Babylon 5 Mafia: Severed Dreams - Over

[veerus]

Can someone explain "falseclaims" to me?

[Kinetic]

Ha!

I was right on: DGB and TheInternet being scum!
I was right on: Armlx and Pop being scum!

I had all of the scum pegged...

I was wrong on another scum being in B5...

I was wrong on MafiaSSK, totally thought he was a survivor...

If you look, I was playing a double gambit by calling pacman the scum. I wanted Nat to believe I was WiFoming him and kill DGB who I actually thought was scum, but since if he killed the real EF member it would be difficult to pull off an AoL win.

I really was trying for AoL win, even at the end. I REALLY felt like this game was heavily favored against AoL, so I wanted them to win more than anything.

Good game to all, not a win the way I'd like it, but a win is a win, and in such a complicated game, *shrug*. Good play Nat.

[Natirasha]

No prob.

I'm glad I won.

[pacman281292]

OMG I HUNTED YOU DGB
THAT MOVE WAS OBV


I knew it. "Fight for WC" crushed us. I hate you (Kinetic), and I can't believe no one listened me. Effectively; WC goals went over. Good job, kinetic. I hate you.

[forbiddanlight]

Originally, I was trying to use my role as a pro town vig, and I thought Mana_Ku was lying her ass off (hence targetting twice). When N3 came around, I couldn't resist the quick win ^-^. So, I'm curious why you blocked me though, farside?

[Darox]

I will say this now: you are EXTREMELY lucky that the game didn't end on Day 1, given what the Cult's win condition actually was.

Yeah.

Damn alarm clock not waking me up so I could do something stupid like claim I was actually earthforce and lying or claim survivor to debunk the KoC lynch and win the game.

[armlx]

Really good set up. Not sure if the AOL/Shadow/Vorlon WC's were ever going to happen though.

[Kinetic]

Really good set up. Not sure if the AOL/Shadow/Vorlon WC's were ever going to happen though.

If I'd gone with my gut and thought the two other B5s were indeed survivors then they might have...

I also think the other AoL (besides Emp) in B5 should have been scum and only one scum in unaligned.

Other than that, yea, really good setup.

[The Internet]

We as scum kind of realized it hit the fan during night three when we saw that we had been killing at random (we were trying to avoid doc protection), and then realized there were alot of AoL left. I am amazed that the cult was so weak in this game.

[Darox]

The cult seemed pretty imbalanced to me.

The only reason I didn't win day one was because I slept in past the deadline.

[Natirasha]

Yeah, cult seems very OP in this game.

[malthusis]

That's probably why it was an ADDED on WC, rather then a must do to win WC.

[Kinetic]

Cult was very strong. It wasn't OP in my opinion, it was just about right.

I do think, though, that in addition to the cult there should have only been one other survivor though.

[forbiddanlight]

I do think, though, that in addition to the cult there should have only been one other survivor though.

Would've made the anti conditions too easy though.

[Kinetic]

I do think, though, that in addition to the cult there should have only been one other survivor though.

Would've made the anti conditions too easy though.

Depends, I thought the cult created survivors, so in that case it wouldn't have. Even if they got lucky and killed Darox day 1 there still would have been 3 survivors total.

[Mana_Ku]

I think I need to play more games with armlx. It seems like he pisses me off every time he's scum. And when he isn't he doesn't .

Kill Mana_Ku, NOW.

How nice

Also, DGB after I have posted this post, check that little pink sign underneath my avatar. I'm not sure if TI made that mistake as well.

And DGB, why did you think I was suspicious of TI?

[Tarhalindur]

I do think, though, that in addition to the cult there should have only been one other survivor though.

Would've made the anti conditions too easy though.

Depends, I thought the cult created survivors, so in that case it wouldn't have. Even if they got lucky and killed Darox day 1 there still would have been 3 survivors total.

Cult of Pacifism was an alignment faction. Neutral Survivor was a racial faction. This means that, no, the Cult could NOT create new Neutral Survivors.

For reference, the PM sent to armlx when he was recruited (yes, the Cult could recruit Mafiosos, since it was impossible for recruits to communicate with or even know the other members of the Cult):

You have gained the following win condition in addition to your original win conditions:

New Win Condition

:

You win when a day ends in No Lynch, or nothing can prevent the same.

You now win if you fulfill any one of your three (3) win conditions (the Vorlon Operative win condition, the League of Unaligned Worlds win condition, or this new win condition).

I'll get up the full design comments when I have time, but I will note this now: Cult of Pacifism was a punisher role, designed to be moderately underpowered normally but punish the town in the worst possible way if it got too reluctant to lynch. I probably should have slammed the hammer down when I checked the thread before dinner Day 1 (or just not granted an extension) as a lesson for players in Tar games in the future.

[MacavityLock]

By the way dybeck, if you're still here, what was the deal with my "miscalculation?"

[veerus]

I probably should have slammed the hammer down when I checked the thread before dinner Day 1 (or just not granted an extension) as a lesson for players in Tar games in the future.

It would've kind of sucked to lose a game on a technicality of having to unvote. IMO, you made the right choice in letting the game continue since the original vote came in before the deadline.

[Tarhalindur]

Can someone explain "falseclaims" to me?

My role PMs tend to have a very distinctive structure. Falseclaim abilities are a countermeasure intended to prevent Mafia from being caught due to missing an important structural detail or common element of town role PMS when falseclaiming, which is a bit of a pet peeve of mine (notice that I usually provide at least two countermeasures against this tactic).

This would have worked better if I had remembered to actually give the Mafia the falseclaim ability in this game. Oops. Sorry about that. (I also forgot to give them the AoL win condition at first and had to rectify that midgame. Oops.)

Yeah, I seriously screwed up on the Mafia in this game, as I will explain when I have time to type full design notes.

[forbiddanlight]

Well still, I'm glad I didn't have to go past D3 after claiming a killing role. I dunno what Kinetic was after saying he knew I was scum, but that scared me into screwing up, lol.

[armlx]

I think I need to play more games with armlx. It seems like he pisses me off every time he's scum. And when he isn't he doesn't Very Happy.

To be fair, in the last game like that I was on the one outer of acting as such.

[Kinetic]

Well still, I'm glad I didn't have to go past D3 after claiming a killing role. I dunno what Kinetic was after saying he knew I was scum, but that scared me into screwing up, lol.

Ha, hell yea it did, rofl.

I'm like... whaaat?

I was still working on the theory that there was at least 1! scum in B5. And I tossed a coin between you and Vis in that post. Being a mason with Emp I knew he wasn't scum.

And yea, the only power role I had was I was a mason with Empking and the only way to kill Empking was to kill me. So I faked NK immunity and if pushed I would have said Emp had lynch immunity but not NK immunity and we were linked.

lol

[Tarhalindur]

Vote Count References:

These were fairly simple. The quotes were simply funny quotes that were used in the series (I tried not to use any in vote counts that I did in role PMs, hence why my personal favorite quote - "BE SOMEWHERE ELSE" - never appeared in a vote count). The vote count names were simply the names of each episode of the series in episode order.

Design Notes:

This setup had two major innovations: dual setups (racial and alignment) and a multi-faction town (anti-factions and AoL were all weighted as town in setup design). Expect more multi-faction towns from me in the future, since the idea never really lived up to its potential here.

My main errors in setup design were 1) Allowing Kinetic's symmetry plan to work reasonably well (I DID have failsafes, but neither were sufficient to prevent this) and 2) SEVERELY underpowering the Mafia (as previously noted, I even forgot to give them the falseclaim ability). At a bare minimum, they should have had redirectors (either with or without roleblockers) and probably a secondary power (either redirectors + roleblockers or redirector + 1-shot Mafia Assassins, I think); allowing them to kill only six players (anti-factions and opposite Mafia) might also have been an acceptable solution.

The design was fairly simple: the game was a Mafia game if played by alignment faction and something completely different if played by racial faction, with the expectation that the game would end up somewhere in between. Each race (including Neutral Survivors) had 3 players. All the races save two (the Neutrals, who each had a unique win condition, and Babylon 5, which had three town or townish characters that I wanted in the game and I would have difficulty fitting in - the failsafe against setup breaking was a useful side effect). Each Neutral Survivor had to survive or fulfill a special alignment condition, each Mafia group had to kill 9 players (50% more than normal, due to having a built-in factional kill), and each other faction had to kill six players.

There was one other noteworthy design principle here: there were no protective roles allowed in the game. Period. Allowing protective roles would likely have unbalanced the setup, IMO, and didn't fit flavorwise at any rate. (The one role name that would obviously be protective was handed to the SK as a safeclaim.)

Note: Mafia in general and Mafia Godfathers in particular were weighted fairly highly in the racial balance section, since they had the ability to use the Mafia kill for racial purposes if necessary.

If I had to make this setup again, I would probably hugely shift where the scum were (at least two factions would have had at least two scum... or maybe that's just what I want you to think...) and power up the Mafia in general.

Specific roles:

Lorien

- This role was, as previously noted, a punisher role - overpowered if the town was indecisive, somewhat underpowered otherwise. I was generous in allowing this role not to win immediately this time. Next time, you won't be so lucky.

Lorien had two safeclaims: himself (AoL/B5) and Jeffrey Sinclair (AoL/Minbari). The latter was provided to reduce the problem of all the safeclaims for neutrals being B5 - I hope the flavor behind Sinclair as Minbari is obvious to anyone who watched the show.

Jha'Dur

- This role was deceptive: the SK condition was unfulfillable by design. This was actually designed as the one true neutral survivor, with the SK condition simply intended as an incentive for the player with this role to kill people (preferably in a disruptive manner). I'm not sure whether forbiddanlight ever realized that the SK condition was unfulfillable, but she played the role very, very well (I was a bit disappointed that she played vig at first, but I do see the logic behind it).

Franklin (the obvious Doc rolename) was given to this character as a safeclaim both because I felt it was the strongest safeclaim available and because I wanted this role to have a hint that there was no Doc.

Soul Hunter

- This, beyond anything else, was supposed to be the failsafe against raceclaims: the raceclaim SHOULD have made it trivially easy for this role to fulfill its alignment condition and badly hurt the town in the process (it would have been trivially easy for this role to win Day 2: help lynch KoC (Lennier) D1, help lynch hp [leaves] (Bester) D2, then shoot Kinetic (who pretty much had to be Delenn at this point by process of elimination) D2 for the win). Instead, VisMaior lurked his way through the game and played as survivor-vig. *sigh*

Side note: This role, like the SK, was also designed to be swingy: it was tasked with killing three major town power roles and both Mafia Godfathers.

Sheridan

- This role was actually designed as part of an Archangel variant (target a player, that player cannot be killed so long as you are alive, 1-shot) and stayed untouched during design.

Ivanova

- One of the first roles added to the setup, she remained untouched during design. If I had been playing this role, I would probably have globalblocked D2 (especially since that could protect malthusis/Mana_Ku) then daykilled ASAP D3), but veerus's decision made some sense.

Lyta Alexander

- Another role in the fine Tarhalindur tradition of investigative roles with drawbacks (she was effectively a millercop who got incorrect results on a major town power role) - flavorwise, this was justified by not being able to read telepaths' minds (the roleblock result was purely for confusion). This role was, again, added to the setup early and never changed. (There WAS a reason for having no scum in B5, you know...)

Pak'ma'ra' Ambassador

- I messed up on the race faction name. Oops.

Drazi Ambassador

- I knew early on that I wanted at least one of the Nonaligned to be a Mafia Roleblocker. This role wound up fitting the bill. Again, suffered from the "Mafia were far too weak" problem.

Gaim Ambassador

- One of the last roles added to the setup (when I knew that I wanted the Nonaligned to be the 2-scum race). Usual problem applies.

Delenn

- The other part of the Archangel role, and probably the reason why Kinetic was able to break the setup (he had one of the town roles with the most information about the setup).

Lennier

- Both of the Godfathers were chosen as such for the same action in the series (

betraying Sheridan

). I slipped up on the rolename here in particular (I should have referred to the role as Vorlon Operative Godfather/Minbari Vigilante, so the Godfathers would know what their role was designed as for the racial balance). Again, this role was never changed during design (if I had, I might have caught the no-falseclaim ability problem...).

Neroon

- One of the few roles changed during design (and probably the reason why the Mafia were so underpowered) - he was originally vanilla (as was Refa), but my reviewers felt that the anti-factions were underpowered. In hindsight, they were 100% wrong and I should have stuck to my guns and made the replacement roles weaker... or, come to think of it, maybe I should have given the anti-Shadow mutator to the LoNW...

Garibaldi

- The other Godfather, chosen for the same reason as Lennier and subject to the same major errors. Note: I did not include Morden in the setup because a) that would have been too obvious (I would have needed to hand out a safeclaim) and b) Morden doesn't fit too well in the racial structure.

Sakai

- A random character from Season 1 drafted for use as an AoL vanilla. Never changed during design.

Bester

- The other millercop, designed identically to Lyta.

G'Kar

- The flavor here was misleading. The role description (Gunsmith) was accurate. Flavor: he measured the psychological ability to kill, which both Bester and Lyta clearly have flavorwise. I believe this role may actually have belonged to the Cops in the earliest drafts, but I can't remember now.

Side note: each town faction (there were 3 town factions in this game) had 1 investigative role. G'Kar, the weakest, was given to the most numerous (AoL).

Ta'Lon

- I wanted somebody from the Narn to be a Mafioso, and Ta'Lon turned out to be it. This role desperately needed a second power for both racial and alignment balance, but I never realized that.

Narn Bat Squad Leader

- Yes, this was a role in the game. Yes, it was vanilla. My name is Tarhalindur, you know...

Londo Mollari

- Londo was actually the Godfather for a while, but he didn't have the same type of flavor Garibaldi did and he was pretty obvious if players tried to break the setup open by name claims. (Hence why he became the roleblocker.)

Vir Cotto

- Well, somebody needed to be an AoL vanilla, and here's the obvious suspect... Vir turned out to be a role I was adamantly against changing.

Lord Refa

- Refa, like Neroon, was originally vanilla. He was in fact the reason I made the mutators: the Centauri were clearly underpowered and the anti-factions arguable so. I just screwed up in making Neroon the second mutator.

Play Notes:

Neutrals:
- Darox played decently but not too well - he probably could have earned the D1 win if he had tried for it (confusion during the last few days or simply lobbying by PM for me not to extend the deadline).
- Forbiddanlight played an excellent game (to such an extent that I would call her the player who did the most to ensure her own win) - making up for Mind Screw II, I see?
- VisMaior, IMO was the biggest disappointment in the game, as he never used any of the potential in his role. He basically won because the town was willing to tolerate lurking (and because he chose the right target D3). He could easily have ensured a win by simply helping out on two lynches and then nuking either Mana_Ku (which would have counted towards his hitman condition even with the doublekill) or Delenn (who he should have been able to figure out was Kinetic and vulnerable with a few pertinent mod questions).

Mafia:
- The Mafia were already in a bad position to start with and compounded this with horrible play, especially with regards to kills (I don't get the dybeck I, dybeck II, and Darox kills in particular).

Town:
- Town won because Kinetic had enough information to figure out most of the setup and none of the killing roles ever took a potshot at him (FL's choice makes sense given how she played her role, but Mafia should have noticed that he pulled the same bluff in freaktown and not made the same mistake, and VisMaior of all people could have figured out he was bluffing).

Now, time to get preparations together for Mind Screw 3... things like finishing balance, writing flavor text, and checking to see who wants to pre-in...

[Kinetic]

Town:
- Town won because Kinetic had enough information to figure out most of the setup and none of the killing roles ever took a potshot at him (FL's choice makes sense given how she played her role, but Mafia should have noticed that he pulled the same bluff in freaktown and not made the same mistake, and VisMaior of all people could have figured out he was bluffing).

ROFL. Totally right. The entire time I was like: I sure hope no one actually READS this game I keep mentioning and realizes I made THE EXACT SAME GAMBIT there.