Batman - The Dark Knight Mafia Game

[Pyrotechnician1]

I think it could have been one of the most brutal endings if a treestump helped convince the doc to lynch the wrong person. Too much pressure in these 3 players left scenarios! lol. It's a good thing I don't smoke weed considering I am paranoid enough as it is.

Your initially claimed role was so much cooler than the role that I gave you, that I actually wished you had the role you claimed. It would have been massively overpowered, but it was well constructed, and fit fairly well. This happened with another player too, in the dead thread we were discussing things, and on Day 7 when CG was fake gloating, I once again wished he was actually some kind of strange commuting survivor neutral role.

Very nice game pyro, I enjoyed it a lot.

I made sooooo many hopeless fails and slip-ups that I was suprised to live as long as I did. Terrible game from my side. Ofc Gwaihir's late day uber bussing of both his remaining teammates didn't help our cause either :badteeth:

Balacing a game with a ton of powerroles is always hard. I was sort of annoyed at our poisoning ability, as having all your kills delayed by a day got on my nerves quickly - especially when I had to come up with a fake claim. I also think that 2 cops, a watcher, the bat signal, and a tracker were too many investigative roles for town - especially on top of an easily confirmable 4 man mason team. But, ofc, the mafias also had some awesome powers so yeah. Could've all turned out very different if kegs and DJ hadn't made so exceptionally good use of their roles.

I feel like I did have a lot of investigative roles, but as Jcakes told me over chat one day, its better than some other scenarios we have had here. You also have to note that I had little to no protective roles, there was one consistant protection (the doc), and the inventor could hand out a one shot bulletproof item. Two other roles (CG and Drixx) had possible protection, but it only affected themselves. I even gave the one mafia team strongman shots, so the chances of investigators taking a dive quickly was high.

No complaining about how the town had it too easy. It took lynching a mafia every single day except for once for the town to win. Any game which allows the town only one mislynch in order to win is not weighted against the mafia. [highlight]More than[/highlight] 1 in 3 players in the game were mafia, and both teams had a daily kill ability, and you all didn't crossfire each other at all. It's basically down to incredible play by djm and kestegs that the town even had a chance, and even so I thought Moar was going to pull it out in the end.

Imagine how differently the game could have gone. Let's say that BPC had been the trigger for "Last Laugh". In that case you come back to life on day 8 and the mafia win. The game could have completely swung just based upon a tiny little detail.

The game could have changed tides very quickly and I'll bring that up more in my full on post, but one thing I had regrets about was around Day 3 I realized that even with the current stream of investigation results, if there was no crossfire the town didn't have a chance just due to the sheer number of mafia. Later on in the game, I was reliant on the vigilantes and gladiator to make the right choices to give the town even a shot at winning.

It was an extremely well balanced and well thought out game and was loads of fun. The roles were great. As discussed in the dead thread, you HAVE to balance with the assumption of cross fire. And if kestegs had gone down early, mafia probably would have skated through this game. If you run this game 100 times, I bet we would see some pretty even results . Very fun

I have an idea for the gladiator role. Why not let the person activating it select two people instead of automatically pitting themselves in the battle? I could find it very hard to vote for the activator of the gladiator in any game, but a mafia gladiator would change my feelings. WIFOA!

I had a blast making the roles, that had to be the most fun, more on that later of course. The gladiator role, however cool it sounds, if it was a mafia power, that would make it extremely powerful. If used on two random townies you could pit a cop against a doctor if both of them were claimed, it also guarentees a mislych day. The gladiator in this one was a modified version of the one in Solar's game. There wasn't enough incentive I felt for the gladiator to use his ability in that game (Not that there was a chance too of course), so with the addition of bodyguard ability that couldn't be used until after the gladiator was used created that incentive.

Have to still say I disagree. In a 2 mafia set up, town should not have the same chance to win as in a normal setup. So it should feel harder. Especially when the 2 mafia have no crossfire and no failed kills, one of them a poison! That means it should be very hard on the town with a lot of power roles, requiring correct choices to win. Especially with a huge mason group that makes it much harder to get a townie lynched (and when it includes 2 investigator roles!).



How about we go with a more likely scenario. Imagine that omg was not mod killed and spent his second shot killing FOE the day I was lynched. Where would that put the game? Town would have run away with it.



...yeah, once again sorry for that. I was sick and not thinking so well. Completely forgot cdm actually was a lover, and not just his false claim. Messed that one up.

Also a good point to bring up kegs - damn you for winning that WIFOM battle. I thought I had Gory, no problem. Then you had to completely predict me. Sigh.



1st paragraph: Exactly my thoughts. I have only played 2 other games with 2 mafia that I remember, and this one was the most balanced. Excellent job Pyro. The thought and work put into this was very impressive.

2nd paragraph: Hah, that would be a really interesting role, and way easier to give to the mafia. I like it!

If there was one thing I did not like, it was the inability of mafia to hide. Cop, watcher, tracker, rolecop, party hoster (kinda). 5 kills we could not use names of because of masons. Makes it real hard for mafia to claim or hide from investigators. My mafia only had a one-shot redirect that we somehow managed to use at exactly the right time.

That said, posioner/seducer was one of the most intense roles I have played in a long time and I absolutely loved it.

Omg didn't have a second vig shot, he was a one and done, but that seems to be a common fake claim here, if they only have one shot, claim two, it lets them use their shot, and then since they are vanilla after that its not a big loss if they are targeted for a night kill. Pretty slick actually, not the first time it has been done though. The original role did have 2 shots, but I was short on town roles (and as a result added the huntress) and split the vig shots between them, making one a day vig, and the other a night vig.

I think I've heard a complaint about difficulty for their faction to win from each group (town and both mafia groups), so if everyone thought it was hard for their team to win, then it must have been balanced! =) Good logic right?

The multiple one shot roles were constructed that way on purpose. Most of those shots were extremely powerful, and even adding one more, could drastically alter the balance.

Thanks for hosting Pyro! Definitely a fun game with so many things going on. Some "oh, that's obvious" moments and yet some surprises as well. I didn't see Batman as watcher (I was thinking vigilante) and I didn't see him as a mason either.

Game balance is tricky with just two factions. It's nearly impossible with three.

On paper, town looks pretty damn overpowered (4 team mason, including power roles, multiple investigators, multiple vigilantes, etc) yet town needed every single power role and action to eek out a win. For the most part, town hit home runs with their night actions while mafia didn't hit any. Town lynched exactly 1 townie in 8 attempts. Town vigi's killed mafia but not townies (luckily). One mafia team could have sent in 4 additional night kill attempts. And despite all that, town could have lost.

Paper and practice are very different, and I learned that throughout the time I spent watching the game progress. More on that later of course. Comment on batman's powers though, in a batman theme game, you expect batman to be in the game, you also expect him to be the most powerful role in the game. Its too obvious. Also, although Batman is considered a "vigilante" he never actually kills anyone, ever. Thats where the Red Hood role came in, he had no qualms about killing if necessary, and although he doesn't scream town aligned, it really depends on how you look at his storyline. Batman is more of a watcher kind of guy to me, always finding information, but you never know he is or was there. The mason group and the corresponding bat signal were an evolving idea from the start. I had a very different idea when I was first creating the roles, but was talked out of it. Also, batman may say he always works alone, but he almost always has a sidekick or two.

I think someone mentioned an objection in the dead thread...

orly? ---

Yes, I wonder who that was...

 

[flubbucket1]

Reading The Tricky thread. The irony of choosing me for the crawlingdeadman ability because I seemed the most townie at the time...:rolf:

 

[Goryani]

@CG - Tell us more about your claiming strategy. I'm still surprised/curious.

 

[Caluin Graye]

@CG - Tell us more about your claiming strategy. I'm still surprised/curious.

I promise, tomorrow morning. Out and about tonight, and not much time to get into it.

 

[djmbbandie]

So I get this feeling I'm dying first next round...

@Mal: If you weren't that angry that I voted you in twilight, I probably would have investigated one of the usual lurkers.

 

[pharphis]

*scribbles in notepad*
don't act angry toward dj

 

[Pyrotechnician1]

Alright time to run through some end game thoughts.

First off, thanks to TC for helping with the balancing/multiple questions I had. I think I sent him enough emails that he was probably sick of me, but you know, the makings of a great game.

Second, thanks to all the players for bearing with me with my first game as mod. I think the only mistake I really made was when I didn't list kestegs as having visited dj that one night. Otherwise I think I kept most things in order. Sorry for the amazing delay in putting up the stories, mid way through the game a big project rolled in at work that really put a damper on putting additional time into the game, and it took me a long time to even write a 5 sentence dialogoue. Not really my strong suit, but it worked out alright I thought.

Thoughts on roles and setup. When I first started pulling together the roles, I had a lot of ideas, and I pretty much wanted to include them all. It was amazingly easy to put together the mafia roles, the enemies in batman are what make the series what it is, they are all distinguishable and I was able to put a lot of creativity into what abilities they had and associate them in a way that made sense. The only one that I had difficulty with was the fear monger ability of scarecrow. I knew I wanted him to have some kind of "fear gas" related mechanic but couldn't really nail it down until late in the setup. Shame it didn't get used anyway, the way it operated the mafia group thought it was a possible hinderance, but with an ability that prevents changes in votes I felt needed to have some complexity. I quickly had 8 mafia roles easily established. I didn't really want to make it a two mafia game, but I wanted all the roles, and 8 mafia on one team was way, way to many. So I split the team, and associated the ones that would make sense together, "the tricky" mostly decevious characters, and "the feared" mostly strength characters. The poison mechanic was one that I hadn't seen used in my time playing games here, but I liked the complexity it added to gameplay for both town and mafia. It also served as a method of confusion, which is always a great addition to games. The end of day death I knew would take players off guard, and forced them to wonder if they were going to drop dead at end of day, but also forced the mafia team to plan accordingly. I gave both teams various shot abilities, and a couple with unlimited use abilities. The one shots were powerful one shots I felt, and adding additional shots could drastically alter the balance. The right use of the abilities though could easily give the mafia teams the edge they needed.

The town setup was much more difficult, I had the obvious character choices to add in, Batman, Robin, Gordon, Alfred, etc. Some of the roles I included were kind of on the edge (The Huntress, the mayor, and legs the treestump). When I had the final list of players I was actually short a town role or two and thats where the huntress and the mayor came in. Batman as a mason and having the mason group was not originally what I wanted to do, I wanted to make batman a mason recruiter, but with the large number of mafia it was highly likely that he would die early on from selecting the wrong person to recruit, it was way too swingy even for my taste and after some discussion with TC the idea was scraped and I just set up an established mason group. The inventor I particularly liked as I always liked the idea of passing out abilities to other players. Some say that the sonar (party host) was overpowered, but it was a one shot, so the person had to predict when they would be targeted. I had a lot of investigators, but batman is investigation, detective comics = investigators? No way! There were hardly any targetable protection roles though, the inventor could give out a bullet proof, and there was the doc. After that either the role only affected the player themselves, or had to have something else happen first (gladiator+bodyguard). I felt that especially with the strongman shots, that investigator roles would take a dive quickly, so it would work itself out. I also like the catwoman role as it was kind of a role/name cop combination thing. I actually thought about having the items catwoman steal either prevent the person from using their ability for one night, or granting catwoman the use of the ability for one night, but thought that would be way over the top. Also batman was restricted from telling gordon he had masson partners in their chat as that would eliminate too many possible investigations.

There is not much I would change about my setup, I took multiple roles from multiple games and altered them the way I saw them fit into my game. I could probably talk about every single role but then this post would be way way to long and no one would read it. I enjoyed all the roles and really put an effort into having no vanillas (even if it constituded a one shot, or even being a plain mason.) I actually enjoyed the end result as it seemed to work out pretty well. If there were two things I would change though, it would have been to reduced the number of mafia probably by 1, and then respectively reduce the number of masons as well as the group was pretty large and it made fake claiming difficult for the mafia. Then again though I didn't expect the one team to take out two masons two nights in a row and then have mass claim happen on day 3. I realized that the town chance of winning at that point was also slim due to the sheer number of mafia and lack of crossfire, and had to rely on the remaining town roles to chose wisely for them to have a chance. Then again I guess I could say this was all intentional as there as to be some degree of difficulty for all teams in a game with two mafias.

All in all, great game everyone and I hope you all had a fun time playing. It took a lot of time to put this together and mod, but it was enjoyable being able to watch everything happen. If anyone has any comments or input I would love to hear them as they will go into making my next game that much better. Next time will be a co-hosting with Gwaihir it should be a blast, but that will be a long way off, which will give us much more planning time as well.

 

[pharphis]

Ah, great to her detailed insight on the planned mechanics for the game. I would agree with the changes, too. 1 less mafia and 1 less mason should make everyone a bit happier.

GG if I didn't already say it . I look forward to the co-host game

 

[Caluin Graye]

I want to preface this post with stating that in no way am I trying to attack Pyrotechnician. I found the game to be well thought out and quite flavourful. However...

I was having very little fun in the first four day phases, Twilight inclusive.

Twilight was about as expected, with general spam banter and a few people trying to prod others. Hard to get excited about that. Days one through three were a matter of "follow the cop", which while on the surface is great for town as they are near guaranteed to lynch scum, doesn't lend much towards interesting discussions as it will almost always boil down to "Well, let's lynch the guy who's guilty". I sort of felt that the game was less about reading people and gauging reactions and more about who got the luckiest with their night actions, and that's not very fun to me.

Which leads me to my role. People soon started claiming: Watcher in a four man mason group; Treestump with a vig shot; A politician; a rolecop. It seemed like just about everyone had some really cool, interesting ability to play around with, and I had... commuter.

Please don't get me wrong. A commuter is a pretty powerful role in of itself. But compared to a lot of the other roles present in the game, it left me with a strong sense of role envy. So when it came time for me to claim, a few thoughts went through my head:

1) "I'm currently having less fun than I normally do." Most people who play with me know that I'm more interested in having fun rather than winning the game. I'd eat a loss if it means I'll be having fun in the process. So I decided to try to break away from the follow the cop attitude I was noticing and force people to discuss something else: The fact that I refused to claim seemed appropriate.

2) "How does me revealing my role help town?" And honestly, I came up with no good reasons at the time. As I said: At the time of claiming, I felt the town had zero reason to know I was a commuter. The mafia, however, had every reason. Additionally, because Moar had outed that she was able to visit me on night two, then anyone could have easily made out what nights I commuted, there-by completely negating the usefulness of my role.

Ash commented that I should have lied about it, or made something else up. My response is: With a town full of god only knows what power roles, why in the world would I risk lying about what role I have? That would only serve to get the mafia a very easy lynch, which doesn't help the town at all.

Additionally, I felt that by not revealing my role, I might goad at least one shot from the mafia. If I died, no harm done. If I commuted that night, then awesome, one less townie dead. And if for some stroke of luck someone claimed they did something to me on an odd night, then I would have claimed.

3) "If I don't claim my role, who would want to know my role the most? Town or mafia?" My answer to that was mafia. Generally speaking, when you're used to knowing what's going on most of the time, you tend to become irritated when something comes up that you don't know. Unfortunately, I was wrong, and only townies rose to the bait.

4) "How can I make my role more useful in this sea of power roles?" Simple answer was to not claim and wait to see if someone lied about something I could catch them with. So that's what I did.


If in the same position in the future, I'd probably do it again. Mass claiming serves a purpose for the town, but you have to remember that mafia are also part of the town. I felt that mafia had far more to gain by knowing what my role was than town did, so I withheld the information.

 

[Caluin Graye]

From the dead thread:

What what what?!?!?!?!?!

When have I ever taken 4 days to role claim after first hinting about something mysterious?

Half-Life mafia. Masons. Maybe not four full days, but that was mainly what I was referencing.

 

[djmbbandie]

I also like the catwoman role as it was kind of a role/name cop combination thing. I actually thought about having the items catwoman steal either prevent the person from using their ability for one night, or granting catwoman the use of the ability for one night, but thought that would be way over the top.

I probably would have yelled at someone to save me the night I died if you did this.

 

[Gwaihir]

Omg didn't have a second vig shot, he was a one and done, but that seems to be a common fake claim here, if they only have one shot, claim two, it lets them use their shot, and then since they are vanilla after that its not a big loss if they are targeted for a night kill. Pretty slick actually, not the first time it has been done though. The original role did have 2 shots, but I was short on town roles (and as a result added the huntress) and split the vig shots between them, making one a day vig, and the other a night vig.

I think I've heard a complaint about difficulty for their faction to win from each group (town and both mafia groups), so if everyone thought it was hard for their team to win, then it must have been balanced! =) Good logic right?

Lol, fail at reading roles. still, the modkill definitely was not good for the town.
Good luck getting a multimafia game where everyone is ahppy with balance

Reading The Tricky thread. The irony of choosing me for the crawlingdeadman ability because I seemed the most townie at the time...:rolf:

...yeah. We may have misread you a little bit. I should have known somehting was off, as I always have you pegged for scum!

Next time will be a co-hosting with Gwaihir it should be a blast, but that will be a long way off, which will give us much more planning time as well.

thanks for letting me piggyback on your mod. I kinda want to see how this whole process goes. I also want to inflict some particularly crazy roles on people, so be warned!

I also like the catwoman role as it was kind of a role/name cop combination thing. I actually thought about having the items catwoman steal either prevent the person from using their ability for one night, or granting catwoman the use of the ability for one night, but thought that would be way over the top.

I probably would have yelled at someone to save me the night I died if you did this.

You targeted FOE, right? Catwoman with last laugh. That would have been hilarious. And scary.

Such an amazing role, but hard to balance it.

 

[Goryani]

Twilight was about as expected, with general spam banter and a few people trying to prod others. Hard to get excited about that.

I agree with this. Twilight is no substitute for an actual day phase. No lynch = no point. The real action happens when you can lynch. During twilight, I usually "fake it," even as a townie. I didn't bother faking it much this game, and it must have showed since all three night talk groups thought I was scum after twilight.

Days one through three were a matter of "follow the cop", which while on the surface is great for town as they are near guaranteed to lynch scum, doesn't lend much towards interesting discussions as it will almost always boil down to "Well, let's lynch the guy who's guilty". I sort of felt that the game was less about reading people and gauging reactions and more about who got the luckiest with their night actions, and that's not very fun to me.

I would have liked to have seen djm claim later in the day just to have more of that actual discussion. Player reads were still important, but they were limited to matching claims with behavior. Every player with a "guilty" verdict gave a scummy reaction save kestegs.

Definitely agree with the luckiest night action statement but that's usually what role madness boils down to. The side who makes better nightly decisions usually wins. I'm not sure how the Feared Mafia would have behaved if they took out non-masons with their early kills, but I'm sure it would have been different.

2) "How does me revealing my role help town?" And honestly, I came up with no good reasons at the time. As I said: At the time of claiming, I felt the town had zero reason to know I was a commuter. The mafia, however, had every reason. Additionally, because Moar had outed that she was able to visit me on night two, then anyone could have easily made out what nights I commuted, there-by completely negating the usefulness of my role.

I somewhat disagree with this. Claiming serves several purposes. Some purposes are irrelevant (commuter isn't likely to obtain a guilty verdict) but some very good reasons are still valid.

Claiming gives town the tools to adjudicate your claim. If you ever appeared on a watcher or tracker list after claiming no targeting/night abilities, the watcher/tracker would know your claim contained lies. If you don't claim, the watcher/tracker have no way to know whether or not a lie occurred. I never considered tracking you because that tracking result wouldn't prove you were lying and wouldn't prove you were townie. Turns out your role still wouldn't have let me prove you are a townie (I'm sure I'd have gotten no results no matter which night you were tracked) but at least I would have enough to know if you were lying.

Claiming lets other townies know their actions will work on you. A watcher normally sees themselves on the watch results since the watcher is targeting that player. Therefore, a watcher could verify your claim simply by targeting you on a night you are commuting. If no results were returned, the watcher can safely assume you did in fact commute.

Additionally, I felt that by not revealing my role, I might goad at least one shot from the mafia. If I died, no harm done. If I commuted that night, then awesome, one less townie dead. And if for some stroke of luck someone claimed they did something to me on an odd night, then I would have claimed.

I think you had to lie if you were going to be a NK option. By not claiming, you guaranteed mafia wouldn't target you at night. One, your claim sounds reasonable for a bomb or party host, which mafia avoid like the plague. Two, there were simply too many confirmed townies with investigative actions - a mystery isn't high on the mafia target list.

3) "If I don't claim my role, who would want to know my role the most? Town or mafia?" My answer to that was mafia. Generally speaking, when you're used to knowing what's going on most of the time, you tend to become irritated when something comes up that you don't know. Unfortunately, I was wrong, and only townies rose to the bait.

I disagree with this. Pretty strongly. Each and every townie should always be very interested in the role of the last claimer.

Your claim (or lack thereof) was perfectly consistent with a ninja or X-shot ninja. Poisoner or NK faction. I even speculated about such a role before I died. I can easily imagine a ninja type role claiming commuter. I can easily image mafia wanting to wait as long as possible to claim just so they themselves weren't caught in a lie.

What happens before mass claim is often different than what happens after mass claim. Being mysterious is fine before mass claim. Trying to pass off as a town power role to soak up a NK is a great thing to do but only works if mafia don't have a waiting list of concrete targets.

4) "How can I make my role more useful in this sea of power roles?" Simple answer was to not claim and wait to see if someone lied about something I could catch them with. So that's what I did.

The non-killing actions performed by mafia were all truthful. That's not uncommon. Something I said to Moar I could also say to you: What actions do you think mafia have that would let you catch them in a lie? At some point, choosing to make yourself look scummy just to catch someone in a lie that will probably never come isn't worth it.

From the dead thread:



Half-Life mafia. Masons. Maybe not four full days, but that was mainly what I was referencing.

It's been a while, but didn't I claim super early? Like D2 or whenever it was that Ankeli faked a cop read on a mason partner. I claimed to keep Asrrin alive. I lied about several aspects of my claim but I still claimed. I claimed I was conditionally bulletproof (I claimed to have Asrrin's same protection) but wasn't. I also hid the fact I was mason enabler - my death would have ended night talk for the rest of the masons. I also tried to hide the existence of a third mason partner while not outright lying that there wasn't one.

Perhaps you are thinking of Valhauros' mystery ability. We didn't claim details on the mystery ability because we masons had no details of the mystery ability until after the game ended. We were told it would occur N3 and were notified it happened. We had no clue what happened though. Repeat for N6.

 

[Caluin Graye]

Thanks for the feedback, Gory. I much appreciate it.

I agree with this. Twilight is no substitute for an actual day phase. No lynch = no point. The real action happens when you can lynch. During twilight, I usually "fake it," even as a townie. I didn't bother faking it much this game, and it must have showed since all three night talk groups thought I was scum after twilight.

I still prefer Twilight over the 'Random player(s) die(s) before ever getting to play' we used to have, though.

Claiming lets other townies know their actions will work on you. A watcher normally sees themselves on the watch results since the watcher is targeting that player. Therefore, a watcher could verify your claim simply by targeting you on a night you are commuting. If no results were returned, the watcher can safely assume you did in fact commute.

When I played Watcher in Ravenwood Retreat , I did not 'see' myself, nor have I as a moderator told a Watcher that he sees himself visit. Due to that, I had not considered it. Had I known kestegs would see himself visit a player, I may have reconsidered. It worked out this game as he was out watching people getting killed, but I don't deny the usefulness of verifying someone's claim.

The non-killing actions performed by mafia were all truthful. That's not uncommon. Something I said to Moar I could also say to you: What actions do you think mafia have that would let you catch them in a lie? At some point, choosing to make yourself look scummy just to catch someone in a lie that will probably never come isn't worth it.

FoE claimed to have given me a grappling hook. Had he claimed it on an odd night like he originally stated the role, I'd have counter-claimed him since he stated he always received a verification. He instead claimed it on an even night, which countered something he said earlier in the game, so it was not necessary to claim at that point.

In this particular game, mafia were mostly truthful with their non-killing roles, but that's not always the case.

Perhaps you are thinking of Valhauros' mystery ability. We didn't claim details on the mystery ability because we masons had no details of the mystery ability until after the game ended. We were told it would occur N3 and were notified it happened. We had no clue what happened though. Repeat for N6.

Possibly. I'd have to re-read the game. All I really remember is that you were the 'face' of the mason group, and you were giving out the little tidbits of information to the town. Or possibly when I went off on the mason group, you were the one who yelled back at me, so that's why you stick out in my memory.

(Please note that there are absolutely no hard feelings involved with any current or past games: Part of my enjoyment of mafia is being challenged, getting into verbal pissing matches with people, and growing from the experience.)

Ninja Edit:
(Except maybe Ankeli. VENDETTA.)

 

[Goryani]

FoE claimed to have given me a grappling hook. Had he claimed it on an odd night like he originally stated the role, I'd have counter-claimed him since he stated he always received a verification. He instead claimed it on an even night, which countered something he said earlier in the game, so it was not necessary to claim at that point.

In this particular game, mafia were mostly truthful with their non-killing roles, but that's not always the case.

You're right. I forgot about FoE. I guess I never considered FoE's claim a truthful claim so I wasn't looking for ways to determine whether or not FoE was town.

Possibly. I'd have to re-read the game. All I really remember is that you were the 'face' of the mason group, and you were giving out the little tidbits of information to the town. Or possibly when I went off on the mason group, you were the one who yelled back at me, so that's why you stick out in my memory.

We also had a post restriction. Well Asrrin the cop did. He had NK protection (not immunity, but protection) as long as neither he nor a mason partner claimed cop or cop results. We avoided claiming those things for several days just to keep NK protection alive and well. I admit asking some leading questions hoping to get someone else to speculate about that possibilty without claiming outright. I think you were the one I asked some of those leading questions of. It would have been so much easier (though less dramatic - I admit, avoiding a mason lynch under those circumstances was one of my fondest mafia memories) if there were no such restriction + protection.

 

[Drixx]

I still prefer Twilight over the 'Random player(s) die(s) before ever getting to play' we used to have, though.

Random? I've been N1 killed two games in a row. Twice is a co-incidence. Thrice is?

 

[Caluin Graye]

Random? I've been N1 killed two games in a row. Twice is a co-incidence. Thrice is?

Both of those games you had at least one day (twilight) to talk with other players and make an impact. Imagine how irritating it'd be to die on Night One without even having that. Sign up, get your role, get a PM that you're already dead.

 

[pharphis]

hmm. I'm not sure if I prefer twilight or Day starts, but night starts are certainly lame.

 

[Pyrotechnician1]

I want to preface this post with stating that in no way am I trying to attack Pyrotechnician. I found the game to be well thought out and quite flavourful. However...

I was having very little fun in the first four day phases, Twilight inclusive.

Twilight was about as expected, with general spam banter and a few people trying to prod others. Hard to get excited about that. Days one through three were a matter of "follow the cop", which while on the surface is great for town as they are near guaranteed to lynch scum, doesn't lend much towards interesting discussions as it will almost always boil down to "Well, let's lynch the guy who's guilty". I sort of felt that the game was less about reading people and gauging reactions and more about who got the luckiest with their night actions, and that's not very fun to me.

Which leads me to my role. People soon started claiming: Watcher in a four man mason group; Treestump with a vig shot; A politician; a rolecop. It seemed like just about everyone had some really cool, interesting ability to play around with, and I had... commuter.

Please don't get me wrong. A commuter is a pretty powerful role in of itself. But compared to a lot of the other roles present in the game, it left me with a strong sense of role envy. So when it came time for me to claim, a few thoughts went through my head:

1) "I'm currently having less fun than I normally do." Most people who play with me know that I'm more interested in having fun rather than winning the game. I'd eat a loss if it means I'll be having fun in the process. So I decided to try to break away from the follow the cop attitude I was noticing and force people to discuss something else: The fact that I refused to claim seemed appropriate.

2) "How does me revealing my role help town?" And honestly, I came up with no good reasons at the time. As I said: At the time of claiming, I felt the town had zero reason to know I was a commuter. The mafia, however, had every reason. Additionally, because Moar had outed that she was able to visit me on night two, then anyone could have easily made out what nights I commuted, there-by completely negating the usefulness of my role.

Ash commented that I should have lied about it, or made something else up. My response is: With a town full of god only knows what power roles, why in the world would I risk lying about what role I have? That would only serve to get the mafia a very easy lynch, which doesn't help the town at all.

Additionally, I felt that by not revealing my role, I might goad at least one shot from the mafia. If I died, no harm done. If I commuted that night, then awesome, one less townie dead. And if for some stroke of luck someone claimed they did something to me on an odd night, then I would have claimed.

3) "If I don't claim my role, who would want to know my role the most? Town or mafia?" My answer to that was mafia. Generally speaking, when you're used to knowing what's going on most of the time, you tend to become irritated when something comes up that you don't know. Unfortunately, I was wrong, and only townies rose to the bait.

4) "How can I make my role more useful in this sea of power roles?" Simple answer was to not claim and wait to see if someone lied about something I could catch them with. So that's what I did.


If in the same position in the future, I'd probably do it again. Mass claiming serves a purpose for the town, but you have to remember that mafia are also part of the town. I felt that mafia had far more to gain by knowing what my role was than town did, so I withheld the information.

I'm sorry that you felt that way. However with the way the game turned out, its hard to disagree with your points, the investigator night actions resulted in day phases that weren't exactly the most exciting, however I also didn't expect both mafias to complete avoid killing the investigator for a couple days, especially with strongman shots.

Regarding the commuter role, its hard not to say that I included it because it was one of the very first roles that I had when I started playing so I felt a need to include the role. If I were to do it again, I probably still would have made Nightwing a commuter, but added an ability that could have been used on the nights he was in town. Most likely a JOAT of some sort. Next game I hope you end up getting something more interesting, and I will definately take your comments into account the next game I mod. I know its never exciting getting a "boring" role in a game full of roles, but I did my best to make sure everyone had something.

 

[pharphis]

I didn't get to use my role!

*quits*