Brightest Day Mafia, Part 1 - GAME OVER

[GreyICE]

Why did Drill Sergeant (Miscellaneous) successfully enhance Roleblocker (Roleblock)?

Drill sergeant was assumed to be a day action in the first draft. On review we saw that had changed, but decided for sanities sake it happened in the same layer as role modifying (i.e. copying) abilities.

Otherwise it literally did nothing most of the time, and that's kinda bad.

Also, damn we were more powerful than we thought...next time scum teammembers NEED to submit their entire role PM in QT. Toog you didn't tell us you got an EXTRA KILL.

Yeah, also the vote stealer was fairly powerful as he counted as a spare scumteam member in LyLo (4:2, steal a vote, now scum have 3 votes, town have three votes, gg town).

[GreyICE]

First, I have to congratulate Dekes and Dana for running this insanity. Overall, things were handled very well. I apologize to anyone who was offended by my running the moderation, it was a bad situation that I handled as best I could, and Dekes+Dana handled it nicely.

It was my idea to throw out the Golden Rule of NAR since I felt that night actions would be a stone bitch to resolve anyway without the various shenanigans the Golden Rule introduces. Basically, if we got a head start on resolving actions before the action deadline, we'd dramatically increase our efficiency, but we'd also dramatically increase the risk of a roleblocker 'blocking a roleblocker' or otherwise fucking up our nice 80% complete action resolution. Since the blocker-on-blocker action is a PITA to resolve anyway (especially with our flavors of blockers) it just seemed simpler to scrap the entire Golden Rule ordeal and resolve all actions simultaneously in each layer of NAR.

Double Days were something me and Dana hit on early to make this number of scum work. Basically, with a 6 man scumteam and a 3 man cult (OW) either we left the town dripping with power or we called it. I was scared up until the 11th hour that the cult was too strong despite our numerous anti-cult measures (for one, favoring roleblockers over protective roles) but Dana held firm and that was a very solid call.

Things I liked:

1) The strongest town power role being double days - I've been in too many games where the 'omg wow' power dies N1 or does nothing to trust town power. Indeed, the double days were crucial to town victory here. My major motivator was the worry that town apathy would kick in - there was a good chance in a mass power role game that there'd be two or even three confirmed scum on any given day. That leaves the lynch feeling very useless. Here, it remained a primary factor, and despite EVERY SINGLE PLAYER having a role, the lynch remained very relevant.

2) Lafleeze - I think me and Dana had more fun dreaming up that role. I would have cried if he died D1. Instead, he proved to live up to his full potential to confuse, confuddle, and be awesome.

3) Lex Luthor, town governor - don't flavor game. Lex and Lafleeze were your notifications that wouldn't be working.

4) Roleblockers - there were a TON of roleblockers, which lead to us just ditching the doctor (enough ways the scum kill could be intercepted anyway). Honestly I don't think we even seriously discussed a doctor - it's a boring role, one that doesn't fit superheroes, and one that just risked voltroning a PR into god.

5) The faction I think played best won. I like it when that happens.


Things I dislike

1) Kilowag - I sketched up the ideas of what he would do in haste, and we never really balanced them. The mystery magical vanilla was one of the less weird things he could do. Overall, I'd include the role again, but I might add some sort of hint that powers have changed. I also kinda wanted him to be a day power, because I thought that would foster discussion (I can upgrade someone, who wants it?). We lost that in the shuffle, and I was unclear about that anyway.

2) Lex Luthor, town governor - god that was a mean role. Lafleeze at least got a cool power to go with his obvscum claim, Lex just kinda got the shaft.

[GreyICE]

Also, on Day 1 mass claim breaking the game, ReaperCharlie pushed hard to make sure that didn't happen (yes, really) and I think that it wouldn't have. At the ground level it would have been VERY hard to guess the pattern that is obvious when you're staring at the role PMs. To explain:

Lex Luthor and Lafleeze are not only both town, THEY BOTH HAVE THE SAME RING (there's only one orange ring). Their in-game roles are from different points in the timeline.

2-shot Vanillizer - this role is potentially devastating during mass claim. Remember, culted players lose their powers. A player claiming to be vanillized looks an awful lot like a cult recruit on the ground level, and once cult figured out what was going on, they'd have almost certainly abused this.

2-shot Janitoring Vig - remember, we envisioned the scum team having 2 kills at least N1 (N2 we knew it would be dicey if the role made it that long, I envisioned it being about 50/50). With 2 kills and a Vanillize, the town gets boned HARD during mass claim - for instance the mafia can take out the jailkeeper, Lafleeze, and the Mafia cop in one night, with very little the town can do about it (NO DOCTOR).

Roleblocker - heh

Basically, the scum team could take out 4 roles N1 during mass claim (2 dead, one vanilla, one blocked) and another 3 N2 (2 dead, one vanilla, one blocked). Additionally, scar could take out an anti-cult role (which he did) and the cult could recruit an anti-cult role. On the ground level, that results in absolute chaos without firm town leaders who stick to their guns.


Ugly claims
Maxwell Lord - No one ever got to see this one in action, but Maxwell Lord is a REALLY ugly character. Wonder Woman KILLED him for hells sake. Also I don't know if anyone noticed Magua's pun, but when he said he was the cult counter he KNEW everyone would take it as 'he counters cult' when his role was the cult

counter

(he gets a PM telling him the number of cult in the game 'i.e. counting the cult').



Extra notes:

1) the flavor scene with Necron and the staff - this was always meant to be in there. Basically, we didn't want a repeat of Darkest Night with the 'ninja cult leader' so when he resurrected (an event that cost the cult an extra death, so as not to be TOTALLY ridiculous late game) it played out a nice little modscene warning the town that Necron was back in action. That was always the intention. Sadly, none of us thought to write the modscene ahead of time, something I certainly should have caught (Dana had enough to write, BELIEVE ME).

2) Three member starting cult - Essentially, thanks to the double day mechanic, cult leader was an even night recruiter. Additionally, he was blockable. With the scumteam power level where its at, my equation was that 6 mafia = 7 cult in terms of strength (Mafia had many more and much stronger roles than the cult). Since I could assume at least one recruit 'went bad' (recruit hit scum, recruit was shot before recruiting, cult leader jailkept) that made cult equal to mafia on night 5. We can argue back and forth (recruiting nets you much stronger players on the plus side, on the minus side recruits can only come from one player making the tracker and watcher much stronger, and the town is targeting the cult leader over the mafia due to the cult being more long-term dangerous).

3) My goal wasn't to make the game balanced. It was for each team to, at some point, go 'holy fuck how do we win this' and at some point go 'holy fuck how do we lose this.' I thought mafia would have that point early on when they realized they had a 2 shot VIGILANTE on the SCUMTEAM, but thanks to the mistakes, it never materialized. Otherwise I think there were points that both scumteams were counting lynches and wondering how the hell they would win, and points where the town felt they were slowly drowning in a sea of scum.

[GreyICE]

you forget ofc that vanillzing people confirms then as non-scum
anywho SK wins the page
Kast and hiplop are now bros for life.

Huh?

It confirms them as non-mafia scum, perhaps. A player who becomes cult recruit is vanillized.

It was fully anticipated the cult would start taking advantage of this eventually, as well as the town being like -_- about the entire thing.

[GreyICE]

...and that's why we use Natural Action Resolution I can see it would be more work, but when people are told throughout the game that things are being done one way, it's disconcerting when mods announce on the final day "haha we messed up, we're actually running this game completely different from how we've been saying from the beginning". Sometimes that doesn't make a difference, but in this case BB misunderstood your messages as confirmation that Tans was not recruited (thus making him town).Personally, I think the fair thing would be to just refer him to NAR as had been done throughout the game, and if he was asking questions specifically about how the mafia vanillizer role worked, then just tell him he doesn't know OR that "it depends on what the vanillizer's role PM says".

Uh, Kast. Blackberry was the MAFIA COP. That meant he found out if players were a member of the mafia.

He had no ability to say if a player was recruited.

Also we followed NAR order resolution, just not the golden rule bullshit that leads to the roleblocker fiascos, etc. So investigates were ALWAYS going last.

Which still didn't matter since Blackberry got 'not mafia' if he investigated any cult member.

[GreyICE]

Yeah, the problem is that the golden rule is highly noncondusive to running games quickly, and 90% of the time no different than following the list. The other 10% of the time it's usually fine. More importantly, simultaneous resolution solves all dueling roleblocker possibilities.

Given that my quick review of the action finds 2 instances of dueling roleblockers and like 0 instances of the golden rule changing something, I think we went with the relevant portion.

[GreyICE]

Yeah, but the point about making it a role is that the role brings skill to the game. It's like saying 'well if you want the town to have a cop, why not just let all the townies vote on who to investigate each day?'

Your role especially brings up some interesting questions. If you're wagoned, do you fakeclaim something that's confirmable, guaranteeing your lynch eventually, but possibly keeping you alive 2 critical night phases? Does the scumteam sacrifice a less valuable role to increase your towncred?

It's generally assumed that the town has to work to protect their PRs, yet scum feel they should get the effects stock rather than face similar problems?

Every now and then I think scumteams really have this feeling of entitlement. No, all of our claims need to be provable, risk free, and safe (Busdriver? Oh come on, how often do two people really know they've been busdriven? Almost never. You could fakeclaim busdriver for a year). No, our PRs shouldn't matter.

AHEM.

The stock 'double day' game is 13:3, all Vanilla. This was err... 15:6. PLUS CULT. Yeah, we made life difficult for the scumteam. It was balanced by them being SO FRAKKIN ENORMOUS.

[GreyICE]

9:3 all vanilla is fairly balanced.

Nope!

2-11 mountainous is unbalanced

in favour of the scum

11:2 can be considered theoretically balanced with practical problems achieving theoretical results (consistent playerbase so scum can't shoot strong players, the problem of most people avoid 11:2 like the plague, the fact that all our testing is done with 10:2 which has one less lynch, etc.)

In any case 9:3 all vanilla should be won by town roughly one game in 40. If that.

Double days obviously favors town significantly, that's why the game can increase to 13:3 from 11:2 all vanilla.

In any case, yeah. Your understanding of balance is horribly off, Kast (this is why 90% of all players should never role speculate - they couldn't balance a setup to save their lives).

[GreyICE]

Difference being that this game is about numbers. If town loses the cop, they don't lose the numbers game. If the scum team is "balanced" around a role able to make up the difference in kills, and they lose it on the first lynch, it's a severe blow to their inherent balance.

And if the town is balanced around a cop, it's a severe blow to the town to lose their cop N1.

It's the same difference. At the end of the day your role chopped one day phase off the game. That's major, but good play can make up for that from town or scum.

The scumteam was not 'balanced' around anything. It had 6 power roles. It had the tools to deal with a mass claim. If they fucked up and lost their tools or didn't use them properly, well, then they didn't play well.

[GreyICE]

Then I think Toog is overestimating how crucial his role was to scum success. Scum still made it to MyLo with his role dead.

[GreyICE]

Think of it like this: a chess game is balanced if both players start with the same pieces. If you remove the queen (2 shot extra night killer) from one team, it is no longer balanced. If you remove the knight (town cop) from one team, it would ALSO be unbalanced. However, the degree of imbalance is much less in the second case.

A game is only 'balanced' in the raw, unadulterated state. That's reality.

The minute actual game-play occurs that theoretical balance gives way to gameplay and decision making.

You can't expect the game to be balanced pre-game for the possibility that Toog (or any player) plays badly and is lynched or makes poor use of his abilities. That's an absurd stance to take.

Well actually we did do exactly that for the cult.

But the problem of, say, the cult recruiter going to DrMyShotty or something is far worse for the game than any scum role going to similar.

[GreyICE]

Oh, most assuredly so. You misunderstand. GreyICE already stated that the pregame setup balance assumed Toog would get one shot off and would have a 50% chance of getting the other one off. Since the *mods* assumed this to be the case in order for the game to be balanced, Toog's argument is valid; if the mods idea of pregame *balance* is a role that grants the mafia one bonus kill and a 50% chance of a second bonus kill, then they should put in a role that does exactly that.

However, like you and others have pointed out, it wasn't actually necessary for game balance reasons.

No plan survives contact with the enemy.

For game balance reasons we didn't assume inhimshallibe would claim the scummiest fucking claim he could possibly think of and guarantee that no scum in their right mind would ever target the Paranoid Gun Owner with ANYTHING.

Pitiful play occurred on both sides.