Event [Complete] RA:APB-themed Mafia game II

[VERTi60]

No it's from the internetz

[Category 5 Hurricane]

Yep. Inactivity killed this game. When a cop mark can't get you a lynch, you can't win.

 

I want to suggest two things for future games to see if people like them.

 

1) Mandatory voting each phase: If you have not placed a vote when day ends, you earn a permanent extra "penalty-vote" on your head the next day. It will take one less vote to hammer you. This penalty-vote goes away if you vote the next phase. The penalty may stack if you go multiple day phases without voting.(Does not count for early hammers)

2) 48 hour phases instead of 24, especially after Day 1.

By the way, excellent game, Voe and Chaos. You both had me fooled until it was too late to stop you.

Oh, and one more thing. Mafia docs closed during the day.

[Mojoman]

I didn't suspect Voe at all!

What did I miss that he said?

[Category 5 Hurricane]

Quite a number of things, really.

 

The post where he said "I don't know of any town roles that explode on death, do you" was the line that made me think role cop, for example. This was surely the line Chaos was upset about. Since he was talking about your role, this should have flagged your attention. Allied Spies effectively are role cops in this game. In this case he wasn't the Allied Spy, but the Spy did tell him what your role was.

 

I always wondered why you didn't seem to flinch at Voe knowing your role.

Edited September 2, 2016 by Category 5 Hurricane

[FRAYDO]

Oh man, how I wish someone would have shot Isaac. That would have been great!

 

I want to apologize for my inactivity. As I said in the dead doc, I tried to play mafia from the phone with regrettable results. School and work got the better of me and I couldn't participate or analyze as much as I would have liked to. The same must have happened to Death_Kitty. Hope he's well.

 

Anyway, I will without a doubt be more active in the next game. ChopBam seems to be interested in joining, and catching Wallywood on TeamSpeak the other day he said he'll be interested and to let him know when the next game will be. Maybe we could try it with Category's proposed mandates.

 

Count me in for the next one.

[Category 5 Hurricane]

Killing_You, I flagged onto you for a number of reasons, all of which fall under a category I call "Tzar" after a former player by that name. You were way too eager and aggressive and seemed to be digging for info that would be more helpful to scum than town. Here's a list of things that brought my eye to you.

 

1) Your very first post had three things in it that flagged my attention. First you were nervous. In my experience, new players are more nervous when they are scum than town due to the "Oh god, don't slip" style scum have to follow. You also asked for roleclaims out of the gate and firing weapons. Early roleclaims are often said to help scum more than town, because town can't trust the claims while scum can. Scum effectively get kill-priority list from role claims. (e.g. OWA this game, the only town player to roleclaim was killed almost ASAP). Using weapons at such an early stage would also mean using them at a time of the game where the chance to hit scum is lowest and also set scum killing priority, as people who have fired are a lower priority (for example, scum would have won at day break had they chosen to kill Death_You instead of me. Apparently. I actually don't understand why the scum had only needed to match town size while disregarding the 3rd party. Seems odd. I wouldn't have ended the game there, but given Issac's inability to contribute anything other than a "Oh my god you suck" vote, it may as well have ended there.)

 

So, that was a great start.

 

2) Your next post included a logical doozy. "I'll vote Voe because if he's Allies, he's a major threat, and if he's not I'll just unvote later". When are you going to learn this? You learn after the lynch, not before. You can't decide to unvote "if" he's town. It implies that you already know what Voe's alignment is. And if you already know what his alignment is, you aren't town. Or you are a town mason with him, but then why the vote bluff?

 

3) You made a vote, but then backed off because you were "unsure". Welcome to mafia! You are never sure! This looked like a scum trying to back out of getting a lynch record. (Something Voe wisely avoided later that day) Even when I had Voe tagged as scum, I kept looking for alternate scenarios. "If Voe isn't scum, what would that mean? Who else could be if he isn't?" I was imagining a scenario where Chaos and Death_Kitty or Issac were stealthing their way through the game. Same thing happened with you. I thought if you weren't scum, Chaos was. I knew either Chaos or Mojoman was the Allied Spy due to the weapon jamming, was heavily leaning towards Chaos.

 

4) After that, I've already brought up that you shouldn't have felt that you needed to protect yourself given the suspicious position you were in. Scum don't tend to kill players they think they can credibly lynch. To counter that, some town players will actually intentionally draw suspicious attention to themselves to try to get scum to leave them alone. That's all experience. You'll probably learn when you think you are at risk and when you aren't.

 

5) MYLO and LYLO is something scum tends to be more mindful of than town, especially because scum knows exactly when that is. This was the weakest of my reasons to think you were scum, but it was one. You seemed to be thinking steps ahead like a scum player might.

 

All in all, though, by the end of the game you were doing quite well. You weren't, for example, confused that lynches kill town players.

Edited September 2, 2016 by Category 5 Hurricane

[Killing_You]

Regarding the first post, I was joking around to get the game going, second post was because I didn't want to take chances with a vet unless other evidence came up. (Which it seemed to... after I left for work.) And the whole unvote later thing... yeah that was stupid of me.

 

So is it good or bad to think ahead? All I saw was townies getting picked off one by one and I didn't want to lose the first game. Oh well, live and learn I guess.

[Category 5 Hurricane]

No, it's good to think ahead. I just don't expect new town players to do that. That's why I said it was the weakest reason. Experienced players of both types will be watching it closely as it can change voting tactics.

[Killing_You]

Alright cool. One last thing: What does MYLO and LYLO stand for anyway?

[Category 5 Hurricane]

http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Mislynch-and-Lose

http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Lynch-or-Lose

[Killing_You]

Ah, thanks.

[VERTi60]

Yep. Inactivity killed this game. When a cop mark can't get you a lynch, you can't win.

 

I want to suggest two things for future games to see if people like them.

 

1) Mandatory voting each phase: If you have not placed a vote when day ends, you earn a permanent extra "penalty-vote" on your head the next day. It will take one less vote to hammer you. This penalty-vote goes away if you vote the next phase. The penalty may stack if you go multiple day phases without voting.(Does not count for early hammers)

2) 48 hour phases instead of 24, especially after Day 1.

By the way, excellent game, Voe and Chaos. You both had me fooled until it was too late to stop you.

Oh, and one more thing. Mafia docs closed during the day.

 

Game didn't die at all - all night actions were sent and used, voting patterns where strange but they were happening, cases were made, all battle actions done, scum team and all power players were pretty much active. One town player afk and replaced but this happens almost in every game since IRL stuff happens.

More or less some people didn't want to participate more which benefited allies, as it should. Last game it was the other way around, 2/3 of the allies didn't participate as much (and the one slipped on D1) leaving them to be lynched pretty quick. You did pretty good as TP so the victory you earned was all accounted for.

Also some of the players who could have flipped the game's outcome (e.g. Mojo) just said they were either confused or didn't believe/know who to vote for. For example Mojoman's suicide could help town a lot to half down the allied team. Isaac was pretty much neutral so I don't blame him that he didn't help town (but on the other hand he haven't done much to attract attention to get shot/killed, I would prefer him more as a vanilla townie but he wanted to be the C4 so goes that). OWA, even though he could of participated more, did a very good job nailing the scum, if it wasn't for him voe probably wouldn't even be suspicious (along with Chaos who aided voe later).

 

 

Thank you for the suggestions:

 

1. Mandatory voting is something we had in some games already in past but I didn't wanted to push this in these game series which are more or less "in easy mode" to teach new players. But personally I wouldn't mind them - it's interesting "motivation" I hereby call a discussion if people want this in next game. If I get at least 5 more "yes", then yea, we'll try it in next game. I'll add this to the poll.

 

2. 48 hours would be possible for bigger games (e.g. 15 players or so). For small, fast paced games I don't think it's worth dragging the day if all votes and actions are done relatively fast (speaking from experience here).

 

3. I don't close the mafia doc anymore for multiple reasons. One of them is the time difference and in case of small allied teams in these fast paced mafia series, communication is a key to survival. Once again in bigger games with like 4 scum members this is different and for the sake of "vote building" the doc should be closed, but I don't want to end up with a scenario again where I don't get a proper NK for several phases due to lack of communication.So once again when we run a small fast paced game the doc will be opened and if we ever get a larger game doc access will be restricted.

 

 

 

I didn't suspect Voe at all!

 

What did I miss that he said?

 

1. OWA called him out and right away got killed, flipped as alignment cop as the dog - this is like a no brainer.

2. Watching voe's voting patterns and then later his behavior, just like cat5 pointed out, there were several leads for example when he mentioned your role's description which he could only learn from spying. There were several other slips which didn't get much attention.

3. As liten, nodlied and others pointed out (but this is more or less veteran knowledge), there is an unwritten rule - Lynch voe D1 so he flips a town doctor/cop, don't lynch him and he ends up being scum

4. by the end of D3 it was pretty much known who the scum is. If you're still unsure, follow the rest of the "townies", even those which died already (and flipped town) and already pointed out who the scum might be.

5. Never trust Polaks. J/K

[Isaac The Madd]

I still have no Idea on how to get someone to shoot me in this game, also I would have lost if I was lynched.

[VERTi60]

I still have no Idea on how to get someone to shoot me in this game, also I would have lost if I was lynched.

 

That's a tricky part - but, I suspect the allied team would have tried to night kill you eventually (though they went for power players first), or if the dog or somebody else investigated you - it could trigger some action.

MOD ANNOUNCEMENT:

 

I have just edited the poll - please vote for Cat5's suggestion to have a mandatory voting system in next game to force voting participation.

 

Also if more or less all players want to play another game soon vote for it in the third question, we can have a game running next week or sometime in Sep.

[Voe]

Ha.

 

That line about the exploding town roles was supposed to be sarcastic, but it ended up the biggest slip I made. I started writing a huge case, once, but then i realised I just can't follow it up because of the inconsistency of a rifle claim and that single post.

 

I don't think I made many mistakes aside from that.

[Killing_You]

The mandatory voting is fine, but I don't think Day 1 should be mandatory. It seems to be a white noise day of "he said/she said" where almost nothing of substance can be done because night actions have not taken place, which can be crucial to case building.

[Category 5 Hurricane]

You're right VERTi60. It wasn't inactivity, it was a lack of participation. Bad word choice on my part, but I meant basically what you said.

 

Clearly there are pros and cons to mandatory voting, and there can be a case made either way. The main goal of such a system would be to avoid "Luigi winners" and have an automatic removal system of players who aren't participating.

A "Luigi winner" is someone who wins by doing nothing. This happened to me in at least one game where a scum player went inactive but won the game because nobody could ever suspect him as he literally said nothing for several days, so players basically acted as if he didn't exist. If I remember right, the dead players on the scum team called in the night kills for him. Death_Kitty could have been scum this game and nobody would ever have been able to figure that out.

 

On a more general note, a lack of participation makes for a boring game. When I'm one of the more active players, it's a problem. I'm rarely around when the rest of you are so I don't often get to do anything other than make one long post after work, and one or two short posts before or during work (where I have to bring a laptop with me just so I can post during my break). I thought a mandatory vote would be a easy way to nudge people into talking. While being quiet is a pro-scum move, having lots of talking might not help town given that suddenly people can claim they are voting just to avoid the penalty, and people who have earned a penalty might wind up taking up lynches that scum might have fallen to. I'll have to look around and see if such a system is suggested on other mafia sites.

[VERTi60]

Clearly there are pros and cons to mandatory voting, and there can be a case made either way. The main goal of such a system would be to avoid "Luigi winners" and have an automatic removal system of players who aren't participating.

 

 

 

Personally I also hate Luigi winners, therefore whenever I play, whichever side, I go for least active players first if there's no obvious target (kinda same as Fraydo did, but usually not 30 mins before hammer >)

[VERTi60]

Although the truth is we don't have that many Luigi winners in mafia game, usually they're on the losing team.

[Voe]

Also i vote yes for mandatory voting.

[VERTi60]

Vote in da poll too - so far I see 4 against 2 for

[Killing_You]

I voted Hydra because I don't want D1 vote to be mandatory.

[Mojoman]

^ Same, no mandatory day 1 voting.

 

Or we could include mandatory day one Voeting

[FRAYDO]

A vote for Hydra is as scummy as a No Vote.

 

##vote Killing_You

 

 

jk

 

[Killing_You]

You would, wouldn't you?

 

##shoot FRAYDO

[Voe]

She told me to say hydra is scum.

[Isaac The Madd]

Voe is always Scum.

 

##Shoot Voe

[FRAYDO]

Seems you two have gotten a little trigger happy!

[VERTi60]

So 3+2 for the idea, 4 against. We'll try the forced voting but not for the first phase and see how it goes, okay?

 

Since 9 guys are ready to play next round I'll have a thread on Friday or sooner this week to signup.

[Category 5 Hurricane]

That's impossible. That vote was supposed to be a tie!

 

But on a serious note, whatever the method, I really just think we need some sort of system that discourages lurking and automatically removes inactive players. A penalty for not voting would hopefully drum up activity enough that the rule never actually matters, but it might discourage people from playing at all. Given the split vote, I'm fearful that the latter might be true. I believe you used a "content post" timer before and I think that worked fine. It might be a knee-jerk reaction, but I just want a game mechanic that either encourages active participation or discourages lurking.