Games [Game Over] The July Crisis Mafia

[VERTi60]

 

Just now, OrangeP47 said:

Also I'm sorry Jeod for taking you out of the game and then not sending you any friends

He was tortured in the purgatory together with kam, chopbam and who knows what other horrors.

[VERTi60]

(KY with severed head too)

[ChopBam]

I'm proud of myself for catching this scum slip from OP47, mentioned in the dead doc.

 

[ChopBam]

Just now, VERTi60 said:

He was tortured in the purgatory together with kam, chopbam and who knows what other horrors.

Kam was not in the dead doc.

[OrangeP47]

Just now, ChopBam said:

I'm proud of myself for catching this scum slip from OP47, mentioned in the dead doc.

 

You're right. I meant to say quiet not quite. Quite a slip from me.

[VERTi60]

Oh so he was a random stalker then.

[Chaos_Knight]

4 minutes ago, OrangeP47 said:

You're right. I meant to say quiet not quite. Quite a slip from me.

*Quiet a slip

 

[VERTi60]

Here's what the game looked like from my perspective:

 

What I thought I was in the game like:

 

What others thought I was in the game like:

 

What the game was really like:

[Nodlied]

Welp, no video as Windows Movie Maker and Audacity keep refusing to work. Starting to write the game-end post now.

[VERTi60]

You had an outro planned?

[VERTi60]

You can fix WMM by setting the affinity in the program task manager for only one processor (if you have multi processor pc and WMM is crashing).

[Mojoman]

Can we still resolve that verti investigation. I want him in jail in the end

[VERTi60]

2 minutes ago, Mojoman said:

Can we still resolve that verti investigation. I want him in jail in the end

 

[Mojoman]

Man this win feels dirty. Like, Jeod third party dirty.

[VERTi60]

Just now, Mojoman said:

Man this win feels dirty. Like, Jeod third party dirty.

 

[Jeod]

14 minutes ago, Mojoman said:

Man this win feels dirty. Like, Jeod third party dirty.

I like the part where Verti went all Donald Trump and showed you guys how to win.

[Jeod]

Bonus points, you all hate Verti for winning.

[VERTi60]

6 minutes ago, Jeod said:

I like the part where Verti went all Donald Trump and showed you guys how to win.

[VERTi60]

7 minutes ago, Jeod said:

Bonus points, you all hate Verti for winning.

There were certainly emotions on both sides but mostly just trolling ;p

[Retaliation]

8 minutes ago, Jeod said:

I like the part where Verti went all Donald Trump and showed you guys how to win.

I can't remember was that before or after the part where he almost lost the game by shooting me but didn't because he can't read?

[Nodlied]

 

 

As Chaos_Knight died, the remaining taskforce members managed to calm down and agreed to resume their work. They found a load of information in Chaos_Knight's room as well as the one belonging to OrangeP47. This, combined with the already known evidence and that that the continued investigation, managed to uncover the necessary information for the taskforce to connect the dots and come to the right conclusion. It appears that some individuals on both the Serbian as well as the Austro-Hungarian side were working to start a war. From secret organisations to powerful members of the respective nations. From aided smuggling to the eventual assassination. 

Without the meddling of hostile individuals and the disappearance of a rather charismatic man, the final verdict became clear.

1. Several high-ranked Austro-Hungarians instructed their most loyal servants to increase the world tension, to allow for an assassination to happen, and to arrange for temporary alliances with the enemy to achieve the goal.
2. An organisation known as the Black Hand wished to spark a Serbian uprising in the Empire by sparking to war. 
3. The Austro-Hungarian government did not know about the treasoness members in their society, nor did the Serbians.
 

The proof presented to the Great Powers hit the headlines all across the world. Slowly the different parties began to de-escalate. The German Empire no longer felt that it had the backing to justify supporting the Austrians. The Austro-Hungarians were no longer possitive about crushing the Serbians and were embarrassed. The Russians now believed that mobilizing their army would lead to war nontheless and canceled the call before it reached the high command. The French, while happy to ''win'' the crisis, were also a bit down about the fact that they wouldn't get a shot at liberating their occupied provinces. The Serbians, while embarrassed by the evidence of terrorist groups working on its territory, felt relieved. And the British? Well, let's just say that they were quite pleased with the result. The Concert of Europe would stand.

 

 

And thus all seemed well. The system of the industrial age managed to keep the world from being plunged into war. A most splendid ending is it not? Well, the system worked, but as time went on and with past crises, the system became increasingly unstable. With the growing alliances, the armsraces and the constant maneuvering on the diplomatic front, the system will have to collapse at one point in the future. What will be the final thing to trigger this great European war? Nobody knows, but until then, the Great Powers will have to keep up with modern developments, and what if one falls under its own weight?

 

 

 

Links to the necessary documents:

• The link to the one and all main doc.
• The link to the folder of excel files

 

Player roles

Mojoman as the taskforce leader

Mojoman was a taskforce member whose primary power came from contacting other people. This would have allowed for sneaky strategies and keep the most important information away from the scum team. Mojoman wasn't that active in the docs nor were some of his partners, but he most certainly tried to get stuff done. One of the most interesting docs was the final one with Cat5 where they plotted the demise of Verti60. Even with these good plays, he still made some questionable posts that made could have steered town away from victory. Besides that, I haven't got a clue why Mojoman claimed his objective was to catch the assassin, as his objective did not even mention such a thing. Also, his revolver would have been of more use to scum than to town.

 

Verti60 as the skilled veteran

The backup role. Interesting enough, I didn't give this role to him on purpose. As Verti was the ''add me if you need another semi-inactive player'' guy, he ended up being the final one on the list. As I assigned roles by RNG generator, Verti would be left with the ''leftover'' role, which happened to be the backup. So no, the meta argument ''Verti can't be scum because the GM wouldn't hand him to the scum team'' was not valid.  Verti started as an, as expected, inactive player who initially complained about his boring role. After he backed up Jeod, he became the #1 item hoarder. Too bad he never got his hand on Irishman's suitcase and Retaliation's cane. In the end though, Verti became gunslinger gone insane and caused a big headache for Voe who had to fill in for me. Did Verti make the winning shot? Yes. Was he right about Fraydo being scum? Nah, not really.

 

Chaos_Knight as the black hand agent

One of the two warmongerers, he had a hard time. He played well during the early game. Together with Orange, they plotted a lot of things in advance. It's just sad for him that OrangeP47 made a huge mistake. He tried to sit out the remainder of the game with some success until his luck ran out when he became the only possible target for the Khorne aligned Verti60. The reason why many of you became hostile so quickly was partially due to Chaos_Knight's tracking ability, which provided a hidden +1 suspicion point to whoever he caught visiting someone during the night.

 

Category5 as the young but well meaning soldier

Cat5 started out as suspicious by virtue of being Austro-Hungarian. I mean, they'd be quite suspicious in Belgrade after the start of the crisis. I don't think I need to explain much on him. His spyglass would have been the key to winning a potential evidence victory and he unkowingly assisted in finding the evidence on himself, check the evidence tracker for more info on that. Besides that, he did his best to safeguard and report on the vault, a rather important part of the game. And, well, I think we all know how his posts and grand-wall-o'-texts have effected the game. Good play on his part as always.

 

OrangeP47 as the von Hotzendorf loyalist

As with Chaos_Knight, he was in for a hard time, and he went straight ahead to the planning phase. He did miss one point though. When scum got the ability to nightkill, he immediately jumped the gun and went ahead with the murder of Jeod. He kind of forgot that he was already on the investigation radar and it would have been easy to assume that killing somebody would turn you hostile. A mistake that would ultimately prove fatal, even if he managed to delay it by a day. If it wasn't for a scum slip and his mistake, scum could have been on its way to victory.

 

Retaliation as captain ram 'n slam Horthy.

Retaliation had what I consider to be an interesting role and he made some liberal use of it. While he was frustrated by his locked item during the game he managed to call out the correct people and discover the correct things a short while before Cat5 did, he fully came into his own after the first nightkill, which unlocked his admiral's cane. He managed to nail scum and locked a non-aligned party in its place, all while being productive and providing good information and town play. I also rather enjoyed his night antics.

 

TheIrishman as doctor innocent

TheIrishman has been rather quiet this game. And while he didn't manage to protect anyone during the night that mattered, he was still the first one to correctly state all non-town parties. His role was overpowered but he managed to hide his role very well and even got a boost to his wellbeing while Jeod was still in play.

 

Killing_You as the passive assassin

Killing_You had a somewhat hard objective. He had to kill all three Austro-Hungarians. His grenade was unreliable but could be used from the start of the game and, in true Red Alert fashion, had an unlimited stock of them. He decided to play it safe and dumped his grenade in the vault, hoping to lynch most of his enemies and did not steal anything until the final night. This passive play slowed the world tension increase considerably, which somewhat worked against him. Still, he did his best and nailed one of his enemies before he was slain himself by his own grenade. Interestingly enough, it was the only time the grenade actually killed somebody. Killing_You's role had an effect on when the game would have ended, as he was required to be alive until after his targets were dead and gone, meaning that the game would have gone on as long as he was alive and his objective wasn't met.

 

Jeod the journalist

Jeod was a powerful town aligned role. His investigations during the night provided a lot of information and was the best bet to uncover somebody's alignment short of the non-existing alignment cop or the death of a player. He played well during the early game until he got his hands on Killing_You's grenade. The first grenade attack pushed the world tension over the 25% limit. This meant that scum could start nightkilling. Who was their first victim? Indeed, Jeod. So I'd say that we could count Jeod as the Grenade's first true victim. Beyond that, the typewriter was indeed mostly a gimmick plaything. However, if necessary, it could have provided good information with the potential added benifit of anonymity. Have to hand it to Verti for creating the best news articles though.

 

Fraydo as ???   Kane  

Fraydo had the second non-aligned role. And what kind of role. His mission was to ensure the survival of at least one black hand member at the end of the game. He failed with the deaths of Chaos_Knight and Killing_You. He played some good games during both the days and nights. His strategy to divert attention onto himself managed to bear fruit and his night shenanigans caused a lot of distressed townies. His investigation results were random and he knew it, even if he could have rolled a hostile result. The results themselves also caused a lot of confusion, furthering his goal. Most of it came to a stop when Retaliation stepped in and turned Fraydo's head into something that now resembles a golf ball. His antics managed to nail him as ''confirmed scum lynch now plox'' even though Fraydo's best ways to victory was to either go for the world tension or evidence endings of the game. He didn't mean any harm. 

 

Awards

 Holding all cards
Verti60

Verti60 managed to hoard most items in the game. He only lacked a few but due to his grand collection, he could do a lot of things, even if the power started to corrupt him.

 

 Caning Kane throughout the game
Retaliation

After it was discovered that Fraydo was behind the sudden twist in Category5's nightactions, Retaliation wasted no time to put him down during the night, and again, and again. Retaliation eventually made a sport out of it becoming more proficient at it every night. I doubt that he knew that he kept managing to subdue a close second to god.

 

 Divine intervention
TheIrishman, Chaos_Knight, Fraydo

Several really unusual things happened. First of all, the doctor survived the game and managed to stay hidden from scum until almost the end of the game. Secondly, Chaos_Knight kind of won an RNG by Verti being investigated instead of OrangeP47. And then, for the final bizarre award: Fraydo managed to beat RNG not once, but twice. His investigation result could net him a hostile status if the RNGsus decided shit on Fraydo like he usually does. But this time, he survived both investigation attempts and netted himself an innocent result preventing Verti60 from shooting him.

 

 Peace, not war
All town and taskforce players

Congratulations, you've won the game and prevented the great European war. ... This time...

 

 

Post game thoughts

And thus we arrive at the very end of the game. Kind of sad really. So, what's up with my thoughts?

I'm personally of the opinion that the experimental set-up was a success. Beyond the standard mafia win conditions and its mechanics (which were locked behind the tension limit) we also had the new tension and evidence mechanics that allowed for alternative victories. This allowed for a game where nobody had to die if the players wished it so. World tension went very well and if KY had at least tried to steal some things more often, the world tension would have put a lot more pressure on town, relieving scum. But what if scum decided to ''stay innocent''? Well, that's where lynching came into view. Many of you managed to at least figure out part of the world tension, which was enough by design of the game as you shouldn't have known or even tried to understand all modifiers fully, as that would have resulted in wasted time. What about the status system? Well, it was obvious that actual hostile actions equaled more suspicion points. But most of that system was hidden away and there were a few things that would have kept it from being figured out totally. The evidence mechanics, however, were meant to be understood rather easily. You were pretty much set on the amount of true and fake evidence rather quickly but became a bit stuck on how both types of evidence were found. There wasn't any fake evidence creator or planter but it was a bit more complicated than ''fake evidence = scum, real evidence = not scum'' as some pieces required two players of a certain type of group to be investigated. The spyglass had its own tracker to prevent a potential evidence steamrole by day 4.

 

Were there some issues though? Most certainly. Town had really powerful roles and scum was thrown under the bus by KY's lack of nightactions. No blame on KY though, he had his strategy and went with it. Still, I think that it went well enough as a WT game end was still possible by the end of the game. So, what about Voe then? It was his first time as a co-mod or any kind of GM and I think he did well enough. He made a few small mistakes that I fixed when I saw them and they didn't affect the game too much. The gun was a bit different, as he felt that he needed to lower the unlock on the gun due to an earlier miscalculation and the actions already made because of that miscalculation. It was one of the things that effected the game but I don't believe that I could have done anything about it anymore once I arrived back in the game. Finally, I could have written down some clearer instructions.  I'm not surprised that it caused some confusion every now and then.

 

My ending verdict? I'd say the set-up is a success. I had a lot of fun and I saw a lot of interesting ideas floating around in the posts made by you guys. It wasn't perfectly balanced, but I believe that it has potential and I most certainly enjoyed it a lot. It was a lot of work (just check all the bloody docs) but I got used to it and found my way through. I hope you guys enjoyed it as well, despite some of the shortcomings (and I believe that you did, but I'll see your verdict later).

 

Anyway,

Thanks for playing!

 

 

[VERTi60]

8 minutes ago, Retaliation said:

I can't remember was that before or after the part where he almost lost the game by shooting me but didn't because he can't read?

I was bluffing shooting you, voe later changed the gun usage parameters of the gun so shot went through. But I didnt know the proper usage until I used it 2nd time.

[Retaliation]

8 minutes ago, VERTi60 said:

I was bluffing sbooting you, voe later changed the gun usage parameters si the gun shot went through.

Oh so you were bluffing. 

Also accurate image of FRAYDO after this game:

Interesting that locking up a town player is an increase of 15% WT. I think we could have handled that big of an increase, but not sure.

[Mojoman]

Wish Fraydo would have told me to shoot someone. I woulda held onto the gun then.

[Mojoman]

So basically our victory is IN SPITE of Verti, not because of him.

[OrangeP47]

29 minutes ago, Nodlied said:

The Concert of Europe would stand.

Not done reading the post yet, but didn't the Crimean War end the Concert of Europe

[Nodlied]

Just now, OrangeP47 said:

Not done reading the post yet, but didn't the Crimean War end the Concert of Europe

Yes.

But I felt that it was a nice name for the pre-war status quo.

[kamuixmod]

3 hours ago, VERTi60 said:

 

He was tortured in the purgatory together with kam, chopbam and who knows what other horrors.

I was actually the one doing the torture.

Edited August 24, 2017 by kamuixmod

[OrangeP47]

You know, in the end, Cat 5 kind of called it early on. He said something to the effect that my MO as scum was to instantly go on a killing spree.  It was perfectly valid, nay, given the circumstances, the right choice, to NOT nightkill the night we got it. That never occurred to me at the time. Nightkills are scum's greatest tool, or so I thought at the time, it would be unthinkable to skip one. But alas, it really was the seeds of our own destruction.  I should bring some of my caution I use when posting to my usage of night actions too, I guess.

Anywho, interesting game. I liked the WT mechanics, and the seperate investigate/lynch.  It's gotten me out of 'creative block' for my Cuban Missile Crisis game, and I might borrow some elements for it. The last on that matter I'll say is that I can tell I must already think in a very similar manner to Nodlied, as a lot of the design choices here are the same that I would have made. I actually cannot comment more about it though without spoiling my own setup.

[Retaliation]

So there have been a lot of comments in the doc on how we kind of ignored going for an evidence victory, but I think we had a bad start to try for one. Of our first 3 pieces of evidence only one was true, the spyglass never did anything until scum was already on the ropes, 2 investigations where there was no evidence, and FRAYDO stole a piece of evidence (and the spyglass). At the end we could have tried for one, but that required us to trust Vert who managed to erode an entire game's worth of trust in a single day.