Homestuck Mafia Game Thread

[Balcerzak]

Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ag1r7uGI3L5gdE5yV1h0cFFmQ2pwNEh6WUFtbXRwNmc

This spreadsheet contains nearly all of my notes about the setup, execution, etc. of the game. It doesn't include some of the later boring days, because nothing was happening, and that's my fault.

[spoiler=endgame summary]Won the game twice (due to alt wincons):

Kiryn (Vriska was lynched and she had voted for her)

Scorri (Shipping wall had 3 successful entries)

Proto (Successfully hijacked a kill)

Shinori (Successfully saved life)

Won the game once (due to alt wincon):

Snike (Identified who had his cueball)

Won the game once (due to ordinary wincon):

Excellen

Rein

Iris

Kay

Naglfar

JB

This game was first and foremost an experiment. Parts of it turned out really well, parts of it turned out very poorly, and the blame for that is 90% my own. I really wanted to do a "mafia game with no mafia" and see what would happen, how long it would take to figure out, etc. I thought the Homestuck theme fit this like a glove, as both the Kids and the Trolls are very much protagonists. However, there needed to be at least some tension, so I definitely needed kills, and settled on serial killers to fill that void.

I dabbled around very early on in the planning process on making the game have the full set of characters (4 kids, 12 trolls), and the two serial killers being hiddens, but that was just a cruel and unusual punishment and was a terrible idea, so I scrapped it. I needed the SKs to survive, so I tried to load them up on superpowers, and give them fake claims that would work reasonably decently.

My initial assumption was that as the Kids were outnumbered, that the Trolls would assume them to be mafia and try to lynch them all, so I gave them the traditional "inspect" type roles to try to give them an easy claim to save their ass, and I also gave them free character claims to boot. While the initial assumption played out with Excellen's lynch, both towns decided they could coexist quicker than I had anticipated. The kid's resurrection abilities existed mostly as an attempt to try to balance the number of kills each SK would need to pull off to win. I figured a resurrected and cleared Kid would be a much harder target to take out as long at the Doctor was alive, and thus the balance would mostly be there. I did have stipulations in place that if multiple kisses were directed at the same dead Kid, any in excess were wasted. This was probably a bad decision on part my part, as a lack of communication and organization between the kids left Excellen dead, and spoiled the chance of a flawless game where everyone could win. This is one of my biggest regrets from this game.

On the otherhand, I had deliberately given several of the Trolls, who were in the majority numbers-wise, much shadier sounding roles, like Hijacker, Hooker, Silencer, in an attempt at making them seem suspicious. This was actually a holdover from when John was the Rolecop, not the Question Asker, and I never really remembered to change things around, or consider if that distribution was actually necessary. This then goes and ties in with the fact that the numerical advantage they had made vote division uneven for the SKs, a shameful and overlooked effect. I had not fully anticipated SK open reveal to joint with town, instead assuming town vs town infighting would last longer, and if anything the two SK would try to joint with each other. I clearly should have tried a little more thinking outside of the box. Additionally, Troll-on-Troll infighting was planned for in the fashion of Vriska and Terezi. Originally I intended the Vriska wincon to only kick in if someone had died, as the kill was feeding her lusus, but hilarious circumstances, and I couldn't deprive Proto of a rightly earned win. Vriska didn't care who was killed, so she would be just as likely to get an undefended Troll killed as she would a Kid or anyone else. Terezi on the other hand needed Vriska lynched, and Kiryn did not disappoint to follow through on this with a stealth vote tie, achieving her goal. Nepeta's HEARTS shipping aspect would also have allowed for a chance of collateral damage. What was a holdover from one of my earlier iterations of the game was giving the trolls (who already had vote control) /even more/ vote control with the vote negator/silence, and the mayor. I don't know why I thought that was a good idea.

The other major problem was that I did not anticipate as many blocked kills as happened. By making the SK immune to each other, and by giving a town hooker and having only a single-kill-per-night, the game was easily broken and shutdown. If both serial killers had killed on each night, that would definitely have increased tension, and been a change for the better, although there would still have been some pretty fundamental problems with balance (which was why I had added in alt wincons, though they definitely didn't cure everything).

As far as the limited outside contact goes, I deemed this system a rousing success. Many of the other attempts at LOC seem /too/ limited, IMO, yet there were enough brakes on this one to shut down town leader. I probably should have kept to my original intention of dividing OCs into 1 incoming and 1 outgoing, and if I run another LOC game, that will be what I do, but I was really pleased, especially in the earlygame, with how much people were taking advantage of the opportunities. This is undoubtedly what led to the quick unravelling of the two towns no mafia setup, and caused other problems, but again, that was a separate design fault, and nothing to blame the LOC for.

As far as individual performance comments, I'll keep things rather brief:

Kiryn - IMO gave a surprisingly good performance for a rookie. One of the most active posters in the thread in terms of total posts, and quite active in her pesterchums from what I remember. While she did have a few stumbles and perhaps took a few more risks than was rightly proper, things paid off for her. Her choice of inspect targets was solid as well.

scorri - had the weaker performance of the newcomers in my opinion. Her night action choices also seemed a little questionable to me at times, almost random, but with a role like she was given maybe that was inevitable.

Snike - almost ruined the whole gameplan on D1 with his comment about the cueball painting a huge target on himself. Man, you nearly gave me an ulcer there, as I was sure you were going to get yourself lynched. Despite that, managed to somehow pull things off and secure a joint with the town.

Excellen - If I give you a free character claim, chances are I intend for you to use it. That said, your laying the hints about "kissers" in the main thread was a good attempt to get some coordinating with the rest of your mates, but should probably have been executed with more subtlety. You would definitely have been better-off served by laying low.

eclipse - hurt badly by a complete lack of familiarity with the source material, and the hardest role in the game. After the D1 botch where her charge was killed it was all downhill for her. She put up a solid fight at the end, but it was too late.

Naglfar - had great intuitions early one, guessing his alternate wincon right away, before dismissing it as a silly idea. He fell prey to inactivity and really ought to have put in more effort.

JB - Did a pretty amazing job in getting the trolls organized, whether or not that was his intent. Probably the game MVP, part by design, and part by accident. As much fun as seeing more people having to post in rhymes would have been (silencer worked that way because fuck being wholly unable to post, that is bullshit), probably made the correct call in mostly idling with his night action.

Rein - Had a lot of very good early game insights but proceeded to make a lot of nearly deadly mistakes for his faction. Decided /against/ reviving excellen when he was the only other kid confirmed to contact him. Assumed he had his alt condition fulfilled and started taking risks with Doc Scratch, etc. I don't remember anything especially notable about his night actions, but his day play could have used work.

Proto - got "stealth" kill by his own faction Day 2, which was unfortunate, because I love Vriska and her role was a fun one. Did very little before he got killed, and thus not much to comment on

Shinori - nothing he did stuck out to me, aside from forgetting to submit night actions on time, although he did shape up in that regard. Managed to not get himself killed right away, and thus was instrumental in enacting the joint win by doc saves.

Kay - very inactive.

Iris - I had high hopes for her thinking of good questions to ask, to get at the meat beneath the setup of the game, and was thus disappointed when she acted as basically just another cop. Maybe one day I'll figure out the right was to do a QA, but this was not that game. Didn't post much in-thread, but made some use of the pesterchums. kind of an average performance.

I guess I'll answer any other questions as needed. I'm sure this is a pretty terrible postgame, and honestly I should have done it way sooner.

[scorri]

Eh, at first mine were fairly random, but once we figured out who Doc Scratch was, I was trying to pick who might be killed, so I was shipping Scratch with them so that Scratch would kill himself instead. Since, you know, I didn't know SK couldn't be affected by their night kills...

[riariadne]

gamzee huh