had you marked down as a Witch.
Sure glad I didn’t follow that one up
Yeah, I was kind of thinking that, too. It would be nice if we could’ve communicated privately, but would that have made it too easy?
So the Cabal–one of their powers is being unrecruitable? What else could they do–I was never too clear on that. Ironic, since everyone thought I was Cabal. Block other people’s powers?
Cabal Powers
You may talk secretly among yourselves, Day or Night, whether alive or dead (see below). As a unanimous group (alive and dead), the Cabal may choose to block the actions of one Player each Night. This will prevent the use of the targeted Player’s powers that Night and stop any attacks they may attempt. Witches are immune to being blocked.
Special Power 1
As the Bavarian Cabalist, you have a Secret Power: once per game, you may block all Night investigations, including the Witches’.
Special Power 2
As the Cabalist who serves Cthulhu, you have a Secret Power: once per game, you may block all protective Powers at Night (including the Witches’), guaranteeing that all attacks are successful.
Special Power 3
As the Discordian Cabalist, you have a Secret Power: once per game, you may confuse all Night Powers. All Night Powers (including the Cabal’s and the Witches’) will be randomly assigned targets. Users of a Power will know the target they ended up having, but not why it was changed. Powers will be resolved normally, once the new targets are assigned.
Of course, this will have changed by the time Pleonast decides to run this set again.
And look how well you did! I think the Undead are just about right. In hindsight, if you had used your recruitment on sachertorte on one of the early Nights, Undead would have won easily.
Good point. But a well-balanced game will give each faction a chance at winning, even through a couple unlucky breaks.
Forcing the Wolves and Undead to finish off each other in order to win would make it too easy for the Town to win. With the victory conditions as they were, the Wolves and Undead gain the same advantage of killing each other as Town. So they would really only want to collude if another faction were close to winning (like the Town was in this game). If a player is going to give up on winning and decides to help another Side, it doesn’t really matter if his own death is truly necessary, or merely helpful.
I see two big “game breakers” that need to be considered in any Maifa game: faction collusion and universal Town role-claims. Collusion is discouraged by orthogonal win conditions and advancement of win conditions by eliminating any other faction. (Of course, having only two factions precludes collusion entirely.) In these rules, the Wolves do not want to kill Vampires, but Necromancers are fair game. Vamps are happy to kill anyone. The Cabal must balance between helping the Town kill Undead/Wolves and killing the Witches via Undead/Wolves. As I’ve said up-thread, collusion can at best only be temporary, since as the currently dominant Side is killed off, the other Sides will be increasingly tempted to screw over each other. Only one Side can win, after all.
Universal Town role claims would change how the game plays out, but doesn’t really affect the balance, as long as complete protection is impossible. Scum will be better at picking out false claims than Townies, and so will target the real Townies. Townies making false claims sets up the Town for disaster (although, it might be something a Scotsman or Magician could try). As the Town gains an advantage in numbers or information, role claims become more useful. This is a basic mechanic of Mafia, so shouldn’t really be prevented.
Anyway, enough of my rambling on…
On preview: Zoggie, it’s somewhat in the Undead’s favor that they don’t know each other. Can’t give incriminating evidence about each other. And I specifically wanted to give the Vampire a chance to kill the Necro, to force some circumspection.
The Cabalists each had a special Night power.
- Blocking all investigations (the Bavarian).
- Blocking all protection powers (the Servant of Cthulhu).
- Randomizing all targets (the Discordian).
They never had a chance to use them.
If the undead get a couple of bad breaks they are out of the game, in much the same way as the Cabal were in this game.
It was only a chance investigation from the Witches on me which gave the game away. We played well, but once one of us goes down it is very hard for the other to get close to winning. I am really surprised we got that far.
I agree, I think it was far better that I did not know who the necromancer was.
I guess I just have a hard time seeing how a 22 person team with 10 scum is ‘balanced’ unless the scum are truly adversarial.
Something I noticed is that Town’s reluctance to chit chat and general lack of discussion was the most Pro-Town thing we did. In a weird inversion sort of thing, I found that Information in The Conspiracy was deadly to Town, especially in the Early-Game. In the typical mafia set-up, the addition of knowledge (e.g., who is town and who is not town) would lead to a decisive Town Win. In The Conspiracy, the addition of the same type of knowledge would have lead to a decisive Town LOSS. This inversion shows that information discovery hurts the town far more than it helps it. Thus the last minute, little discussion lynches of Days 2 and 3 probably were very good pro-town moves.
Can you explain your thinking more, sach?
We’ve often heard the mafia mantra that the game pits numbers versus information - Town has superior numbers, while scum have fewer numbers but more information (as well as the power to night kill). In the traditional setup, if the game moderator were to list on Day One who was Town and who was Not-Town, the game would end quickly with a decisive Town win – town would lynch scum perfectly and with their superior numbers, Town could not be stopped.
In The Conspiracy, the game setup is very different. Not only does town hold a lesser numbers advantage, but if the game moderator were to list on Day One who was Town and who was Not-Town, while Town could then lynch perfectly for the rest of the game, they would still lose. Scum would also know who was Town, and with multiple nightkills, the town numerical advantage would be erased by Day 3 or 4.
The game of mafia is designed around ‘town trying to figure out who is scum,’ but in The Conspiracy figuring out who is scum (and the converse, who is Town) loses the game. Thus, it is in the Town’s best interest to eschew the pursuit of knowledge, and hope/pray that scum knock each other out by accident.
At one point, I was so tempted to vote for “Pygmy Rugger* because he’s always scum” but that would have blown your cover in Firefly.
*You were still Pygmy Rugger at that point, I think.