PJ Commentary on the Game
I try to have some commentary for every game I run, and this game is no exception. Usually I write commentary
well
ahead of time, but my free hours lately have been put towards other things (alas!). For some off-the-cuff commentary that is likely not complete for my thoughts:
1.)
It might be argued that this was not an actual game of “mafia”, given that there were no votes. This is true to a certain extent. Certainly, the first day or two it would have been very difficult to
know
when you are killing somebody. That just seems to be a natural result of the type of mechanic we wanted to test, but despite this, I think there were a good number of safeguards taken into account to keep this game in the realm of a mafia game. [Reasons haphazardly addressed below].
2.)
This set-up was inspired from a self-challenge to make a “random”-themed game that had
acceptable
“random” roles. With the aid of Yosarian2, we managed to come up a slew of roles, but at one point a “Hot Potato” role was discussed. I took an immediate liking to the role, and after mulling it over I decided to scrap the “Random Mafia” and focus on a “Hot Potato” mechanic. For some reason, the thought of potatoes exploding everywhere in a mafia game had me laughing and giggling every time I tried to talk about it.
The point of the game is to
discover random factors
, and additionally, to
take advantage of and control of randomness
.
3.)
To help players “discover” random factors, you have to make the factors largely non-random. This was done through a number of ways. Firstly, the potatoes were limited in type, and given easily accessible triggers, expedited by giving very specific “explosion times” in death posts. Secondly, the Butterfingers role suggests that number of times thrown is a relevant factor. Thirdly, the Baker role suggests that a baked potato has an additional trigger when compared to an unbaked potato of the same type. Fourthly, the Tatermancer role was privileged to get specific information about potatoes. The further the game moved along, the more control the town should have had over who they were killing. As you might notice from the “distribution” section, the “key” potatoes were the Russets and Baked Russets, which we wanted to assure the town would be able to gain control by the time the game was dwindling down to the final days.
To help reign in randomness – such as a situation where the town just seems to be unable to kill one particular player – the Man in Tin Foil was meant to be the safeguard sacrifice. To help out in situations where mafia might be taking advantage of known triggers (i.e. tossing a potato between themselves and then ending with a toss to a townsperson), we included the Butterfingers role which could defuse such a scenario
safely
without fear of dying from a “times thrown” trigger.
4.)
Using randomness to your advantage is key. Although you clearly cannot analyze voting patterns for this game, you
can
analyze who throws what potatoes to who. This information is especially relevant early in the game, where nobody can
quite
be sure if what they throw will kill the catcher. It was very likely that mafia would not toss potatoes between themselves early in the game,
especially
because even if they want to bus one particular player,
they might end up killing the wrong partner
.
Even if that did not occur, it was anticipated that the town would try a “C and D toss this potato”, “E and F toss this potato”, and “G and H toss this potato” strategy. This way, the town could keep a “list of scumminess” and make sure potatoes are always thrown to people within that list. Although this idea seemed to be kicked around, it never really came into the game full-force. Of course, to counteract the effectiveness was the Potato Cop! How can they investigate anybody if they are never tossed a potato? Oh noes!
A single vote on a mafia might not “scare” them in a regular game; but a single toss of a potato in
this
game when
should
scare them.
5.)
Of the potatoes, the only potato I regret is the Blue Potato, and to some extent, the Sweet Potato – I am not sure I like the idea of punishing a player because they are tossed a potato five seconds before a “time in existence” deadline hits. Yos2 and I created them to assure that D1, D3, and D4 had a chance to be “longer” days for the town to plan, and then start figuring out the mechanic. D2 was purposefully designed to be a “quick” day.
The reason the “number of times thrown” were so “high” was because we wanted to make sure D1 could advance a few pages before an explosion; a more reckless town could have shortened this game considerably. Essentially, we were trying to account for recklessness.
Baked Potatoes were meant to discourage lurking – if you aren’t around to toss a potato, you should generally die. “Do You Feel Lurky?” was a sub-premise of the game. If possible, we would rather have a lurker explode than bother to replace them.
6.)
As usual, I wanted to assure we avoided a strong alignment-telling Cop. This resulted in the Potato Cop who could only investigate if s/he was thrown a potato and had two misleading roles to deal with (Miller and Godfather), and even should they be thrown a potato, they will only be able to investigate players they throw a potato to, which might still be
nobody
if their toss resulted in an explosion. The Spudsmith was effectively a Gunsmith, which was meant to not be as surefire to tell alignments, but an essential “backup” to the Cop. Without the use of any protective roles, we needed to make sure there was more than one method to get player-related information that was not conclusive in case one died early.
7.)
Role names were largely meant to revolve around the theme of the game (i.e. “butter”, “tin foil”, “baker”, “spud”, “tater”), excepting of course for James Bond which was included because Yosarian2 happens to like James Bond.
8.)
The Baker and Butterfingers were included largely to add elements of fun to the game. As usual, such roles could have been in either the hands of the town or the hands of scum, and these roles were contemplated being used on both sides. Butterfingers was probably a more “powerful” role than the Baker, so had alignments been reversed, the set-up probably would have been altered to either strengthen the town or weaken the scum in some manner. In the future, I would advise against assuming an “in-thread” role is automatically town. I (at least) am not big on just going out and essentially “confirming alignments” for players without a good reason to do so.
