Mafialands [OC] - Game Over, Congrats ClarinetsandOboes

[The3rdCorinthian]

Kirsche nailed it. Also, he was the first person i talked to, and once he said he was hyperion and he believed me, I tried using my position to play the bandits off against the hyperion. Obviously it didn't work out.

[Life]

This is a long time coming. Managed to find the spreadsheet so feel free to look at it.

Thoughts before game:

As many of you know, I prefer OC to NOC. Allows for more freedom and for any given player to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with work behind the scenes.

The issue is that in a standard Mafia game, most people send in an action and do nothing. Which I wanted to avoid especially since people hate the "follow the village leader" strategy (for good reason too). So I made this game multi-faction. There were three teams of 3 with a wolf. Each team had its own strengths and weaknesses when it came to the roles given in order to make it as fair as possible.

Moley, moley, MOLE:

I created the game so of course I was going to implement moles. It's one of my favourite roles. However, I designed the moles with the idea that they would be quiet saboteurs of the team they were moling instead of just dishing information back to their regular faction. As such, I told all the moles that if they were to reveal to their faction that they were a mole, they would be godkilled. This restriction was only going to be lifted once the mole within their faction was dead.

All three of the moles played very well and it pleased me to no end.

Combating inaction:

My favourite part about the set-up was starting the factions disjointed. I wanted to promote the idea of talking to other people so I purposely gave each person the name of another one in their faction. The mole was also included in this loop which lead to a lot of people thinking that the set-up was 4-3-3 for a long time (until Night 1, if I'm not mistaken). This caused a lot of hilarity for both me and Gaius as we watched people trying to figure out what was going on.

Unfortunately, people weren't as active as I would have liked in the lategame. Oh well.

Priorities:

You know those logic puzzle where John sits next to Judy but across the hall from Janet if she's wearing a red sweater? Like those that you need to figure out how to slot everything in?

Same idea here. I don't like the idea of static priorities (especially kills) because they're not practical. Why can't a Safeguard be hooked? If a Hooker acts first, then can their target never be Safeguarded? Is it possible to put both a BG and SG on the same player or does the BG fail? My personal idea is that you should puzzle them all together to make as many actions work as possible.

Same thing with kills and this one played a huge factor. Since the Wolf was a one-man-show, he had to have top priority when it came to kills, especially with 3 other kills flying around per night and no night-time protection. But after that, what about the factions? So I came up with this plan that each faction would be faster than another faction when it came to kills. The HC was faster than the CR. The CR beat out the Bandits. And the Bandits would kill before the HC. This basically meant that there would be no double kills and you could effectively change the scope of the game by targeting the right faction and person. But even I didn't realize the mind-fuck it would cause me on Night 1. Regardless, I would do this again in a heartbeat.
​

​Hyperion Corporation:

There's a lot here to mention so let's start with Mitsuki.

In short, Mitsuki (the mole) was the only reason why the HC even stood a chance. Diego was subbed in late and AssassinMercenary read his Role PM incorrectly (he was an SG, not BG) and then proceeded to leak every single bit of information that Mitsuki had collected. She eventually figured that out and told him to shut up but the damage was done. But the killer blow for HC was losing Mitsuki on Night 1 and the way it went down.

Mitsuki and Baldrick targeted each other for kills. Due to my system of priorities, Baldrick would kill her first... except then I realized that Mitsuki was actually performing the Crimson Raider kill while Diego was doing the Hyperion Corp kill (I didn't want a mole performing two kills in a single night). So the question was if Mitsuki's Crimson Raider kill would be considered as a Crimson Raider or Hyperion Corp kill. The later kills Mitsuki and the former kills Baldrick. I thought about this one for about a half hour after phase end (it was pretty much the only scenario I didn't envision happening because the odds were stupid) and finally went with the second option because it felt a lot more consistent. Sorry sweetie.

As for Diego and AM, I'd have Diego back again but not AM. He was god awful. I actually cringed at one point while watching him.

The faction itself was designed as more of a diplomatic style. Their abilities were a 1-time lynch stop and Safeguard. Since the lynch-stop could actually win the game for the HC if they used it correctly, I didn't feel the need to give them a good role with that. The Safeguard was actually supposed to be used as a trading tool for either information or required actions. Waste of two roles if you ask me.

​Bandits:​

It's amazing how you can put three pretty good players (based on my experience) on the same team and just watch an entire clusterfuck.

I already mentioned N1 when it comes to Baldrick so let's skip to D2. While I was at work (or sleeping before work, don't remember), Lord Gaius gave someone an extension on the phase without telling me. So I get back with an hour left to go and I see that there's an extension. That doesn't fly with me since I had explicitly planned cycles around my work schedule. I announced that there would be no extension (bare in mind that this is with an hour left in the cycle) and the lynch would go on as planned.

Now I get Baldrick's point about this being bullshit and I can almost sympathize... except for one thing. Baldrick had been changing his vote all day and was the last vote at the time. And he chose to leave the vote as a tie with Paperblade who was on his own faction and silenced for the second time in a row (that was amazing). Baldrick essentially put himself in a bad position by no fault other than his own. As such, they both got lynched and that eliminated the Bandits from the game.

The last person I need to mention is kirsche and this was the paragraph I had written up about him in my notes.

Kirsche had a rough go this game. He was moling a very inactive faction and his team didn't get organized. This is kinda funny because I was sure that the Bandits would destroy the rest of the town due to the team being kirsche/Baldrick/Paper. But Paper got silenced and Baldrick couldn't get online to help out with the lynch since the Crimson Raiders wanted him dead for trying to talk to everyone. He died in the failed double lynch of him and Clarinets (who couldn't be lynched Day 1) which had me laughing all day about it.​

The backlash from people not understanding what was going on made me giggle like a little girl. It was the wolf's only protection and it managed to put him in a position to win the game (not that he deserved it if you ask me).

Faction-wise, the Bandits had the strongest duo of roles (BG and Hooker) and were designed to rule the night. The Hooker was faster than everything but the SG (but if he hooked the SG, protection would fail) and the BG could even block the Wolf's kill despite it being faster than the factions.

Overall, not impressed by this team whatsoever.

Crimson Raiders:​​

It was such a shame that these guys lost. As a team, they easily played the best.

Refa managed to live to the end but didn't realize that he was the kingmaker. Since Clarinets took out Diego (who was planning on killing Refa), Refa essentially picked the winner since the Crimson Raider kill was slower than both the Wolf's and the HC's. However, had he silenced Clarinets, he would have won for the Crimson Raiders. By bad luck, he chose to silence Diego who died anyway.

Speaking of Silencer, that role made me giggle because of the havoc that Refa caused. He silenced Paperblade twice which immediately led to the Bandits' eliminated. The N1 Silence meant that kirsche had no back-up from Paperblade and the N2 silence created the Baldrick situation since Paper couldn't vote. In fact, Paperblade couldn't even Fuck Tiger the lynch because it was tied between him and Baldrick. Amazing.

BBM played a solid game as Cop and helped organize the faction well.

And then there was 3rd.

I can't help but think that somewhere out there, there's a parallel universe where both BBM and 3rd survive N1 and BBM attempts to lynch his own faction-mate on the next day.​

Mitsuki was originally going to be my MVP choice but I can't give it to her since she only put her team in a position where they required some serious luck to win, despite being 2-1-1 during N3. 3rd actually put his faction in a position to flat out win if Refa chooses correctly on a 50/50 Silence choice (like I said, silencing Clarinets gives the CR the win).

I don't know where the fuck this guy came from but he played like a beast. He moled the shit out the Bandits and kept them from being organized whatsoever. And when I refer to AM as an information leak, 3rd was the sieve that caught everything and filtered out the important shit. This guy knew basically everything that was going on and was simply spouting random bullshit that other people believed without question. Even though Mitsuki was the only person to figure out how the moles work, 3rd didn't give a shit.

But the downside to this was that because 3rd moled the fuck out of everyone, ​his own faction locked him out of their faction talks and brought Mitsuki in instead.​ ​Call me crazy but I thought that shit was hilarious. He also organized the lynching of kirsche (the last mole) in a very smooth way.

Therefore, I give the honour of MVP to 3rd. I was incredibly impressed by his play and he only lasted until N1. I really wish he had lasted longer.

I already mentioned Silencer being absolutely key and Cop was basically useless. I knew that Silencer would be near broken in this game but I wanted the CR to have a bit of an information lead in order to use Silencer efficiently. As I said above, if both 3rd and BBM survived the night, BBM would have gotten back the Mole role of 3rd and tried to lynch him.

​Eridian:

Wolf roles are difficult to balance correctly in order to give them a fighting chance without handing the game to them. I've seen no less than 3 games that I've played in dominated by a wolf who was just too strong for anyone to handle (Train Mafia 2 from about 5 years back is the best example).

As such, I decided that the wolf would be immune to the first lynch of the game and have the quickest kill possible. That meant that with 9 people left in the game after the first lynch, he was fair game and had to communicate with the factions in order to get to a point where he could win.

Based on the results of this game, I think I balanced the Wolf perfectly. Clarinets avoided the first lynch with Kirsche dying solo instead (which was hilarious) and then got incredibly lucky. His existence was hidden for a bit due to the N1 clusterfuck of Mitsuki/Baldrick and his N2 kill of Diego sealed his win even with Diego dying before getting the kill off. Even if AM had used the kill instead on Refa, Clarinets would have won.

Having saying all that, I don't think that Clarinets played well. He was incredibly inactive early and then basically just handed out the fact that he was the wolf on a silver platter to a bunch of people. Had the HC not been shooting themselves in the foot all game, Clarinets would have lost badly. But they did and he won so... congratulations are in order.

That's done. Thank you and good day. If you have anymore questions, go ahead and ask.

[Clarinets]

Having saying all that, I don't think that Clarinets played well. He was incredibly inactive early and then basically just handed out the fact that he was the wolf on a silver platter to a bunch of people. Had the HC not been shooting themselves in the foot all game, Clarinets would have lost badly. But they did and he won so... congratulations are in order.

Yeah, I agree with this. During most of Day One I didn't even know this was multifaction and after that I really had no idea what I was doing. I just did what Refa and Mitsuki told me to do without really thinking about whether I'd die or not. I mean, I'm pretty sure I did well convincing Refa I was a Neutral Wolf, so I suppose that counts for something.

I think I would've done a lot better if I had known this was multifaction, then I could've come up with some sort of plan at the beginning instead of just blindly following orders.

[BBM]

I almost made a third chat with me, Refa, and 3rd, with Mitsuki locked out, as the only person I was really sure about was Refa, but I thought it would be best to just stick with my gut that 3rd was the mole. But I was totally wrong about how I thought the moles worked, so, yeah. I maintain that the way the moles worked was dumb but shrug.

[Baldrick]

I forget the specifics, but I figured that if I removed my Paperblade vote the other players could re-organise their votes to get both of us lynched anyway. So I had to do it at the last minute to ruin their plans. With Gaius' extension in mind, I planned to leave work and get home in time to change my vote. Obviously, that didn't happen.

I maintain it's more important to work around the player's RL commitments than the host, because the host has a co-host to do stuff on his behalf and (non-hydra) players don't. If you don't want a co-host making decisions on your behalf, don't have one.

[Life]

I forget the specifics, but I figured that if I removed my Paperblade vote the other players could re-organise their votes to get both of us lynched anyway. So I had to do it at the last minute to ruin their plans. With Gaius' extension in mind, I planned to leave work and get home in time to change my vote. Obviously, that didn't happen.

I maintain it's more important to work around the player's RL commitments than the host, because the host has a co-host to do stuff on his behalf and (non-hydra) players don't. If you don't want a co-host making decisions on your behalf, don't have one.

I was strong-armed into using a co-host. I didn't want to in the first place.

[Baldrick]

If only you'd abandoned this game as well.

BTW, I had a good laugh at your joke about me being a "pretty good" player.