Be Excellent To Each Other

Yeah, sorry about that. I'd already said earlier in the game that people who didn't have a role wouldn't get a roleblock PM, and I couldn't go back on that.

I was a little suspicious , but here is where the game messes with your head because *if* he was being blackmailed , then the mafia had specifically wanted to get rid of me ......and was i really important enough to get rid of compared with the more powerful town roles.

I also think the blackmailer is a dangerous character because it can cause so much confusion in the town.

The fun is worrying that some dumb townie will start pressing you on it. Perhaps a tactic for the Mafia in a future game is to subtly push the blackmailee towards a reveal, because I'm sure a townie will push harder and force it. So the Mafia get a free kill.

I was considering changing the rules so that the blackmailee actually lost the game if they suicided, to emphasis that nothing was more important to them than keeping it covered up, but decided I didn't want to change the rules during the game.

The problem is that you put the blackmailee in an impossible situation. A strict mod will kill at the first perceived hint and just about any questioning will lead to a suicide. All the blackmailee can hope for is to hope their vote has been lost in the general conversation. Even silence won't get you out of it.

It would have been ten times worse had I found a Mafia that night. Reveal info, vote the other way = instant death or lynching.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of the blackmail, but there has to be an element of leniency.

Yeah, I know. But if I'd done what I suggested above, the blackmailee wouldn't want to give any hints whatsoever.

Had Gaywood not died, we would have blackmailed you every night. Eventually someone will either pick up on it, or you'll suicide, having first revealed all you know.

Which was deliberate, because an unencumbered doc-cop pairing with a roleclaimed cop is an extremely powerful pro-town team.

How to play a character being blackmailed:

Vote, say nothing till its close to a lynch, and theres a good chance that at least some of the mafia have voted the same way, then post

"Hello, its me again *puts noose around neck* I'm being blackmailed, so I've decided to end it all *jumps off chair*"

And watch the fireworks.

Which is why I said that I should have changed the blackmailee's win condition so that risking themselves for the town didn't happen.

but, people won't see that, they will see that they were town before they were blackmailed. And they would take down the mafia people with them...

Malc

It wouldn't have been worth the cop sacrificing himself. Especially as the mafia wouldn't vote who the blackmailer voted unless they were dumb.

Then we just look at the people who DIDN'T vote the same way!

Which would've reduced the amount of people to look at fractionally. It wouldn't have helped.

Make it so that a blackmailed person's win condition is changed to mafia until further notice (ie: the mob stop blackmailing them). They'd become a de facto member of the mob, but wouldn't know who else was in it and couldn't communicate with the others.

I could see that working with 2 proviso's :

1) The Mafia can only hold one person blackmailed at a time.
2) If the blackmailer dies , the blackmail-e is 'freed' and reverts back to 'townie'

The only real communication the blackmail-e should get is who they should vote for each day and they should get that from 'god'

Difficulty is if the blackmailer pics the cop (accidently or on purpose) , because then the town are pretty much stuffed.
Possibly the cop is immune , or the cop because he is so law abiding can only suicide if blackmailed.......

Still won't work, because the blackmailee knows his win condition will just revert to town the next day.

What about working it a different angle and have it so the blackmailee has to stay quite and is not allowed to post.

I've come to the conclusion that any changes to win condition must be sudden and permanent, otherwise it introduces too much ambiguity. See also: people who were bitten once in VampireScum.

Okay then - not changing blackmail-e's win condition but they cannot 'post' as they would to the thread , they need to have everything vetted by either the mafia or by 'god'

So the mafia blackmail the player and can basically have him say 'anything'

They write the post and have him post it , if he wants to post anything else he should not but needs to send it to 'god' to either approve or let the blackmailers modify.

It does add a delay in there and really you want all available mafia able to decide what the person says but basically they become the mafia's puppet for the day.

Their win condition is still town , they can try and be subtle in getting messages out by wording it a specific way and hoping the mafia wont spot it

You may also want to add that a person cannot be blackmailed twice in a row (or in a longer period of time) ?

Yeah, that would work.

I'm not sure how well it will work in real life though. Unless a mafia user account is made then everything will have to go though the game runner. And players might not have access to the forums for long periods of time which means any messages (having gone though the process of being looked at, vetoed and rewritten) could end up being irrelevant to the current discussion in the game.

I guess I'm being a bit pessimistic in thinking that there could be quite a big delay.

I agree with Bluecup. I think in practice, it would be unworkable.

This needs to be in it though, or the person being blackmailed could have a really poor game and lose interest - think poor Mimi stuck in the asylum.

But Mimi could stil contribute fully - she just couldn't vote. In fact, it's not a bad place to be - if she were a villain she could stir up trouble without ever having to put her money where her mouth was by voting (and the town would be unlikely to lynch her as she'd not be perceived as a threat), and if she were innocent, she could speculate and cast suspicion on the mob while being relatively safe from them - they'd be unlikely to waste a hit on someone who definitely cannot carry out a night action, and who cannot vote against them.

I think perhaps make it so that they could be blackmailed only two or three times, after which they would be allowed to go nuts and confront their blackmailer, discovering the identity of a mobster in the process. And still make it so that they couldn't reveal or hint at their blackmailing, natch.

Ideally you'd somehow want to give the blackmailer the ability to post directly as the blackmailed person. Then there'd be no delay and they could be made to say anything. I doubt phpbb could accomodate this though, I don't think it's permissions are fine-grained enough to do this without giving the blackmailer any other ability (or indeed the ability to post as the blackmailee outside the mafia forum, which could be rather bad!).

And I would agree this would have to be capped at one day, after which the blackmailee gets the negatives/dirty panties/murder weapon back and cannot be blackmailed again.

How about the blackmailed person doesn't have to change their vote, but at some point throughout the game day, the blackmailer gets to choose the content of three of their posts?

Now there was a fair amount of us in the dead thread watching and thinking Mimi might just have been the Joker and that would have been a really good way for her to play (seeming uninterested) , however it turns out she really was just uninterested :-(

The game really is what you make of it , I think a lot of people put their names down *wanting* to be either :

SK
Mafia
Power townie

And then are really disapointed when they turn out to be a dull boring vanilla townie (I'm not saying that this was the situation for Mimi because in effect she was less than that because she couldnt vote)

BTW All this discussion is going on in the game 6 chat thread in the dead zone , I think we've probably moved beyond this and it should be out in the main Scum part of the forum ?

That could work , with a limit being placed on the amount of 'other' posts they could make ?

i.e. Blackmailed - your first post of the day will be "Blah"
At some point during the day you should post "Blah"

And you will recieve a further email before (1/2 way through the day) which you should also post.

Apart from these you are allowed to make 2 other posts of your choosing but cannot change your vote.

Or we just don't use the blackmailer again, to be honest

My rules have the blackmailer in!

Malc

Can you send me those at some point Malc, if you think you're still going to need me to help out with that game.