Thank you for that clarification JB. Honestly, that does help me to not get so bent out of shape from your guys’ questions.
Thanks again.
A mod-confirmed role is essentially a mason group of one. This type of singleton mason is unlynchable without a fake counterclaim by scum. And even with a fake claim, that player is likely to remain not-lynched anyway. Fake claims by scum are inherently bad for scum. Too many mod-confirmed town roles and it becomes basically impossible for scum to have any chance at winning.
At its core, mafia is a game of information versus numbers. Town has the numbers but not the information. Scum has the information, but not the numbers. Once either side gains access to the piece they don’t have, they win.
Mod-confirming roles is giving Town information like candy. Usually the way the game plays out is Town has to sacrifice numbers to gain access to information. So far, Town has offered nothing by way of numbers and gained quite a bit of information for free.
Ok, but how is my way different then an open game where you know how many Town roles there are what they are… Claiming to be Frank Martin in my game is not much different then claiming to be Town Commuter in an open setup. Am I wrong in this?
The fundamental difference is that open setups are usually weighted so that early claiming is less useful.
In your game, claiming “Frank Martin” is safer because scum doesn’t know what the rest of town looks like. They can’t calculate whether it’s a good idea to go after him or not. Is he a doctor or a roleblocker? Can he be protected? In a completely closed setup, claiming “hey guys, I’m Frank Martin the town Roleblocker” would still engender discussion about whether that was a role that even exists. In your game, you’ve verified that there is a Frank Martin and that he’s town.
Meanwhile, your flavor text also implies that there is a player named Karl who attempted to make a night kill. Town can infer that this means that scum have to choose one of them to actually make the kill. This is an important piece of data, too, because in some games scum just collectively decide who’s going to get whacked. If that’s not the case, then the flavor text is misleading and that has further implications.
ANYWAY.
Mosier is pinging my scumdar pretty hard. Astral is right when he says that no-lynch days are bad, and it’s pretty early in the game for anybody to be “certain” of who scum is just off of Day 1 clues.
No. Not wrong at all. I would argue that an open set up game with many unique known-to-be-Town roles is unbalanced from the start.
Open setup should have very very few unique known-to-be-town roles and many many many vanilla town.
Ok, well thanks for that clarification everyone.
I have decided to post a list of all the Night Actions that transpired in the game at the end of the game, so you guys can get an idea more of what happened and how I interpreted it into the narratives.
I will say this - there are 3 scum players and 7 town. Town does have power roles, obviously, but some Town are vanilla.
I don’t see where Mosier is in any position to soft claim a power role today. He was on the lynch block yesterday. Any claiming should have happened then.
I feel bad for Astral. It looks like he has to argue with a wall.
If there really are three scum then I take back my comments about being unfair to scum. That’s really quite a lot of scum for a game so small.
Well, I agree that at first it may seem like too many Scum, but then again, I have some fairly powerful Town roles. So we will see how it works out. I think I balanced it well enough.
Dante, if you are going to share information about the game state not known to players in this thread, could you use a spoiler box?
Sorry. Will do.
Thanks. I just prefer limiting myself to the same information available to the actual players. (That way, when I’m right about something I can pretend I’m quite smart and not just lucky.)
Well, that fell apart rather quickly on me.
It was fun having you, though. Thanks for playing!
It did, didn’t it…
This game is interesting - being able to match up the role names/character names to players adds an extra layer for deduction. Prof P put it all together pretty quickly.
Well, this game was definitely different from the other Mafia games we’ve had on this board. With Dante actively shaping the game as it goes along, it feels a little more like a tabletop RPG, or something like that.
At this point, the only lingering question for Town is whether AstralRejection or HookerChemical is the last villain. It might come down to a coin toss.
I can post without risking spoilers! I was so relieved when Prof. posted 490!
Did you investigate him?
No, I investigated sangfroid. By making so many town power roles, Dante made sangfroids alter ego very betraying. When starting out, I was unsure of the extent of powers beyond myself and a godfather. Then we found out about the transporter, the deputy and Mel Gibson. Sangfroids alter ego was TOWN. When names became players, it became obvious sangfroid was Hans. The reason I investigated him is because I realised last game I can’t read him. And I figured he’d capitalize on that either way. I probably should have shared it as soon as possible, but I wanted to stay hidden for a bit longer. I tried to put attention to him, and I think it worked out in that respect.
Who do you think is Karl?
I’m unsure, but I’m leaning HookerChemical for now. I’m hoping this day will be a bit more substantial. Jason Bourne… More than TOWN.