Be Excellent To Each Other

Did we? I've hunted back to May last year and Craster ran an almost vanilla game, but didn't tell us how many of each thing there was.

I remember being happy to be vanilla, but I don't think I died that early.

Oh, night two. Yeah I did

Davpaz ran a vanilla game recently, didn't he?

haha, no worries. I didn't expect it to work, but I was banking on Bobby replying quickly without thinking (particularly if he was the only baddie left). Seemed worth a shot.

By the way, thanks for running it Trooper. For all my moaning, it was still fun or I wouldn't have played.

I think the dual roles thing needs work, but it might have worked on its own but for (a) the lack of posting and (b) the fact that even on death, people's roles weren't revealed.

I think that last point is quite important, because if even the admin's word after a death can't be trusted, the town are fucked.

April. The ruleset was close to, but the hyper-fast 10pm ending days were a bit out of the ordinary

Anyway, blah.
I've got a good idea, but I a) don't have any time, and b) I'm not sure how many people would be up for it.

But basically, £1 each, and the winning team gets the cash monies. I'd be interested to see what the difference was.

I think the clear solution is just to let me run all the games.



I jest.

I had fun being a Serial Killer, and got 4 of my 5 kills.

Once I found out there was an underground mob I called the people in it pretty well. The only one I wasn't sure about was APOD, as it might have been a good cover story.

All good points. I'm not saying this game was in any way perfect, and I enjoy making complex and interesting games which does mean that they may well be unbalanced. Plus, as I mentioned before, I enjoy running a game so it is as much for my enjoyment as it is for anyone else, maybe more so

I do accept that this was a very confusing game, and I intended it to be, just maybe not quite as confusing as it turned out in the end. If there had been more action to start with, things would have come out earlier while the town still had time to do something about it (whether they would have is another question ) By the time the underground mob were found out, it was pretty much too late and all they had to do was wait for timeouts, which totally killed the game.

One thing is for certain, if you want a bog standard game, i'm not your man, I can't help but play around with the format

It doesn't help that we don't repeat games. Looking back I think there are a lot of good games that weren't as successful as they could have been, through circumstance or balance issues, which with a few tweaks could be really excellent. Maybe we should do a "greatest hits" of Beex Mafiascum, and pick our favourite game or two to replay?

I can't decide whether being SK or a vanilla is my favourite role. SK is mucho fun.

Yah, APOD actually played in character really well. I was never suspicious enough to push for it, but couldn't quite shake the possibility that it was a clever ruse, either.

What happened with the protecting stuff, doc?

I roleblocked Malc, GJ (sorry!), Malc again, then Nickachu, Bobbyaro, and Bobbyaro again. In other words, I was almost completely useless

I think that is what is causing the most confusion. People didn't have dual roles, they only had one role and one win condition. When they died their true role and win condition was revealed. The fake mafia didn't have two roles, they just didn't know what role they other people in the fake mafia had...

forgot about the random day lengths!

I'd be up for it, for sure, but baggsie on a team by myself...

GJ protected Zaphod, Apod, Curio, then herself for the rest of the game, the snivelling coward

Hang on , i had two - one was my real role and the other was my 'fake' role






There were 2 hours between those 2 messages , and to the rest of the mafia I was their don , the only person who knew that was false before I died was me (or possibly Alarm as i'm not sure what the underground mafia got told)

So i was a townie - but had a secondary role as a fake mafia don who knew and could communicate with some people outside of the game - so its a bit more than "your a townie"

I'm beginning to think that this is actually a ruse, no one has actually died yet, and we are just waking up on the island.

Yes, your role was the townie head of the fake mafia. You only had one real win condition

Way to go me. That's a brilliant game idea ruined as a revealed concept.

Heh, I was actually going to do a Lost type ending! But I thought that would just confuse things even more.


To be absolutely clear how the game was setup, everybody was given a role to start with.
Right before the game started, the mafia were all told that they were living a lie, their mafia life was fake and what their real role was.
Also, right before the game started, 3 townies were told they were actually a member of the underground mob, along with one of the fake mafia.

That was it, nothing more than that, anything else is just theories you have have made up yourself

Hang on. Surely the mafia don actually being a townie would mean that you should immediately tell the town who all the mafia are? You're the 'don', so they can't stop you. You could even off the other mafia overnight.

Nah, too confusing, we won't have any of that sort of subterfuge in our scum games!

That was precisely what Zaphod was thinking of doing, but decided not to. I wonder what would have happened if he did. Zaphod didn't know about the underground mob at that point.

I possibly had one of the best roles, fake mafioso and real mob member. The mob knew all the mafia's moves.

The only downside was the chav role, which twice nearly got me lynched.

Oh, and thanks for running the game, Trooper you clart.

That was something i was struggling with - the problem was my 'mafia' was Kovacs , Alarm and Joans , if for example we lynched Kovacs then its the cop because the mafia part roles were fake if we went for Joans then 'he's not mafia he's a SK' so that would also have got me killed because i'd have been proved wrong.

(oh and Kovacs basically did that later on and still wasnt believed despite having even more real information because he'd investigated.

Reading back, I agree that the big reveal of the hidden mob died on it's arse. I read it and re-read it, but it just seemed like you were messing around. If you're going to do something like that, it needs to be explicit.

"A body is found. He is wearing a pinstripe suit and fedora. In his hand is a tommy gun and bowl of pasta. How could this man be anything but Mafia? But maybe, just maybe, he was trying too hard. A search of the body reveals a note: "I can no longer live the lie! I am not Mafia! I am a townie!". The townspeople look shocked! What madness is this??"

... for example.

I agree with that. The reveal, such as it was, just seemed like a joke.

It was always your decision to make , and I thank you for taking the time to run this - I understand the sheer amount of work going into these things.



So very much



A lot of the game is the bluff and double bluff (or to put it another way the "Curiosity Roleclaim") and as a loon if you were even partially responsible for some of the 'don hunting' stuff that went on then congratulations :-)



Which I think is why it was limited to once a month , there is also the lingering suspicion around certain people because of what they did in the past , this often plays into those little moments where people who should be working together dont simply because at some point in the past one of them was on the other side or did not listen to what the other person said (ref me backing up Mr Dave in that one game to the towns loss and then not really trusting anything he said for the next few games even when he *was* just a townie).

A gap between games is important - I actually think as part of the post mortem for this game we could come up with a list of suggestions which we could use in the future - things like

1) Days (at the start of the game) need to last at least 24 hours and ideally should end at the same time (end of lunchtime seems to work well because a lot of people can check the forums at this point?)
2) Silent players who are not taking part should be mod-killed regardless of their role (possibly some caveats for people who are legitimately away) *OR* they should be swapped out with people who were unable to make it into the game (I remember a role swap in an early game which worked).
3) Hidden roles and concealed things have their place , but when they are revealed it needs to be clear whats revealed (again I think back to a game where Grim... placed the hidden roles in the description thread as [hidden role] and then revealed them and the information when things happened)
4) There should be a gap between games , even where one starts late - I think at least 2 weeks between the end of one game and the start of the next
5) Even when doing a blind game , talk to someone else not taking part about the balance and the way you expect the roles to work - when doing a non-blind game take on the feedback from others about where characters seem over or underpowered.
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You are correct, but I was losing interest and patience at that point, so didn't put as much into the underground mob reveal as I could have.

I would have thought, that information provided by the GM is never a joke, certainly if it is part of the overnight actions, and is in a repeatable style and format, and there is obviously something weird going on in the town... Everything means something, maybe if people had talked a bit more this would have come out. That was the intention at least.

Aye, there's the rub.

Thanks for running the game, Trooper. Sorry for my diminished contribution.

1) completely agree, 24 hours days at least, and end lunchtime finishes. The evening ends didn't work too well.
2) not too sure about this, ironically considering the end of this game I don't actually like to modkill unless I can help it. I'd prefer a way for the town to sort it out themselves if possible, but I don't know what.
3) Agreed. Apart from when not knowing there is a hidden role is an integral part of the game. The hidden spy passing notes in the UNScum worked really well.
4) Yup, and there always is, I don't think we have run a game with less than at a least a 2 week gap, have we?
5) Agreed, and this already happens a lot.

I would hope the 'threat' of Modkilling like this would be enough to stop it - the alternatives I think are a post in the game thread that in-active players may be removed or a PM warning them ?

The difficulty is that if you say you will modkill inactive players then the town will not vote for them because they think they will 'waste' their vote / lynch

I think the threat that this would happen should be clear , however in a 'good' game it would never get to this stage because the town should be policing itself for this.



I could go for that - However I'd add that when the hidden role is revealed it should go onto the rules post and show everyone what the hidden role was - if that happened here it may have lessened the confusion over the 'fake mafia' deaths (Curio did this recently with the blind game where after each kill there was the characters description / special abilities posted)



Possibly one of the early ones - it was more down to someone (I think Alarm) mentioning that the next game could start as early as next week and the comments that both could be running at the same time.



I may have missed that happening somewhere visibly with this one and although there was some balance in that even at the end the town could still have won I think things were slightly stacked against them.

I remember reading somewhere that the odds should work out pretty much even .... actually I couldn't remember where so went to wikipedia to find a large section on the probability :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_%28party_game%29

Oh and this line "Therefore, not lynching anyone (even at random) will typically favor the Mafia." needs to be carved into some peoples foreheads :-)

That... sounds fun.

I think it sounds slightly less confusing than this one turned out :-)

I agree with this, and I'm not angry or anything with people who weren't talking much - we usually have a player or two who's unexpectedly distracted or busy with other things (I think we've all been there). It seems that we just got unlucky this time with so many people in that situation. Typical, too - first time I've ever roleclaimed and nothing comes of it



Ha, you did really well with that, though, considering you'd been outed. You had me doubting everything even more than I already was.



Because he's a loon! He was basically siding with the mafia, so we'd have had to kill him because he was causing so much trouble. If we'd have a few more players it would probably have worked, because he'd have been such a liability we'd have to get rid of him.


How about this: Instead of modkilling quiet players outright, each day that they're too quiet means they get a PM from the admin adding an extra condition on their role, as though their isolaton is driving them mad and making them more likely to do crazy, lynchable things.

Let's say a quiet day means that they get a random message from a list, like "loneliness is making you babble - you must post at least 200 words tomorrow". Or "it's making you paranoid - you MUST vote for, and argue with, [player x]". Or "your delusions are taking over. You must tell the world you are a famous detective, here to save the town!"

Or you could give them fake "you were roleblocked" messages, imaginary PMs from another player - just screw with them, basically, forcing them to play the game rather than killing them off.

I was just thinking exactly the same thing. Even just a slight wording change - "He thought he was the mafia don, but now the truth can be revealed... How many others are in the same bag?" Still confusing, but at least the reality is revealed. With the second death from the fake mob you could have explicitly said "But the real mob are still out there," too. Though people reading things bizarrely is one of the most amazing things I see in most games, so who knows what would have been made of it.

Thanks for running trooper. I think the problems here were a lot of people were busy in real life coupled with multiple power roles, and two groups of people who could talk out of the game. Even between the four of us we didn't really talk too much, although thankfully alarm didn't use chav speak on his emails!