The Syndicate

You’re welcome! And thanks for playing, I’m glad you had a good time.

And here’s 11000.

Oddmerta wrote: ↑Mon Oct 12, 2020 3:43 pm Thankyou @Sloonei how do I use it?

Go to User Control Panel -> Profile -> Edit signature -> Copy & paste the image link (with [img][/img] tags) into your signature.

Poison Chan wrote: ↑Wed Oct 07, 2020 3:32 am woahhh!!!!!!! now I have a banner!!! hype!!!!!!!!!!

enjoy it poison ma'am!

I went a little overboard and made banners for each winning album. The original idea was that everyone could have a different banner based on their role, but y'all can also just pick whichever one you want. It's all groovy. The world is your oyster. Enjoy, and thanks for the game.

[mention]Poison Chan[/mention]
[mention]Dyslexicon[/mention]
[mention]DrWilgy[/mention] [mention]juliets[/mention] [mention]Timsup2nothin[/mention] [mention]TonyStarkPrime[/mention] [mention]tutuu[/mention]
[mention]Hally[/mention] [mention]tedxtr[/mention]
[mention]Alison[/mention] [mention]Oddmerta[/mention]
[mention]Long Con[/mention] [mention]MacDougall[/mention]
[mention]Herm[/mention] [mention]Master Radishes[/mention] [mention]staypositivefriend[/mention]
[mention]NANOOKTHEGREATANDFEARSOME[/mention]

tedxtr wrote: ↑Sat Sep 26, 2020 4:10 pm

Sloonei wrote: ↑Sat Sep 26, 2020 3:46 pm I don't know if anyone even paid attention to this during the game, but the numbers at the top of each start-of-day post reflected the number of players belonging to each alignment that day. 1651 on Day 1 = 16/5/1. 701 on Day 9 = 7/0/1.

That's very nice in hindsight, but I can't believe you actually thought anyone would get it, lol

It was just there as a random puzzle piece somebody might figure out. It wasn’t super important information for anyone to have or not have. Tim’s role gave you guys the answer anyway.

nutella, dyachei/logic, and sprityo's roles all had built-in fake claims.
All non-civilian players could have elected to say they were unable to claim. I was surprised that none of them took that route.
I don't know if anyone even paid attention to this during the game, but the numbers at the top of each start-of-day post reflected the number of players belonging to each alignment that day. 1651 on Day 1 = 16/5/1. 701 on Day 9 = 7/0/1.

I never posted all the unrevealed info in this thread.

nutella's full rolecard: Parts of it were kept secret because I did not want town to have that much information about what the mafia team's capabilities were.

And the roles which were restricted from claiming:
Mr Magpie (SPF) Restricted because allowing this role to claim would make it very easy to abuse, and for the player to confirm themselves and their targets as whatever roles they had. This is also why their targets could not make any mention of it other than by responding to the direct prompt. This was one of three roles (along with Herm and sometimes Wilgy) that had the potential to randomly target each night, which was put in as slight deterrent against mass claiming: having people randomly targeting at night makes trackers/watchers/voyeurs more vulnerable to confusing results. I wanted that.

Reckoner (Mac) Restricted because just fuck Mac in particular tbh, honestly no real reason other than to slightly nerf the town's power arsenal. Roles that gather information but can't claim or reveal that information force players to make interesting strategic descisions. This role had nothing mechanical in it that would have made it overpowered if it could claim.

Knives Out (Oddmerta) Restricted because the double-voting phase is a very public, very conspicuous action. Being able to take credit for it and then potentially also getting an alignment check out of it as a mechanically-confirmed player (even if the alignment of this role is not necessarily mechanically confirmed) is overpowered.

Everything In Its Right Place (Hally) Restricted because a watcher that can target every night and then dump all its information is stupidly overpowered.

I said most of this in spec chat, but I'll put it here now as well.

RE: the setup -
The Syndicate has traditionally favored games with no infodumping/roleclaiming at all. I like playing this way. Many of the longtime regulars like playing this way too, I think. That's not to say it's the only way we like to play, but it's a fun variant to have.
But, as we've opened up and had more and more experienced players come in from elsewhere, it's become obvious that "no roleclaiming" is not a rule that most people are comfortable with. Playing in and hosting games with this rule when people do not like it or feel comfortable with it is a headache.

This setup was my attempt to design a game somewhere in the middle of "no roleclaiming at all" and "role madness where everybody claims and solves off mechanics." The biggest flaw in the design is that I put too much of the anti-town power in one role, and you jerks made it the very first role to be eliminated. I do not like soup kills, so I was never going to include anything like that in this game (that's too much power, and too difficult to balance, and far too heavy of a deterrent against claiming). I wanted there to be a real claim deterrent, but I did not want it to be overwhelming. I also didn't want it to be possible for the mafia team to become overpowered by simply getting lucky and correctly guessing a few roles at random.
The Rogue was designed to be more of a threat (to each faction) in a game that was less one-sided than this one ended up being (3 dead mafia by the end of Night 2 is not something I anticipated. Above all else, town just played great in this game). It ended up being mostly passive in this game. I could have built in more aggressive mechanics/abilities for it. Originally I had it as a limited shot serial killer, but that felt like it could have swung the balance of the game in either direction too easily.

For much of the game I felt like the setup was town-sided. I still feel as though that was the case, although not by as much as I feared at the time. This game was never designed for a mass claim: both in the sense that the anti-town roles could directly benefit from that, and because there were just so many roles doing things every night that it would not ever be clear what was going on (and I think we definitely saw the latter play out). A couple small tweaks to one or two town roles, and a more even distribution of the powers across the mafia team's roles could have solved these problems.

I'm saying all of this in case anyone here wants to attempt to design a game along these lines in the future. The key takeaway for me is that the mafia team's claim-deterring powers need to be distributed more evenly and not so heavily invested in any single role. I'd be interested in feedback from others as well.

I hope everyone enjoyed the game as best they could.

Dyslexicon wrote: ↑Tue Sep 22, 2020 7:00 pm @Sloonei So what really happened to Tim's block? =p

Samu blocked Tim, Tim’s block on ted never went through.

NANOOKTHEGREATANDFEARSOME wrote: ↑Tue Sep 22, 2020 12:57 pm Depending on when she got it she might not have been able to without outing, given her claim she could only do the role thing three times

Yeah, I wasn't super up to speed on what she had claimed. But it was interesting from my point of view, knowing that she knew who the last mafia was.

Long Con wrote: ↑Tue Sep 22, 2020 12:34 pm So how did Poison get all the roles?

Well, some people just claimed to her face. That helped. She also had a condition where she received a copy of a role card every night as long as she did not receive a vote the day before. She received 1 vote all game, on Day 8. By that point everyone had claimed and she had a lot of the roles stockpiled.

My favorite moment was when she got the role card for There There and knew the last mafia role was a tracker, but didn’t say a word about it in here as far as I could tell.

juliets wrote: ↑Tue Sep 22, 2020 7:43 am Oh my gosh it was Poison! Good game Poison!! I was feeling really bad that at the end I suspected it wasn't Nanook, wasn't Mac, knew it wasn't me but couldn't figure out who it was. Congrats townies! I think we did pretty well this game, at least with the mafia. Mafia you had some bad luck but you played hard. Catching nutella early was really good luck for us.

@Sloonei could Poison win with town or mafia? Also @Long Con I really am sorry I misread you. You shouldn't trick me so much! (JK, I know that's part of the game.)

Thanks Sloonei, really enjoyed your game!

Poison could win with mafia if it was just her + only 1 other left alive (and at that point she’d probably have all the roles anyway)

Alison wrote: ↑Tue Sep 22, 2020 12:32 am

Sloonei wrote: ↑Mon Sep 21, 2020 11:40 pm

MacDougall wrote: ↑Mon Sep 21, 2020 11:33 pm Meanwhile Alison is basically an unlimited cop lmao.

Me, designing Alison's role: "I can't wait to see the head games that go in between this role and the mafia team all game!"

Alison on Day 3: "Hey guys I'm the cop lol"

If it makes you feel better I was planning to do head game stuff where I intentionally townread people I red checked/scumread people I green checked to throw mafia off the scent, but then I saw that mafia was getting destroyed and we had mech semi-auto so I said "ok" and claimed.

I loved when you asked if you could self-target. I had never even thought of that as a strategy, but I was like hell yeah.

MacDougall wrote: ↑Mon Sep 21, 2020 11:33 pm Meanwhile Alison is basically an unlimited cop lmao.

Me, designing Alison's role: "I can't wait to see the head games that go in between this role and the mafia team all game!"

Alison on Day 3: "Hey guys I'm the cop lol"

Oddmerta wrote: ↑Mon Sep 21, 2020 11:26 pm I didn't trust cop claims because I had to survive n1, activate my double vote ability and have a town get voted off just for a single alignment check that I couldn't reveal anyway

your potential cop check was so convoluted because there was another cop that could claim whenever.

In honor of nutella's clever day 1 fake claim:

MP picking Amnesiac as a top 3 album is very much on brand

It was definitely the album that grew on me the most during the time I spent designing this game. Pyramid Song, You and Whose Army, Knives Out, and Life In A Glasshouse are all top tier tunes.

There was still a path to a solo Poison victory after the mafia elimination.

Rogue:
[mention]Poison Chan[/mention]

Town:
[mention]Alison[/mention]
[mention]TonyStarkPrime[/mention]
[mention]DrWilgy[/mention]
[mention]Dyslexicon[/mention]
[mention]juliets[/mention]
[mention]Hally[/mention]
[mention]Herm[/mention]
[mention]Long Con[/mention]
[mention]MacDougall[/mention]
[mention]Master Radishes[/mention]
[mention]NANOOKTHEGREATANDFEARSOME[/mention]
[mention]Oddmerta[/mention]
[mention]staypositivefriend[/mention]
[mention]tedxtr[/mention]
[mention]Timsup2nothin[/mention]
[mention]tutuu[/mention]

Oddmerta wrote: ↑Mon Sep 21, 2020 10:24 pmGG Poison

Wanna give everyone the answer to the biggest mystery in the game now that you're free to talk about it?

Sorry for those last few phases. Town had essentially locked up the win in 99.9% of possible realities, but Poison's role was unresolved.

Also big news that probably only I was excited about all game long! This is the second biggest game in Syndicate history in terms of post count. Only the monstrosity known as Inception is bigger. Way to go, and thank you for making it memorable.

I'll have more to say about the game and my setup later. It was as experimental as I'll ever get and there were definite flaws. But my first goal any time I host a game is for the players to have fun playing it. I hope that that was the case for everyone.

spec/dead chat:

https://discord.gg/qyU5pX

I received a question about the role Life In a Glasshouse.
No night action is official until the end of the night. The mafia team only sees the final name submitted by Life In a Glasshouse.

A question has been asked about the role Nude:
The first of these two abilities specifically does not target players and thus does not count as a visit/target to detection roles.

[mention]Alison[/mention]
[mention]DrWilgy[/mention]
[mention]Dyslexicon[/mention]
[mention]juliets[/mention]
[mention]Logic[/mention]
[mention]Long Con[/mention]
[mention]MacDougall[/mention]
[mention]NANOOKTHEGREATANDFEARSOME[/mention]
[mention]Oddmerta[/mention]
[mention]Poison Chan[/mention]
[mention]staypositivefriend[/mention]
[mention]tedxtr[/mention]
[mention]tutuu[/mention]

Players may now vote (privately) on whether they would like to shorten Day phases to 24 hours, or stay at the current 48/24 format. Please DO NOT discuss this vote in the thread. Simply PM me with your preference. If a majority favor a change, we will switch to a 24/24 format for the remainder of the game.