The Syndicate

i dont feel good having this conversation but i would feel worse if i were to ignore this

i dont want to suggest having this thread locked out of "removing people's freedom of speech"

but i wont stop responding to stuff that are wrong. so if me and jack continuing to talk bothers you @ mods feel free to lock the thread. in any channels of communication that i have available though, i will not ignore incorrect statements and i will keep responding to them

the last two days were non-standard - yes

mafia had the option to out themselves/look very scummy by guaranteeing a chop on d3 - yes. but i have it written in the card "you may not use this ability during MyLo or LyLo"

town not having the potential for a 100% guaranteed lock on the chop like in a standard game - that doesnt seem broken to me? why is it broken?

if they out themselves, and on the next day they "remove themselves from the poll", the town could have scrutinized the person who removed said outed wolves from the poll. Jpic's duel was publicly announced, and it was announced that he was the one who activated the ability. did town really have no chance to win?

tutuu wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 8:45 pm

NANOOKTHEGREATANDFEARSOME wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:39 pm

tutuu wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:11 pm

NANOOKTHEGREATANDFEARSOME wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:09 pm GM and players arguing in post isn't fun

Sometimes better to just let players vent and realize its not meant as a personal attack

should let players vent but hosts cant vent, they are your retail workers that are supposed to just smile and nod along am i right

This seems uncalled for

You know I host frequently, I am no stranger to people complaining about a setup in post. Frustrating or not, sometimes people need to vent and that's OK, responding with emotion just leads to hurt feelings and frustration on both sides. I get it, you put a lot of work into this setup and its frustrating to see people complain about or criticize it. Realize that they aren't customers venting at retail workers, they're fellow community members expressing an opinion. You can ignore that opinion if you think its wrong, but firing back does little good.

If so let me vent instead of firing back at me, yeah? Am i not a fellow community member?

@NANOOKTHEGREATANDFEARSOME

Im sorry but i want to finish my piece on this. This makes no sense to me. Why does the onus have to fall on the host to disengage and not to the player? Why does the host need to realize that its not personal and should just let it go, but the player shouldnt also be encouraged to let it go and realize that the game not going in their favor was not a personal attack on them made by the host to make them suffer? I felt singled out by you saying that only i should disengage and not jack as well, so thats what i said to u the thing i did

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:42 pm

tutuu wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:34 pm

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:29 pm Town plays 100% perfectly -> wolves control the yeet and have to look bad but it doesn’t matter because they can take themselves off the poll.

wrong

if town played perfectly u would have voted for wilgy or jpic instead of essentially no-voting on d3. town (and ultimately u) had control there

3 wolves were taken off the poll on d3 but also a whole bunch of town. the ability was public. town could have scumread the person responsible for taking people off the poll and thunderdoming a marked target. town could have voted jpic. town could have convinced epi and hkatt to vote jpic. epi and hkatt could have listened to the other townies

wolves did not mechanically control the yeet

What are you talking about? Wolves controlled the yeet entirely D3 because it was not mechanically possible for the town to vote all town players unless they correctly identified and all agreed on who that town was and even then, wolves could all vote each other and do whatever they want. There is zero way to mathematically ensure a wolf yeet on D3 even with perfect reads. You’ve proposed a way. I vote Wilgy. Okay. And then any wolf voting a townie Jpic and they still yeet a townie.

Wolves controlled the yeet but they would look bad if they did under certain scenarios =/= town controlling the yeet.

Town did scumread the wolf left on the poll but 2/3rds of us weren’t allowed to vote.

And the point about the gladiator wasn’t “wolves controlled D4’s yeet.”

The point is that the apparent balancing mechanic to allowing wolves to entirely control D3’s yeet is that they might end up looking bad, which I’m pointing out is entirely irrelevant since wolves can remove most of their team from the poll.

A wolf gladiator is unbalanced for other reasons but we’ve already gone over player expectations and how that fits into game balance.

Wolves controlling the yeet but looking scummy in the circumstance of town being right =/= wolves controlling the yeet full stop though, thats obvious

In a normal game a town can wagon a scum, and scum can cfd to save their wolf, looking scummy in the process

I dont see the difference

I acknowledge it was too hard and frustrating, i reject the notion that it was impossible or that towm had no chance

You not being allowed to vote for ur correct scumread on d4 does not make the game broken, since i ensured town was in control of the chop on d4 mathematically if u will. The triple neighborhood ability forced the user to target two town.

NANOOKTHEGREATANDFEARSOME wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:39 pm

tutuu wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:11 pm

NANOOKTHEGREATANDFEARSOME wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:09 pm GM and players arguing in post isn't fun

Sometimes better to just let players vent and realize its not meant as a personal attack

should let players vent but hosts cant vent, they are your retail workers that are supposed to just smile and nod along am i right

This seems uncalled for

You know I host frequently, I am no stranger to people complaining about a setup in post. Frustrating or not, sometimes people need to vent and that's OK, responding with emotion just leads to hurt feelings and frustration on both sides. I get it, you put a lot of work into this setup and its frustrating to see people complain about or criticize it. Realize that they aren't customers venting at retail workers, they're fellow community members expressing an opinion. You can ignore that opinion if you think its wrong, but firing back does little good.

If so let me vent instead of firing back at me, yeah? Am i not a fellow community member?

i am done with this.

were taken off the poll d4*

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:29 pm Town plays 100% perfectly -> wolves control the yeet and have to look bad but it doesn’t matter because they can take themselves off the poll.

wrong

if town played perfectly u would have voted for wilgy or jpic instead of essentially no-voting on d3. town (and ultimately u) had control there

3 wolves were taken off the poll on d3 but also a whole bunch of town. the ability was public. town could have scumread the person responsible for taking people off the poll and thunderdoming a marked target. town could have voted jpic. town could have convinced epi and hkatt to vote jpic. epi and hkatt could have listened to the other townies

wolves did not mechanically control the yeet

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:21 pm You keep bringing up mistakes the town made as a defense against criticism of the game’s balance.

you are arguing that the d3 chop was broken because even if town played perfectly they could have been robbed of it. thats what i understood

so i responded with "town didnt even play perfectly in the first place. but even if they did, a mafia would have looked scummy for the unexplained cfd"

am i missing something?

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:17 pm As long as town doesn’t play perfectly, game can’t be broken, right?

I’m not arguing town deserved to win this game.

I’m arguing the game was broken and town only had the ability to yeet their top suspect on D1 and D2.

"As long as town doesn’t play perfectly, game can’t be broken, right?" im not arguing that, im responding to what i perceived to be ur argument about why the reverse chop was broken

if thats not it, i still dont understand why u think it was broken

town had the ability to chop mafia on all 4 days. ive laid out why multiple times. the game wasn't perfect but it wasn't broken

(and town didnt even play perfectly on d3)

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:11 pm
Except we didn’t control the yeet D4 either because the wolves had the ability to take 3 wolves off the poll.

It didn’t matter if most of the wolf team outted D3.

Which ignores that “it would make them look bad to do X” is not the same as “they couldn’t do X.”

in order to take 3 wolves off the poll they had to make it 50/50 between a wolf and a town...

just because they could forcibly grab control of the d3 chop even if town played perfectly, i dont see how thats broken? they could - and they would look bad for it. whats the issue?

NANOOKTHEGREATANDFEARSOME wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:09 pm GM and players arguing in post isn't fun

Sometimes better to just let players vent and realize its not meant as a personal attack

should let players vent but hosts cant vent, they are your retail workers that are supposed to just smile and nod along am i right

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:08 pm

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:07 pm

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:06 pm If I had voted Wilgy, nothing stops LC from voting JPIC and yeeting Tony.

Except Tony was a wolf right? Lol

If I voted Wilgy, nothing stops Enrique from voting JPIC and yeeting me.

Town did not mechanically control the yeet D3.

then enrique gets questioned why did he vote for jpic at the last second

even in normal games wolves potentially have the power to cfd

a mountainous game in which a cfd occurs to save a wolf partner does not make mountainous games broken

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:06 pm If I had voted Wilgy, nothing stops LC from voting JPIC and yeeting Tony.

yea well tony was mafia? so i dont see the problem? if u had voted for wilgy, a mafia would have been chopped on d3

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:01 pm

tutuu wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 5:56 pm your criticism is not legit

wolves had no mechanical control over who gets chopped. town had.

town also had kill power

Your proposed plan only works if ALL players play along, even wolves.

I literally had no ability to effect the yeet as a townie for half the game.

That’s broken.

Town had to catch and all specifically agree on two wolves to yeet a wolf D3.

Town had to catch specifically JPIC and all agree on D4.

That’s broken.

I’m not upset I lost. I like being fooled. I have never once been mad at a wolf for tricking me. I probably have lost half of the town games I’ve played. Maybe more.

For you to dismiss criticism of this game by calling me a poor sport is bullshit and rude.

if wolves didnt play along with the most pro-town plan you could have chopped them

you had the ability to affect the chop on d3, on d4 u had ur voice

the town had no just agree to chop a wolf on d3

town didnt have to catch specifically jpic. it was 2 townies and 1 mafia deciding the chop. then jpic made it 50/50 between himself and a town. "Town had to catch specifically JPIC and all agree on D4. - this line makes no sense

i dont think the setup was broken

tutuu wrote: ↑Mon Mar 15, 2021 6:43 pm Official VC 3.2:

(On the left = wagon. On the right = voters)

112 - 1 - Urist
DrWilgy - 0 -
TonyStarkPrime - 1 - Long Con
Enrique - 1 - hollowkatt
Epignosis - 2 - Guillotine, Justplayingitcool
falcon45ca - 1 - MacDougall
Guillotine - 1 - Epignosis
hollowkatt - 1 - falcon45ca
Jackofhearts2005 - 1 - Enrique
Justplayingitcool - 0 -
Long Con - 1 - TonyStarkPrime
MacDougall - 2 - DrWilgy, Jackofhearts2005
Urist - 1 - 112

Not voting - 0 -

Let me know if there are any mistakes


ISO Links:

Spoiler: show

tutuu

DrWilgy
dunya / TonyStarkPrime
Enrique
Epignosis
falcon45ca
Guillotine
Jackofhearts2005
Justplayingitcool
Kylemii
Long Con
MacDougall
Made
Marmot
Nicol Bolas / 112
hollowkatt
tedxtr
Poison / Urist

this is the wagon composition on day 3 (the reverse chop day)

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 15, 2021 6:19 pm

hollowkatt wrote: ↑Mon Mar 15, 2021 6:09 pm

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 15, 2021 6:07 pm I don't even have a fucking townread on Guillo.

That move was scummy af.

I hard town read the following:
Epi
TSP
Guillo
LC

Town read:
Mac
You (Jack)
Falcon
Enrique

Don't town read:
Urist
112
Wigly
JPIC

That's not the point, though.

The point is that if it's JPIC and Wilgy but not Enrique, that would have singlehandedly yeeted a townie and I don't see the townie motivation to make that move.

Now, if JPIC or Wilgy goes and flips town on us, it's NAI. So yeah, worrisome but we'll see.

this is your last post on day 3. its 40 minutes before eod

you had the power to choose who gets chopped between wilgy and jpic. you were online

there were no votes in between this last post of yours and eod

you could have chopped wilgy or you could have chopped jpic. you instead kept ur vote on mac who already had a vote and gave wolves the ability to decide who gets chopped between wilgy and jpic

how can u argue that i robbed u of the chance to vote man

why didnt u vote one of them d3? am i missing something?

i am aware and acknowledge the fact that it was too much / too annoying / not enough room for error, the way i made it, but thats clearly not what im arguing agaisnt

your criticism is not legit

wolves had no mechanical control over who gets chopped. town had.

town also had kill power

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 5:51 pm Like if the wolves wanted, they yeet a townie on D3 100% of the time. There is no mathematical way for town to control the yeet under that rule set. Wolves could give the town the ability to yeet but ultimately, the wolves were in control.

2/3rds of the townies alive at endgame had no vote for half the game.

3/3rds of the townies had no ability to vote for their top suspect for half the game.

In mafia, wolves should control kills and townies should control yeets. In this game, wolves got to essentially control both. They were given extra kill power and were able to control who could and could not be yeeted from a mechanical perspective.

We could have flat caught 3/4ths of the mafia on Day 3 but as long as JPIC wasn’t caught, all of the mafia would have survived the game.

I’m sorry. This game was flat broken.

as ive said, eveyone could agree on a person to get yeeted and that person would have been yeeted. town could yeet whoever they wanted to as long as they agree in advance

on day 4 multiple people couldnt vote but they could speak. they could have suggested to epi and hollowkatt to vote for their scumreads. the town was warned of the extra kill power had urist been chopped. town played flat out poor

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 5:40 pm

tutuu wrote: ↑Sun Mar 28, 2021 3:57 pm for day 3 - if everyone agreed on a name - lets say X to get chopped, everyone could have voted alphabetically for the person below their name except X. this guarantees X to get chopped because they can't self-vote or interfere in any way. it was way too annoying for town but technically the D3 chop was in town's control as long as they put a lot of effort to work as a team

the chop on D4 was also in town's hands. it was 2 towns and 1 mafia deciding the chop. town was in control and they mischopped

This plan fails if even 1 additional player doesn’t play along. There are multiple wolves in this setup and townie don’t agree on everything. Not to mention the time spent trying to essentially undo the rules of the game is time not spent doing anything to find the wolves.

Like...just because you came up with ideas to break your own mechanics doesn’t mean it’s reasonable for the town to have that same idea and for everyone to go along with it.

just because i didnt leave enough room for error to the town it does not absolve the town of the fault that they misplayed and does not mean that im going to keep taking the blame and letting the losing team cope with the fact that they lost because they played worse by blaming the mechanics or the setups

town played worse and they lost. town's reads were not good at any stage of the game

the post that you're quoting to is clearly in response to the argument that "town never stood a chance"

even if the chop on d3 was robbed town has only themselves to blame for the mischop on days 1 2 and 4

im getting tired of people being sore losers. we clearly have different opinions on balance. singing up for my games is optional and u dont have to do it if u dont want to. im sorry for the black dot on your win record in the spreadsheet but im sure you'll live with it

for day 3 - if everyone agreed on a name - lets say X to get chopped, everyone could have voted alphabetically for the person below their name except X. this guarantees X to get chopped because they can't self-vote or interfere in any way. it was way too annoying for town but technically the D3 chop was in town's control as long as they put a lot of effort to work as a team

the chop on D4 was also in town's hands. it was 2 towns and 1 mafia deciding the chop. town was in control and they mischopped

town could have won if they played good as opposed to playing bad like they did

required 1 blue and 1 generic*

MacDougall wrote: ↑Sun Mar 21, 2021 4:19 pm My base role required all my mana

it required 1 red and 1 blue, your base mana was 1 red 1 blue and 1 colorless

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 21, 2021 2:33 pm Publicly announcing a thing doesn’t make it necessarily balanced. It’s a good step a lot of the time but a public imbalanced setup is still imbalanced.

i dont think that the marking role was imbalanced, feel free to disagree and be adamant about it if you want but i dont think its imbalanced

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 21, 2021 2:34 pm

tutuu wrote: ↑Sun Mar 21, 2021 2:32 pm wolves didnt give you mana afaik

It was my understanding that I received mana from LC and Urist on D1 but not enough to kick on N1. I could be wrong on all of that.

wolves gave mana only to themselves all game afaik. only urist gave u 1 mana d1. u generate 3 mana per day, u targeted urself, on n1 u had 4 mana total, u needed 1 more to kick

wolves didnt give you mana afaik

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 21, 2021 2:21 pm The idea that I one time received 1/3rd of the required mana to upgrade my ability or that there were several townies with the ability to band together in trips to upgrade a single town ability does not disprove my point.

I gained twice as much mana from wolves as from townies, from which the idea that I should have found wolves based on who gave mana does not follow.

And again, this is coming from the pov of a townie that said prior to any night phase “my power is more useful if I get mana from other people.” And I was widely townread.

I’m not sure if I didn’t get mana because people missed the uncommon day deadline or they feared punish the fool or gave elsewhere or didn’t trust me. I think all of those things factored into townies not having a lot of night power.

And the town not having a bunch of night power isn’t an issue. I just think it doesn’t deserve multiple extra wolf kills to balance it’s strength.

1/2nd (you needed 2 mana to upgrade it)

i think that a lot of people missed deadline because there was an information overload, punish the fool was way too powerful too. scum had the advantage of having 4 people who could submit each other's mana, so 4 times the chance to not miss the deadline. on day 1 they all didnt submit it optimally aswell, they were too overwhelmed and just self targeted

i think that, once again, my mistakes was the reverse chop on day 3, and punishing town from trying to teamplay. the game was really complex and i didnt communicate how non-standard it was. (the post i wrote right after the game ended)

i disagree that mafia being given extra KP was inbalanced in this particular game since it was all publicly announced

the Marks - they were publicly announced. JPIC gaining 5 dmg if he wins a duel - he had to win the duel first. the 3 dmg from dunya's / tsp's role - they had to neighborize a person

locking town people out of voting was annoying - i get that, and i will hesitate before implementing it again, but:

town was in control of the day 4 chop (it was 2 townies and 1 scum deciding the vote between 1 town and 1 scum). town knew that they would lose if they chopped urist and jpic was mafia. it was telegraphed. i dont think the mafia kill power was the issue in this game

i do believe that day 4 was basically f3 lylo, and town had great odds if jpic was chopped

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 21, 2021 2:04 pm It’s not reasonable for a townie to expect that “things I can roleblock” includes a mafia ability to essentially burn a day phase.

i probably could have done a better job at communicating in the OP that the game has a ton of non-standard mechanics, but, i thought that the player who randed your role would target his scumreads every night. i wouldnt make a role that incentivizes its owner to holster it if they wanna play optimally

i dont think it would have been bullying players into doing X, i think people would just try to solve the game the most optimal way they can

it would have been broken because the mafia would be robbed out of their night kill every night because it costs mana

i wanted to give mafia options so i made their NK cost mana. if it didnt cost mana, and more abilities didnt give feedback / weren't confirmable perhaps PTF wouldnt have been needed

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 21, 2021 11:13 am Honestly, I think Punish the Fool was poorly considered. Not in terms of costs and damage but in its existence at all.

I was normally a weakened version of a roleblocker, a medium strength town role. Specifically, the roleblocker has the low chance to block a mafia kill, saving a townie and catching a wolf. This part of the power was removed, making my role weak to the point of actually being antitown. Without the chance to block a kill, I deemed the chance of blocking a more useful town ability higher than the ability to meaningfully disrupt scum on most nights.

Now, in order to move my ability from antitown to medium strength town, I had to

1) Out my ability, giving the mafia a roadmap and leading to a higher chance of disruption via mafia night action and

2) One or more likely two townies had to sacrifice their night actions by giving me mana.

Perhaps more important than those downsides, upgrading my ability requires the town to coordinate night actions in a way that is unrealistic. In spite of my D1 claim and being widely townread, it’s my understanding that I never received mana from a townie all game. I personally missed the mid day mana giving deadline (midday deadlines being not a thing in 99% of mafia games) multiple times.

Punish the Fool seems to be a mechanic similar to soupkill or anticlaim, ie giving the wolf team a massive bonus in extra kills in order to counter and discourage a game breakingly powerful town strategy of roleclaiming, generally in games with open setups or restricted themes. However, it was instead used to counter a difficult to coordinate mechanic that already requires significant sacrifice.

This town was mechanically weak without PtF. With it, I’d wager that most of the mechanics in this game were not used at all because there was such a strong disincentive for townies to give each other mana.

i disagree with mostly everything here

i dont think that you can say that the mafia non-damaging actions which we got to see in action (interacting with the chopping poll) were way too anti-town, and also say that your ability to block non-damaging actions was anti-town

these two seem to contradict each other, dont they?

i dont think that using the unkicked power of your role was antitown. there were no investigative roles as written in the OP, the most anti town thing you could have done was block one of the two protectives. blocking wilgy and made's roles weren't that impactful, they were VT-esque. all 4 of the mafia members had non-damaging anti-town abilities

you didnt need to out your ability. you needed 2 blue and 3 generic to activate it. you could generate 2 blue and 1 colorless by yourself. you could ask for 2 of any color, at most you could claim that you were centered around blue mana if you wanted to but i dont think you needed to claim anything about your color or ability. urist sent you a blue mana on day 1

there were only 3 townies who had to sacrifice their ability in order to give away mana - urist, guillotine and made. their abilities costed 3. your role, kyle's, hollowkatt's, falcon's, mac's, ted's roles - all of those used 2 mana for their basic ability, and were incentivized to give one of their spare mana away every day, unless they think that they will receive something. marmot and epi were masons with purposely very weak artifacts and were also incentivized to give away mana or use it on one of their abilities. 112's role couldnt activate her ability on her own so similarly she was incentivized to either give it away or try to obtain.

without PTF i think that the game was breakable because people could split the game in two parts - one scummy and one towny part, and force all players from the scummy part to give their mana to the players in the towny part. and then everyone would claim it, and people would keep records of it, and, idk. in the early game maybe it wouldn't have been that breakable but at the mid-late game if there were 1-2 wolves they would have been mech outed easily i think due to being forced to give away mana

i agree that the way it is now was too punishing for town and they couldnt coordinate enough even if they wanted to

i disagree that without it the town was mechanically weak

Long Con wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 6:54 pm Fantastic game, amazing attention to detail and balance and creativity and INNOVATION, this is a VERY strong contender for Best Racket this year. Phenomenal and inspiring, thank you so much tutuu. I have never seen anything like this.

T_T T_T T_T

Justplayingitcool wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 6:33 pm Can I just how funny it was that none of you noticed how the pursue card for the marking has wolves in it!

to be fair that was double reverse psychology on my part when picking the picture :P

i purposely made town-generated artifacts ominous looking so it wouldn't be revealing that they were towny





(note the tentacles)

if i were to have the "Pursue" token look benign, i think it would actually hint that it was mafia-generated (coz it makes sense to have mafia-generated stuff be benign looking right?)

so i thought its more fitting and constent to have it scummy-looking just like the town-generated tokens, and this way hopefully end up having it be perceived as benign

Urist wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 6:24 pm

tutuu wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 6:20 pm

Urist wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 6:16 pm

tutuu wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 6:02 pm On day 4 if JPIC was yeeted I think the scales would have been evened out and it would have been 50/50, maybe even town would have been slightly ahead

I don't think town would have figured out the mana leaf thing was w/w. But at least it would have been closer to a win!

The mana leaves would have showed up on their corpses

So if either LC or Enri got chopped or vigged, a Mana Leaf would show up on their corpse (as being part of their possession), and on their Mana Leaf Generator Ability it would have been written "You cannot self-target"

(They both gave each other a Mana Leaf on N1)

Oh so we would have just won then.

Assuming that one of LC/Enrique gets chopped after JPIC, and if people notice that the other one is outed due to the Mana Leaf being part of their possession, and assuming that Enri/LC doesn't successfully defend himself with "the mafia has power that steals artifacts", and then assuming TSP was chopped at f4 mylo - yeah

Urist wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 6:16 pm

tutuu wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 6:02 pm On day 4 if JPIC was yeeted I think the scales would have been evened out and it would have been 50/50, maybe even town would have been slightly ahead

I don't think town would have figured out the mana leaf thing was w/w. But at least it would have been closer to a win!

The mana leaves would have showed up on their corpses

So if either LC or Enri got chopped or vigged, a Mana Leaf would show up on their corpse (as being part of their possession), and on their Mana Leaf Generator Ability it would have been written "You cannot self-target"

(They both gave each other a Mana Leaf on N1)

(thread is unlocked; game is over!)

I don't think that I like vote power manipulation (Made and Guillotine's roles), I most likely won't dabble there again. The reverse chop as I already mentioned could have been designed better, but I do like the triple neighborhood, I think that was very cute and thematic with the planeswalker Tibalt (deception) and his fakeclaim Elspeth (community). Since he was forced to pick 2 town I don't think it was overpowered. The role revolved around pocketing people which is what Tibalt would do. I'm also happy with the balance of enrique's vraska's role - it was a skill oriented ability. the town was alerted of the consequences, so they had to make a wifom-based decision. it wasn't a hidden KP out of nowhere that they couldn't prepare for, they made an informed choice

i think that if this setup was played as it is 1000 times, with a playerlist that wasn't prepared for this, mafia would win more than 500 and less than 600 of those games. it was also a very swingy setup since all roles had a lot of impact, so there was a big snowball effect. if a mafia was chopped on day 1 or day 2 i think there would have been a snowball for town and the game would have taken a competely different turn. On day 3 the mafia were all sweating because if hollowkatt had unvoted Enrique and voted for wilgy at EoD, it was guaranteed that JPIC or Enrique gets chopped, and then the other one would then get de facto outed and it would have been game over for the wolves. JPIC was also sweating hard in wolf chat during his duel with Urist. On day 4 if JPIC was yeeted I think the scales would have been evened out and it would have been 50/50, maybe even town would have been slightly ahead

I wanna congratulate all 5 members of the mafia @Long Con @dunya @Enrique @TonyStarkPrime @Justplayingitcool , I could see from wolf chat how much effort and passion everyone was expressing. We even all had a dream about this game on the same exact night (except enrique who's dream came a bit late). JPIC dreamt of the wolf chat being accidently leaked somewhere and townies entering it and him getting outed and chopped, and "tears were shed". I dreamt that the mason chat between epi and marmot was somehow leaked and another player entered it and i was very upset. I forgot what were LC's and dodo's dreams but they had it on the same night as us literally and i think that they were all very similar.(TSP joined us too late to have a dream, next game though!). I think this was all due to dunya neighborizing hollowkatt, and we were all very intrigued.

i wanna thank all the members of the town for putting up a fight as well, and i know that this was a very overly-complicated game with convoluted mechanics, and especially if you haven't played MTG before, and you didn't have BTSC to talk with someone, this game was probably very daunting and confusing, particularly "how do i work as a team with the rest of the town to use our mana properly"

all of the wolves put a ton of effort both ITT (and outside the thread for dunya and TSP), and during the night and organizing their mana. so it's not like the mafia had a chill and stress-free game and just coasted off of their power roles, i do believe that they worked very hard for their win. they performed better than the town from my pov, both in terms of daytalk and in terms of towns devouring themselves with their scumreads and with their night actions

so i feel like mafia being rewarded for their greater effort and performance with the win is fair and to be expected. other people are free to disagree, but i have faith in myself that im able to determine balance, if not perfectly than at least moderately. thanks for playing, everyone!

^^^

These are my opinions on what I could have balanced better. I have no regrets about anything else. I'm happy with the balance on Enrique's, JPIC's, dunya's/TSP's and Long Con's roles (except for the aforementioned Democracy)

I heavily disagree with the notion that Mafia being given extra conditional KP in a 13v4 game is unbalanced, considering how much of a punch the town roles packed as well. It's a role madness game after all

I don't think that the toys I gave Town to play with were less shiny than the toys I gave to the Mafia

Town had:

-Kyle who could stop a NK every night from his own mana, if he received 2 extra mana he could give someone a BP vest (life over 10)

-Urist who could stop a NK every night from his own mana at the price of a post restriction

-Jack who could stop all of the mafia abilities with his own mana (jpic gladiator, long con reverse-chop, TSP neighborhood, enrique mark), if he received 2 extra mana he could have stopped a NK on top of it

-Hollowkatt who could obtain a BP vest (life over 10) if he targeted Mafia at least once. The 2 dmg wasn't that impactful but if he received 2 extra mana he became a half-vig (5 dmg)

-Falcon who was a half-vig with his own mana, if he received 2 extra mana he became a full vig

-Mac who became a half-vig if he received 2 extra mana, his unkicked ability was underpowered unforunately

-112 who became a janitor-full-vig if she received 3 extra mana (and everyone could produce at least 1 colorless mana, and all town roles with a kicker had 1 colorless in excess if they just wanted to use their unkicked ability, so i deliberately tried to incentivize those town roles to give away their excess 1 colorless mana every day)

-two masons whose artifacts weren't useful but they were confirmed town

DrWilgy, Made, Guillotine and tedxtr's roles were very situational and not that useful, but i do believe that Town had 9 other power roles that could all heavily influence the game

While balancing the setup I was assuming that by night 3 at least 1 mafia would be dead (either chopped or vigged) and at least 1 mafia night kill would have been stopped. multiple town roles were capable of night killing mafia and multiple town roles were capable of stopping mafia night kills

Here is how I think I could have done better in terms of balancing the game:


1) The reverse yeet (Democracy) artifact was probably too much. It should have costed 1 mana of every color. Or somehow altered to give town more accessibility to the chop. I intended it to be slightly to moderately annoying for town (fitting with the Oko planeswalker) but it ended up stronger than I expected. An idea that I just thought of, unfortunately too late, is to keep the reverse-chop mechanic, but simply give all players 2 or 3 votes (I believe that's doable with the poll). If it is doable with the poll then I think it would have been less oppressing for town and actually becoming fun for everyone, while (i think) still benefitting scum as intended. I think that I saw Jack mentioning this ITT as well when he saw it, i wish i had done that

-FWIW I wouldn't have allowed Mafia to use both the reverse yeet ability and the triple neighborhood ability on the same night. They never considered doing it so it wasn't brought up in wolf chat, but it was my bad on not pre-emptively writing on the "Carnarium" artifact that it can't be used in conjunction with the "Democracy" artifact. Sorry about that, that brought unnecessary confusion for potentially both alignments

2) Punish the fool probably should have costed X mana to use (so u can pay any amount u want), and for each mana paid, deal 3 damage. Instead of pay 3 to deal 12 like it was now. I think that maybe it was a tad too punishing for town to try to teamplay with their mana, but I also think that Town could have done a better job at least attempting to. Urist gave out his mana in an extremely good way on day 1, he targeted 3 town and it was the correct colors for all 3. Epi, Marmot and Guillotine tried to teamwork with their mana as well. Other than those names nobody sent out any mana (except 1 colorless from 112 to Urist but I think that was due to a request?). I think everyone else could have put a little bit more effort to work as a team with their mana

3) MacDougall's un-kicked ability probably should have been the same as Jack's (make him counter all non-damaging abilities instead of only those who target him). It made no difference in this game but he should have been able to, in theory, roleblock Long Con's reverse yeet abiliy and JPIC's gladiator-generator ability. As it is right now, he was too limited in what scum abilities he could block

4) 112's ability probably should have costed 1 less mana (5 colorless total instead of 6 colorless)

5) The Mana Leaf artifact tokens - I should have allowed them to generate colorless mana so that 112 and Made could have used them

6) This was suggeted by Mac and Urist in spec chat and I agree - I think that a lot of people have assumptions about how roles work (people who are able to prove their benign roles existing = town). I don't like these assumptions to be correct in my games, I don't abide by them, I like mechanical ambiguity unless I intend otherwise (like the masons). If a role can confirm their actions in some way then I'm going to try my hardest to make it seem alignment-ambiguous (for instance urist silencer being town, jpic gladiator mafia, enrique marker mafia), that's my policy and that's what I think is the most fun. BUT it is a fact that even tho on a metaphysical level, a person shouldn't assume anything, in practice, a lot of people assume what role is towny and what isn't based off of their past experience in games. It's a fact that I have to take into account. I think the solution is to simply warn people in my sign-up threads to please let go off assumptions and to not make parallels between my benign looking confirmable roles and the meta (as in most widely popular) host design way of implementing benign looking confirmable roles in other people's games. But actually that might reveal some kind of info that I don't want, so the cleanest solution would probably just me linking my past games and asking people to please check out the revealed roles at the end, and to approach mech solving my games with an open mind

Town had no way of stopping Mafia from winning tonight, no matter what actions they submitted, as long as Mafia used all of their night kills on Town. The reasons why I didn't end the game as soon as yesterday's chop was resolved are:

1) Mafia had the option to holster their kills, and my night actions get locked 1 hour before SoD

2) It's a closed setup role madness game with a lot of unorthodox roles. There can always be the chance of something unexpected happening. If I were to end the game right after yesterday's chop - imagine a future situation where I'm hosting a similar game with unorthodox roles, and similar playerlist. The mafia team goes into the night with a lot of night kills and all they have to do is use them to win. However, let's say I don't end the game faster then, because town actually has a chance of surviving. In that case, that Mafia team will think: "'Hey, wait a second, tutuu ended the game sooner that one time, but now she's not, even though this is the same situation. This tells us for a fact that town has some ways of stopping us from winning, we now know this for a fact". If this were to happen, it would be an unfair advantage to this hypothetical wolf team from the future.

Night actions have been locked!

112 has died, she was town
falcon45ca has died, he was town
Epignosis has died, he was town

@DrWilgy @dunya @TonyStarkPrime @Enrique @Epignosis @falcon45ca @Sloonei @Jackofhearts2005 @Justplayingitcool @Kylemii @Long Con @MacDougall @Made @Marmot @Esooa @112 @hollowkatt @tedxtr @Urist

Game is over, thank you everyone for playing!

Mafia has won! - Dunya/TonyStarkPrime, Justplayingitcool, Long Con, Enrique

Graveyard/Spec chat - https://discord.gg/S2YTUVXR

I'm waiting to receive confirmation from people that they are okay with me publicly releasing Wolf Chat, Mason Chat, and the two Neighborhood chats

Full reveal: