The Syndicate

I was wondering how that reset happened!

I was willing to give you the BOTD with the pictures because I knew you were putting 110% into Biblical, but seeing how insanely analytical you were in that game, that's why I eventually broke down. I figured your motivations for posting pictures in this game were more likely baddie-driven, since your behavior in this game was SO different than in Biblical, where I knew you were a civilian.

MovingPictures07 wrote:And NOW I can finally say that I knew Balaam was G-Man and that's why I mainly thought he was faking the pictures in Economics because I saw civilian G-Man in full action here and he was SO DIFFERENT in Economics.

Sloonei wrote:Why me Night 2? basically you all have to explain every decision you made all game

Agreed, I'm also curious what the thinking was on pre-Golden 2.0-NKs.

Bass_the_Clever wrote:
Metalmarsh89 wrote:
Metalmarsh89 wrote:Whose idea was it to kill me on Night 1 and why?
It wasn't my idea. I think it was Roxy only because you weren't tossing any of our names around really. I wanted JJJ or DDL or MP gone night one because they were posting a ton. lol

I'll remember this.

Dragon D. Luffy wrote:Where is that queue?

Here it is!

Oh, seems I missed Golden's 1,000 too. Happy belated 1,000 posts, Golden!

I like numbers.

Congrats on 6,000 posts, MM!

Epignosis wrote:I don't have a hard stance on civilians being alive to win. In Masters of the Universe, the entire civilian faction won because Flyin' High won.

Since then, I've been meticulous about whether civilians should win as a group or not. It always depends on the roles and powers.

Ah, that's true, I just know you tend to be opinionated about it anymore and you haven't had a game where entire factions have won ever since (right? correct me if I'm wrong).

S~V~S wrote:
Dragon D. Luffy wrote:
Epignosis wrote:
S~V~S wrote:And like Epi, I have a very nuanced and layered view of the disco role issues. It boils down to I don't think it's sporting to ruin the baddies game. They work hard, and through no fault of their own, they get outed and lynched. When baddies go down (die, baddies, die!) it should be because they screwed up, not because someone got a PM from the host.
The lady said it better than the gent.

To go ahead and add the nuances I was referring to myself: If you allow civilians to win whether dead or alive, and its an open setup, then there is no reason for the info role to refrain from sharing everything.

And that makes for boring.

If you make civilians have to be careful because they don't win if dead, it makes the info role more careful in his function.
I see your point, but that comes with the nasty side effect of making players unwilling to play the game to the fullest, imo. Because a player who does not try hard would have a better chance at winning than one who does. JJJ would never win a game in this format, for example.
I do agree with you re civs winning dead or alive. I think no fear of death makes for more aggressive civs rather than blendy civs. When I host everyone has win with your team, dead or alive, except LMS roles.

I agree with this as well. Henceforth I'm going to be hosting my games either straight-up faction win (regardless of dead/alive) or make it an altered form. Like in Death Note where the win con was dead/alive but the mafia had additional win conditions, or in my upcoming RUSH game where you earn coins, but your team winning doesn't give you enough coins on its own so you have to win various individual role win cons (which are smaller) and accrue enough coins to win.

I will admit I love different perspectives at The Syndicate though. For example, Epi obviously disagrees with my view on dead/alive and Russ is more hardass than I am on info dumping (I say this with complete respect and friendlove), but I still play their games, and I still love the shit out of them.

Epignosis wrote:Make info rare. That's the obvious answer.

Yeah, that's definitely an answer. Lol.

I personally have a liking of info roles though; I'd rather include them and just make them weird. :P

Dragon D. Luffy wrote:
MovingPictures07 wrote:In Death Note, I had made Mogi a modified cop role in that, if he was silent for 48 straight hours, he could gain a role check that revealed to him that person's role with 50% accuracy. There was a 50% chance he would get the correct role, but a 50% chance that it was a randomly selected role from all roles in the game. I had tons of secrets in that game, though, so no one knew what Mogi's role actually did until it was revealed about halfway through the game. Funnily enough, Russ actually had that role. Russ never knew whether I was going to reveal the secrets or not, so he had the risk of playing it blatantly and trying to cash as many role checks as possible, yet risk outing himself later and getting NKed if I ever revealed them, or playing it safe but not getting near as many role checks. He did the former.
I like this. It's the kind of anti-cop mechanics I was talking about.

One game I hosted once had mafia have a one-shot ability that made every cop get inverted results for a cycle. They used it on day 1, and it almost made mafia win the game. Because town followed the results of an investigation blindly, and when it was wrong, they also blindly lynched the cop in the following day. So the idea is that town should have relied on their brains ALONG with the abilitiy instead of just the ability.

Unfortunately town ended up winning for role dumping because I had put too many masons on the game, but that's something I wanna correct in my next one.

I would actually say with confidence that there are more roles in games here like Mogi (unconventional takes on a standard role) or Nash (unconventional role) than Akerlof (straight-up standard role), that's for sure.

Re: the bolded/italicized, I love that. Awesome ability.

MovingPictures07 wrote: I do think that there is inevitable subjectivity involved in any game though, since there always can be cheating or asshattery, particularly so when games become more and more unconventional.

This is worded horribly, sorry.

I mean, I think there is inevitable subjectivity and subjectivity increases with unconventionality. Two examples of subjectivity are how the Host wants to deal with various cheating or asshattery (do you modkill them or punish them in another way?). There's also inactivity and how each Host wants to handle that.

Of course, a Host can choose to deal with only those issues and no subjectivity in terms of the game setup by making a game vanilla completely, or by making it role madness but making the roles unconventional and ambiguous. Again, depends on what the Host wants for his or her game.

G-Man wrote:"I Believe in a Thing Called Love" by The Darkness (I would have gotten too into this one and I realized that I didn't want any videos of me gyrating and thrusting on the internet)

DDL, I fixed your quotes for you.

I can understand your PoV. Inevitably, it depends on how the Host wants to run it, and I have noticed that Hosts have been increasingly experimenting on ways to counteract it using game mechanics instead of the way Russ included a straight-up cop here. It was intriguing to play with a standard cop role though.

I do think that there is inevitable subjectivity involved in any game though, since there always can be cheating or asshattery, particularly so when games become more and more unconventional.

S~V~S wrote:It boils down to I don't think it's sporting to ruin the baddies game. They work hard, and through no fault of their own, they get outed and lynched. When baddies go down (die, baddies, die!) it should be because they screwed up, not because someone got a PM from the host.

QFT

I almost refused to do the singing contest because I felt really embarrassed about it. Then I thought I probably would just try to loosen up and do it anyway, but forgot about it amid my busy schedule and in dogpeeing in the thread, actually, until Llama reminded me.

I think that Russ and Llama would have been disappointed and I would have lost by default, since I did ask them if I could just upload a partial video (like 10 seconds), but I think that's it. Either of them can correct me though, since I'm not entirely sure.

My punishment for losing was that I couldn't produce or sell for the Night.

Dragon D. Luffy wrote:One thing I don't understand is why implementing a cop is you are so vehemently against allowing the cop to use that information. Sure, not allowing role reveals is one thing, but wanting to modkill a player because he switched his reads too fast?

It gets too subjective for my tastes. What exactly is considered a cop "dumping information" and a cop "not dumping information"? Is he supposed to keep his apparent reads unchanged so there is no chance people will notice he is a cop? Or was he supposed to quote a few random posts from splints and pretend there was evidence for her being a townie in them?

At this point I'd rather stop implementing info roles in the games altogether, if I were you. Better than enforcing a very subjective set of roles to nerf the cop.

Sorry for the criticism, but this is just an aspect of this site that baffles me.

Different hosts and players have very different opinions on infodumping and we've continually had debates about this. I would say that Russ, Dom, and DharmaHelper are the three people at this site who are the strictest against info dumping, but the site culture is pretty much in general agreement on it in its most broad form, since all of our games (except one) have been historically open setup.

Personally, I feel I am much more loose about it than many; I am really bothered only when it is blatant and requires no skill, and my players make statements such as "I know DDL is bad" or "I know DDL is good".

For many, myself included, the rule makes the game of mafia much more nuanced. It takes no skill to check someone with your power and then go into the thread and say "so and so is mafia", then ending the game for that player, and thereafter getting yourself NKed. Instead, despite the role madness setup of many of our games, the game thread itself still maintains a strict form of the hunt. Players must instead challenge themselves to disseminate anything learned outside of the thread into their posts in a nuanced fashion. Games have become increasingly unconventional and very heavy on role madness here due mostly to demand, since many of us don't like playing vanilla games as much. It's partly ingrained in Lostpedia-based culture, as well as preferred by those I brought over from ProgArchives and other facets of my life.

What you say has some truth, though, and many hosts around here have stopped including straight-up cops in their games.

In Death Note, I had made Mogi a modified cop role in that, if he was silent for 48 straight hours, he could gain a role check that revealed to him that person's role with 50% accuracy. There was a 50% chance he would get the correct role, but a 50% chance that it was a randomly selected role from all roles in the game. I had tons of secrets in that game, though, so no one knew what Mogi's role actually did until it was revealed about halfway through the game. Funnily enough, Russ actually had that role. Russ never knew whether I was going to reveal the secrets or not, so he had the risk of playing it blatantly and trying to cash as many role checks as possible, yet risk outing himself later and getting NKed if I ever revealed them, or playing it safe but not getting near as many role checks. He did the former.

Linki with Epi and Golden: I am very intrigued by Epi's elaboration on this matter, though I do know his general view on it already. I also agree with Golden that Turnip Head played the role absolutely brilliantly.

All the more reason I was fine with becoming NK bait too was the fact that I randomly received the NK on N1 and the role check on N3. I figured I was already incredibly lucky and that Turnip Head could do so much more good with his powers than I could at that point.

I know, right! So glad I didn't do that.

Originally, I had actually intended to check Bass, before I decided on either splints or Roxy (and then couldn't decide on which one, lol). Probably good I didn't do that either.

Again, apologies for the obvious switcheroo. I panicked big time. Lol. I should have just waited and come to the thread later that night with my thoughts when I wasn't in the middle of working on something.

Thanks for elaborating, Russ!

I was really confused as to how Elo wasn't able to kill N1, after I triple checked with you and Llama that I didn't steal the NK and I couldn't see a role blocker anywhere, but that explains it!

I felt terrible for my 'too obvious' switcheroo on splints, so I appreciate the leniency there, but I was in a tough spot since I: (1) wanted to bait the NK, (2) I wanted to ensure splints wasn't lynched, and I knew she very well could due to the insane heat that was surrounding her, and (3) I had declared her to be mafia with such certainty I really didn't know what to do.

I intended to build up to it more subtly, instead of going in reverse (sudden turnaround, then trying to place less confidence on it after the fact), but my schedule was ridiculously overloaded around the start of D4 and I knew I shouldn't go into the thread for at least the first 24 hours of that period (but I ended up doing so anyway, so this was moot), so I panicked, fearing I would come back to early votes on splints (since we had seen earlier votes before), and didn't craft my first post after the Night period with nearly as careful of wording as I wanted. I was hoping it'd be OK since I tend to overexaggerate all the time in RL and mafia (being "99%" sure or "100%" sure and then calling out the entire baddie team, etc. etc.), but I was stuck in a hard place trying to make a post in a minute or two that conveyed a sense of urgency, the fact that I really think splints shouldn't be lynched even though I just got done tunneling her to an extreme, and still not break the rules yet try to seem like I have information to bait the NK.

If I could redo it, I definitely would have approached the situation differently, and worded it more subtly, but I'm not sure exactly what I would have said. Additionally, I'm not sure whether baiting the NK was the way to go, but I figured Turnip Head would be a goner N4 if I hadn't, and that splints might have been fucked after I died if people suspected I didn't have information on her.

I definitely dug myself a hole with the whole situation, but I am glad I checked splints anyway, otherwise she would have definitely been lynched D4 or D5, even if I had 100% confirmation on Roxy instead (and I almost did).

It's really funny how sometimes you pour your heart and soul into explaining your thoughts as a civilian and people don't believe you, whereas when you're a mafia and lying about it, people will sometimes more easily find you genuine. That doesn't happen as often for me, but it did a couple times in the past, and I've noticed this phenomenon in other players so many times over the years.

Vompatti wrote:
MovingPictures07 wrote:So if Vomps was Von Mises, who did he choose to have BTSC with?
JJJ and G-Man, plus a couple of people who got NK'd the same night I chose them, including you I think.

Damn, that's a bummer. I would have really enjoyed that BTSC!

Thankfully, I was reading your meta pretty strongly as town regardless, considering I usually have no idea. I don't know, call it gut. I just didn't really think you were a baddie this game. That explains why some others were semi-vouching for you though, especially G-Man at the end.

Sloonei wrote:So Town Golden gets lynched on Day 1, but scum Golden floats through untouched for 4 days?

Great game. I wish I could have been a part of it for longer and look forward to more games with y'all.

Sloonei, I just have to say it was an absolute pleasure getting to play with you after I had to back out of Mafia #85, even if you only lived through Night 2. I definitely look forward to playing with you in more games here and at RYM.

And I know, right? That's how it used to work for me too, Golden, when I had a streak of a few gambits a couple of years back. Then no one trusted me ever again.

Also, anyone who played this game should seriously consider playing Dom's game .

I think he needs about 10 more players before it can start.

So if Vomps was Von Mises, who did he choose to have BTSC with?

Golden wrote:Oh, my other favourite bit of the game other than the rap was this:

This series absolutely made my day. It's also the point at which I knew you would be dying that night. "you should have killed me last night" lol - it was too good to pass up.

MP, I loved your game this game. It was equal parts awesome and hilarious.

Haha, I'm glad you liked it. Honestly, I was just bullshitting, but I started thinking that those three all had a good chance of being bad, and wanted to apply some serious pressure.

Turns out my instincts weren't MUCH better than usual, but I tried.

fingersplints wrote:I think that all of us civvies had a lot of wrong suspicions, but what was great was that we really worked together as a team, and that is why we ALMOST won

I agree 100% with this.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:
MovingPictures07 wrote:
Golden wrote:Of course it's playing with fire. JJ, you have a great ability to turn completely on someone's alignment in a second.
This is SO true.

Oh my god, I'll never forget Mafia #84 when we lynched the first two scum on D1 and D2, then we had a couple of mislynches trying to find that pesky third one. After engaging two other players (Strawhenge and Seaside) who seemed more likely lynch candidates than the third player (other than Jay, sleepy, and myself, who were masons), Jay suddenly turned around on ProFic and we got him!

If it wasn't for Jay's intense analyzing and thus a sudden lightbulb moment, I would have proceeded to lynch Seaside, then Straw, since ProFic was reading most town to me of those three easily.
a very similar scenario played out in this game, but without the necessary quick-turn obviously.

that way-too-easy aether-sanmateo-G-Man lynch setup? yeah if i'm mafia i pursue that too.

Yeah, that's a good point, there are definitely some parallels. Only it's like an alternate universe where we didn't catch ProFic this time and now his name is Golden.

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:
MP -- this was the best game i've ever seen you play for sure. when you were alive you left everyone else in the dust in terms of effort, including me. and that does not happen.

Thanks, Jay!

I'm pretty proud of my performance this game myself. As I mentioned earlier, I was treating it with a Champs-like level of effort, which admittedly I'm not able to give to every other game due to RL (pesky RL getting in the way of mafia, am I right?).

That said, even though I did go all out in terms of time, I feel like my motivation and methods were also more effective than in other recent games, despite missteps along the way (Epi, got lucky with Elo, G-Man, etc.).

You did pretty well yourself, as expected. Not sure it's the best game I've ever seen you play though, but that's no easy feat.

Golden wrote:Of course it's playing with fire. JJ, you have a great ability to turn completely on someone's alignment in a second.

This is SO true.

Oh my god, I'll never forget Mafia #84 when we lynched the first two scum on D1 and D2, then we had a couple of mislynches trying to find that pesky third one. After engaging two other players (Strawhenge and Seaside) who seemed more likely lynch candidates than the third player (other than Jay, sleepy, and myself, who were masons), Jay suddenly turned around on ProFic and we got him!

If it wasn't for Jay's intense analyzing and thus a sudden lightbulb moment, I would have proceeded to lynch Seaside, then Straw, since ProFic was reading most town to me of those three easily.

fingersplints wrote:Remember how I said I signed up for too many games... If I had won this one I would have ended up winning all 4 games I was in at the same time. (Pretty sure I won the jtm one because I was dead but think it was one of those dead players win too ones - I got mvp that game anyways) that would have been awesome

Wow, that's nuts!

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:Thanks for hosting a great game, Russ and llama! And thank you for being so welcoming to all of us new people.

Moreover, thank you everyone for being so welcoming. The Syndicate seems like a lovely place and I'm happy to have had this chance to play with you all. Thank you for tolerating my ridiculous Mafia habits for such a long lifespan.

Very glad to hear it.

Hey, if I could put up with G-Man's pictures or Vomps, I can easily put up with your supatown style.

Golden wrote:Winning, I mean.

And JJJ, it was soooooooo much fun playing with you. You've given my civilian game a new dimension, I reckon. Stick around. Please.

This. It was playing with Jay and the other folks at RYM in Mafia #84 that recently really got me very into trying to actively revamp the way I approach the game, particularly as a civilian, as much as possible.

Turnip Head wrote:My role checks were
N1 - JJJ
N2 - DDL
N3 - Roxy
N4 - Bass

I hinted to both JJJ and DDL in the thread that I knew their roles. Did either of you catch that?

I highly suspected you had checked Jay and DDL the first two nights! Awesome.

Metalmarsh89 wrote:Bass was looking to switch up his playstyle in his next game. Perhaps he can use your example from this game to follow, MP.

Damn straight.

SUPATOWN

Metalmarsh89 wrote:
MovingPictures07 wrote:A Turnip Head recruit would have been ridiculous.

Wow, I can't believe we reached almost 4,000 posts in this thread.
Says the fellow who literally made 4,000 posts on Day 1.

A Turnip Head recruit would have been ridiculous.

Wow, I can't believe we reached almost 4,000 posts in this thread.

It's so weird but awesome to re-read those realizing you were actually town, G-Man. Lol.

G-Man wrote:
Epignosis wrote: My real plan was to behave outrageously enough to keep myself alive long enough for the role checker to target me.
Next time try posting in pictures. Apparently people cut you a looooot of slack even after they realize you're not cursed.

I could not believe how much slack you were getting, it's all the more reason I pursued you so hard on Day 4.

Indeed, I thought we pretty much had this game.

And my face was surely PRICELESS when I saw G-Man flip civilian. I was shocked. I wish I could have seen my own face.

G-Man wrote:
MovingPictures07 wrote:G-Man, I will at least apologize for tunneling and not believing your explanation. For the record, I thought it was mostly true, but that you were omitting the aspects of your decision that were influenced by your alignment. I honestly thought it was more likely Rox's idea than yours.

There's another reason too that I thought you were lying but I can't talk about it yet! I think.
Yeah, you crossed a line that day but I'll forgive you for peeing all over my face.

It was bound to happen at some point but I didn't expect you to come at me so hard, so persistently, and for nearly as long as you did.

I thought about giving up on it a few times but every time I found the will to go the distance.

Heh. Sounds like I'm warming up for The Office Mafia game.

I was just trying to see how you'd react to pressure. :P I honestly had no anticipation of going after you like that either, but based on your responses, I really thought I was onto something.

YES, I can't wait for The Office Mafia. Your Dwight pictures were the best.

Golden wrote:You know how there are some mafia games you play and then you sort of forget in the mists of time?

This is not one of those games.

Agreed 100%. Awesome play from everyone, awesome hosting from our hosts.

Golden wrote:Everyone would be wise to respect TB. She's quiet, but she's got game.

I feel like practically everyone played a good game. This was such an awesome game.

Golden wrote:
TinyBubbles wrote:Anyway golden what have I said that's pinging you?? Kind of disappointed tbh, thought you had my back unless golden 2.0 is golden ressurected to the dark side.. say it ain't so, dear golden. I thought your intuition was pretty accurate?
This was the smoking gun you missed...

Not who TB already had if she was akerlof - but who she was going to get next! It's why TB died. I had to ask and plead Roxy and Bass to change their plan - it was to be MP or TH. They were right, and I was wrong.

Wow, that is scary in retrospect. Well played game by TB! I'm looking forward to playing with TB again as well.

G-Man, I will at least apologize for tunneling and not believing your explanation. For the record, I thought it was mostly true, but that you were omitting the aspects of your decision that were influenced by your alignment. I honestly thought it was more likely Rox's idea than yours.

There's another reason too that I thought you were lying but I can't talk about it yet! I think.

G-Man wrote: Here's some truth for you: I was originally part of the mafia team. Before the reset, the mafia team comprised of:
-G-Man
-Jimmy
-Roxy
-Sloonei

Holy fuck. That team...

Brilliantly played, Golden. Seriously. You have an outstanding civilian game and you replicated it well here.

Golden wrote:
G-Man wrote:
G-Man, you have no idea how much I loved playing this game with you. Your dedication to the memes was nothing short of legendary.

I apologise for being a coward although when I read that post telling me to NK you, I literally laughed out loud at my screen. It was awesome!

I agree, G-Man. It was a pleasure, despite the fact that your usage of pictures and WIFOM really annoyed me at times, I couldn't deny you were owning it. I laughed at so many of your pictures, they were perfect.

I'll update the Hall of Fame later when I know whether to include BWT.

And 3 for Roxy.

Bass now has 5 wins this year. I can't believe it.

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