Yeah, I imagined. It was a well-deserved win and all props to Cyt for that, but lemme rage on it now:
It's EXTREMELY unfair for town to have an anti-town role with such a heavy posting restriction. Town rely first and foremost on behavioral analysis to sort townies from anti-townies, and when you design an anti-town role with such a heavy PR, you just hand out all it needs to dodge that analysis: all Cyt had to do was hide herself behind her role PR, and voilà: a mod-gifted pass to victory. "Oh are there any discrepancies in what she's saying? Nah let's just disregard it, she's making an enormous effort to communicate, we're prolly not getting it.". It's the obvious conclusion anyone would reach, to see that effort as a proof of township and never question her on it.
The insult to injury is to make it immune to my role to further enhance he behavioral analysis virtual immunity. And if she's indeed bulletproof, then I see no way she would ever lose the game. Her obvtown status would never ever be questioned by scum, and she would sail to the endgame unhindered.
Aside that, great game everybody. I had tons of fun and it was the best comeback to Mafia I'd expect from our community (bar the lurking but oh well nothing is perfect).
Well, the fact I made it as long as I did was something. I'll debate joining another mafia game. May be one of you can convince me if you ask me nicely. I prefer tequila.
And to answer the only relevant thing not answered, I'm not a pet, but you can sure pet me.
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I set fire, to the rain.
And pretty much everything else.
And if she's indeed bulletproof, then I see no way she would ever lose the game.
Yeah, Rax and I realized partway in that the bulletproof should've been one-shot, not permanent. There should also probably have been another check on the SK, too. We did our best to balance out such a complex game, but if something wound up a bit overtuned, then you have my apologies.
I guess I should've known that both CFC and H_T were scum after they went radio silent on my chat, but oh well. Good job playing the schizo player CFC hahahahah
And if she's indeed bulletproof, then I see no way she would ever lose the game.
Yeah, Rax and I realized partway in that the bulletproof should've been one-shot, not permanent. There should also probably have been another check on the SK, too. We did our best to balance out such a complex game, but if something wound up a bit overtuned, then you have my apologies.
It was that way early in the design phase, but a few changes made at the review stage led to this as a balance thing, which we completely botched. I'd say this is worse than the Spot from MU1
Between this and the ending putting Q on a rapidly exploding bus, I'm seriously considering ending the series here. Is it time to say "it's been a good nine years of this series, time to move on?"
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And if she's indeed bulletproof, then I see no way she would ever lose the game.
Yeah, Rax and I realized partway in that the bulletproof should've been one-shot, not permanent. There should also probably have been another check on the SK, too. We did our best to balance out such a complex game, but if something wound up a bit overtuned, then you have my apologies.
It was that way early in the design phase, but a few changes made at the review stage led to this as a balance thing, which we completely botched. I'd say this is worse than the Spot from MU1
The cat thing being impossible to deal with was the only sad note on this game. It was quite a fun game with a lot of twists and turns.
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I set fire, to the rain.
And pretty much everything else.
Between this and the ending putting Q on a rapidly exploding bus
To be fair, I did give Q an out.
Oh yeah, just so I can be annoying to everyone about it, the ending was actually going to be determined by the faction that won. Town victory meant Q would've sealed the Pah Wraith away. Scum victory meant there'd be a new Cult of the Pah Wraiths, not an Emissary. Spot victory meant a new Emissary.
Most of the plot was written on the fly. There was little forethought beyond all that. I just abused the **** out of my ability to create pretty good settings, worlds, and plot essentially out of a stream of consciousness, so by the time the villain finally explained her master plan, it seemed like I was including plot elements way earlier than I'd ever thought of them. "BDSM Prophet" as I called her behind the scenes was a result of having to punish Necarg for breaking his Teia-themed posting restriction (she wasn't even a Pah Wraith then, just a Prophet vision taking a perverted role with a pervert). Her being an evil counterpart to Q came after that. The USS Event Horizon was just a means of exiling the modkills at first. And so on and so forth.
The tachyon particles were a Watchmen reference, for those who were wondering. Same thing Ozymandias did to Dr. Manhattan, just on a bigger scale.
I realize this is ***** only I care about, but come on, I wanna ramble so I'mma ramble.
and detailing exactly where I ****ed up in design that let Cythare pull off that Exodia of a win.
Double-vote on non-town plus voteblock = MAJOR chance of ***** happening.
It wasn't as problematic as Legend of Lucian was, but I think it ended up happening just like it: a cornercase scenario that mods/reviewers dismiss believing it won't ever happen but it does. In this case, the phaser vig (aka SK balancing act) NK'ed N1 and the SK full bulletproofness.
As others have said, that didn't make the game less enjoyable or damned it (I had tons of fun regardless of the end result), but it's food for thought. Between 5 scum and such an OP SK, I don't think we'd ever win, even without the modkills.
For those wondering, I roleblocked KoD the last night I was alive. I figured either he was vanilla, in which case I get a latinum anyway, or I stop him from doing stuff he didn't claim, because at that point either him or D_V was the redirector as far as I could tell from claims.
I would have felt bad if we'd lost because of it getting him lynched, but it turns out that we lynched scum and still lost, so...
I would have felt bad if we'd lost because of it getting him lynched, but it turns out that we lynched scum and still lost, so...
I feel you: I lied about the cop part of my role, that didn't exist at all. Now, knowing that I'd be killed overNight because I was more active than Wheat, imagine how desperately I wanted H_T to flip scum
I was just picturing H_T and CFC both flipping blue with me leading town to the worst loss ever.
Well actually also GGz everyone and thank you Annorax and Teia for hosting.
Hi. We never got to meet.
No we didn't because I went on a suicide mission day 1. Hello
Which if anyone is curious about why I did that, it was because DoT seemed like he was ready to give up on day 1. Decided to be a distraction because I felt his role was more powerful than mine and thought I could get a few PRs to out in the process and save my team the trouble of role hunting which worked to a certain extent.
Would never do anything like that again though, overall probably wasn't worth it.
@CFC: if you're from where I think you are I think you'll get the chance. But that's just speculation.
I actually thought town had a chance up until realizing the cat was SK in the spectator thread. Then it was up in the air.
Either way, minus the buffed SK, this was a well balanced game as far as roles, flavor, and the subtlety of how they were written made it hard to get a solid read on which were obv!town/obv!scum.
Even if this is the last of the Star Trek series would like to see more of your designs Annorax and Teia (don't know how much each of you designed things so...)
@CFC: if you're from where I think you are I think you'll get the chance. But that's just speculation.
I actually thought town had a chance up until realizing the cat was SK in the spectator thread. Then it was up in the air.
Either way, minus the buffed SK, this was a well balanced game as far as roles, flavor, and the subtlety of how they were written made it hard to get a solid read on which were obv!town/obv!scum.
Even if this is the last of the Star Trek series would like to see more of your designs Annorax and Teia (don't know how much each of you designed things so...)
Well, curiosity killed the cat, so what do you mean?
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I set fire, to the rain.
And pretty much everything else.
@CFC: You play on MafiaUniverse? Something someone said in the sign up threads there suggested this, though like Nykllor/Niklor could also be my mind taking things on a tangent.
Another example of me being ofF is Tom is(n't) Annorax.
@CFC: You play on MafiaUniverse? Something someone said in the sign up threads there suggested this, though like Nykllor/Niklor could also be my mind taking things on a tangent.
Another example of me being ofF is Tom is(n't) Annorax.
Nope. I only exist here on MtGS. Rax asked me to play, and I did as a favor to him.
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I set fire, to the rain.
And pretty much everything else.
I was trying to narrow down the PoE and I really wanted to shoot CFC but I couldn't because she was a Ferengi.
Game might have ended up different if I had tried to shoot D_V and failed, though, since you were actually blocking kills. But I thought you were claiming vanilla when I asked if Rhand was roleblocked on N1.
Setup draft - Ignore the roles in red; those were in an early version of the setup, but were removed for balance reasons. They would've keyed off the same flavor Weyoun did (Millennium), which I'd hoped would lead to someone actually reading the books (or at least Memory Beta) and realizing what the hell would lead Weyoun to claim Kai. I was considering holding these back for MU5, but with a major continuity-changing miniseries releasing next month and Star Trek: Discovery likely to start airing before MU5 would make it into a queue, I'm going to leave them in for your dissecting pleasure.
and detailing exactly where I ****ed up in design that let Cythare pull off that Exodia of a win.
Double-vote on non-town plus voteblock = MAJOR chance of ***** happening.
It wasn't as problematic as Legend of Lucian was, but I think it ended up happening just like it: a cornercase scenario that mods/reviewers dismiss believing it won't ever happen but it does. In this case, the phaser vig (aka SK balancing act) NK'ed N1 and the SK full bulletproofness.
As others have said, that didn't make the game less enjoyable or damned it (I had tons of fun regardless of the end result), but it's food for thought. Between 5 scum and such an OP SK, I don't think we'd ever win, even without the modkills.
The idea was that the high level of planeswalker ultimates that would kill or mod-confirm scum would make it somewhat easier to eliminate them, to balance the high number. Didn't work out this way though, plus Tom getting lynched before he could ultimate removed the town's last way of figuring the cat out. The "cat gets the phaser" thing should've been included in the "cat can't use technology" rule that I made after MU2's Spot tried walking on buttons to type on the viewscreen, but didn't think to explicitly include in-game equipment in that. It was just enforced as a flavor restriction to stop the cat from using the Universal Translator to effectively lose the post restriction; that I think was the fatal flaw in this setup.
And the permanent bulletproof.
I actually think the double vote wasn't anywhere near as much a problem as the cat being able to use the phaser or the bulletproof not being 1-shot.
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I went for the game winning play in my mind, the double voter thing is out of left field but what ever. How I saw that game going down is the SK assuming that I was an easy lynch after my hard vote on Tom, and therefore shooting Town for a scum victory.
I'll just say that the scum being able to use the Phaser is dumb. But other than that the role seemed ok or yeah remove the permanent invulnerability.
Also, Silver in my mind played this game excellently.
Silver and D_V (and Cyt obv) MVPs for sure. D_V was at many points the towniest of the town, and Silver's reads were mostly spot on, lacking only the necessary confidence to lead town.
Mafia/spec chat were an entertaining read, as were all the mod flavor/character stand-ins. Had good laughters with Annorax earlier on when I was alone in chat and Teia's intermissions ITT.
All in all, I feel like the only thing that has changed in two years is the lower player base, which sucks, but it's great to see lots of familiar faces still around. Still feels pretty much like home
And if she's indeed bulletproof, then I see no way she would ever lose the game.
Yeah, Rax and I realized partway in that the bulletproof should've been one-shot, not permanent. There should also probably have been another check on the SK, too. We did our best to balance out such a complex game, but if something wound up a bit overtuned, then you have my apologies.
Iso reviewed this game, didn't he? I like to blame him for all imbalanced neutrals in general.
How many people wrote Cynth as being Auto Town for Fables play?
I was wondering after Silver popped up not the SK if that was Cynth then or I was just wrong about an SK being in the game. I'm starting to think that SK's wins shouldn't make everyone else loose, specifically when they can have an accelerated win such as double voting.
Also for Wheat since you said you didn't know who would say on the scum team you were good when Fable mentioned it.
Quote from DV Maf chat »
But I would say that Wheat is one of the better players I've ever played with and put him in the top three of town players in this game if not the best.
I tried posting this before, but my computer blue-screened, so I may followup if I realized I forgot something I wanted to say.
Keep in mind that this is mildly revisionist since I didn't actually keep any notes this game other than my chat log with Rax/Teia.
I agree with Kosakosa that having an anti-town role with a heavy posting restriction is definitely not something that should probably happen again. It would maybe have been fine if I was on the Mafia team, since at least that would generate some interactions with my teammates that could have led to me getting caught, but as an SK, I was functionally town to the scum and didn't really have to worry about many slips due to my restriction. I never actually felt like I was in danger of not winning, which probably isn't a good sign. That said, I was working under the assumption that the game could only support a 4-man Mafia team in addition to myself, so there is that. The only exception to not feeling in danger ever was when it was time to claim. I wasn't sure if people would buy that I was just a bulletproof cat, and was somewhat surprised when D_V didn't immediately circle back to calling me the SK like he did when he called me out for being Borg-immune. I also quickly realized that people thinking that I was trying to participate was being read as town, so a couple of the things that I said were literally meaningless and I wanted to see what people would ascribe to them. It seemed like a fairly safe way to fish perceptions out of other people since they brought their expectations to the thread when trying to interpret my charades. I think I only did this once or twice. The rest of what I said was pretty much all mechanical or raw reads, and no one ever seemed to notice that. I even stopped actually keeping track of who I was reading as scum after N2 (which was somewhat relevant since I almost punted the game N4).
In terms of my own play thoughts:
I decided very early on that I would save my double vote as an endgame tiebreaker when I verified that I wouldn't lose it during Lylo situations. That coupled with being bulletproof meant that I could pretty reliably win any endgame that I made it to, since even with 2 scum in endgame, all I had to do was race them to the thread since I could auto-lynch anyone in a 3-man scenario. This was, of course, amplified by the acquisition of the phaser, which could guarantee that in a 4-man endgame, I couldn't be lynched even if the other 3 were all scum.
Night-by-Night Decisions:
Night 1: I wasn't really sure what direction I wanted to take here, so I gave my fiancee the list of player names and let her choose. She chose col_mongoose because "cats and mongooses don't get along". This ended up being amazing since it resulted in me picking up the phaser so early. Unfortunately(ish), col_mongoose didn't charge it, but it was fine.
Night 2: During the TappingStones event, I came to the conclusion that if TappingStones wasn't scum, D_V had to be, because I couldn't see two town players digging in together so much. When TappingStones flipped town, I decided that I'd kill D_V. Unfortunately, this didn't happen because someone protected him, and I ended up losing track of this scum read when I started to coast. I also charged the phaser from 4 to 6 counters (col_mongoose didn't use it N1).
Night 3: At this point, I'd come to the conclusion that since 2 scum had been lynched and this was a 4-man scum team (incorrect), I didn't have to worry about them any more, so I shot into the outer ring of the town circle. I chose Brinatoo because he was one of the two players who was best able to interpret what I was trying to say (the other being tomsloger), and since he appeared to be paying more attention to what I was saying, I figured that I couldn't keep coasting as easily if he was alive. I almost switched back to tomsloger, but I didn't end up submitting a change before the deadline. I also charged the phaser to 8 counters.
Night 4: I spent a good amount of time during Day 4 trying to decide how I wanted to approach my remaining Night actions. Before Zinger and Killjoy were modkilled, I had planned to charge the phaser to 10 counters here and then double kill two Nights in a row. After the modkills, I realized that there weren't going to be enough Days for this to be relevant, so my initial Night actions were to use my factional kill on D_V and a -5 kill on Silvercrys (figuring that the scum would either kill Kosakosa or Wheat_Grinder, since there was talk about Silvercrys being the SK and I figured they'd want to try to have him lynched). After sitting on this for a day or so, I switched my actions to using my factional kill on Silvercrys and using a -7 on D_V to ensure that no shenanigans would let him survive again. My reasoning for the two kills were related to them being the two players I felt could most endanger my win:
-Silvercrys: Pretty straightforward - I didn't want to have to worry about being roleblocked over the last few Days. I had also briefly considered using the Heavy Shock on him instead.
-D_V: This had nothing to do with his claim and also nothing to do with my previous scum read on him (I thought he was probably town at this point). Although his end of day play was extremely questionable, I was still in coast mode. The reason that I chose to kill him is because of tomsloger's claim after he was hammered by D_V for reasons that no one else would have noticed (and that were also incorrect). I came to the conclusion that since he wasn't Ferengi but had loyalty-related abilities, he probably had an item. Since I knew from killing col_mongoose that an item transferred to the player who hammered or killed the player holding the item, that meant that D_V was potentially the owner of a cop shot. Given how he had been talking about how I might actually be scum, I decided that I couldn't take the risk. I switched my factional and phaser kill (and upgraded to a Vaporize) because I decided that I really couldn't risk getting copped.
Night 5: After Half_Time's lynch, I'd come to the conclusion that Chandra's Fiery Cat was definitely the last scum if one remained, because of how he prioritized himself as the last lynch despite being read poorly by everyone else. I figured that town would understand they would need to be removed from the lynch pool to ensure that the rest of the town was aligned for endgame. That being said, I still needed him to survive so that he could keep killing in case there were any stray abilities that I hadn't accounted for, so I opted to kill Kosakosa in case he actually could cop people. If everyone else ended up in a mason chat and he didn't get anything saying that one of them was scum, they could potentially align and lynch me if there weren't any other scum left. I also used Light Stun on KingofDominaria to swing the lynch voting in my favor. Arguably, I should have chosen Chandra's Fiery Cat here, but I figured that KingofDominaria was less likely to be killed than Wheat_Grinder, and removing a vote ensured that the scum couldn't be Kingmakered into a victory over me.
Thanks everyone for the game, and I'm sorry that it had to end this way.
How many people wrote Cynth as being Auto Town for Fables play?
I was wondering after Silver popped up not the SK if that was Cynth then or I was just wrong about an SK being in the game. I'm starting to think that SK's wins shouldn't make everyone else loose, specifically when they can have an accelerated win such as double voting.
Also for Wheat since you said you didn't know who would say on the scum team you were good when Fable mentioned it.
Quote from DV Maf chat »
But I would say that Wheat is one of the better players I've ever played with and put him in the top three of town players in this game if not the best.
I'd thought Cythare was being read as obv!town because the past three Spots were obv!town. If When MU5 happens, I'll have to give that more thought. There was a lot of talk around MU3 of me finally having the balls to make Spot scum, but with that out there, I couldn't just do exactly what was suggested, I had to make it a bit more unpredictable. The damn cat had one too many buffs, even before the phaser was looted.
If When I start exploratory design on a MU5, I'm thinking the Ferengi planeswalkers and the lootable/transferable equipment mechanics may become deciduous, if not evergreen. Those seemed to be received very, very well, although I'm thinking the planeswalkers may need to trend toward a 2-ability model.
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@Scum: what was the reason for the redirect on Brin from KJ to DoTA on N1 and on me from Wheat to H_T on N3? That made no sense to me.
Lol. This was actually pretty funny. So I was the town redirector (And H_T the scum one). BUT, the way it was suppose to work, as anything KJ did would have targeted DoTA instead of the intended target. At that point I figured one of KJ/DoTA would be a lurky scum, and maybe would be taking a shot. But instead, through the course of the day, I was chasing ghosts because Brin said he'd been redirected. Which meant whoever did it was obv!scum (since I knew I was town). It wasn't until the very end of the day that he said "Oh I targeted KJ and it went to DoTA" and I was like "Annorax... did you **** that up?" and he was all "oops".
It didn't end up mattering, since I picked the wrong lurker.
Just curious what would have happened if I failed to make my posting restriction.
The other thing, talked to Col_Mongoose, he said his computer went down, so he was guessing he was the lynch target of Day 1! Wonder how it would have gone if that happened. Either way, filled him in on a little.
I was trying to narrow down the PoE and I really wanted to shoot CFC but I couldn't because she was a Ferengi.
Game might have ended up different if I had tried to shoot D_V and failed, though, since you were actually blocking kills. But I thought you were claiming vanilla when I asked if Rhand was roleblocked on N1.
Yeah, that was me trying to coverup I was a PR (while having perfect wording to be able to reveal my role later).
It didn't help the doctor role in this game was AWOL N1 and submitted no action, though I guess RB cancels that out
Just curious what would have happened if I failed to make my posting restriction.
The other thing, talked to Col_Mongoose, he said his computer went down, so he was guessing he was the lynch target of Day 1! Wonder how it would have gone if that happened. Either way, filled him in on a little.
If Mongoose had been lynched, the hammerer would've looted the phaser.
If you hadn't "That's a stupid question." posted twice in any particular day, you would've been modkilled.
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First post game thoughts (talking bout design here). In terms of the SK, I think in terms of the mafia we were fairly well off against it. The town not so much though. In terms of the name cops, if I'm reading the function on the roles right KoD was the only one That'd get much there. Toms ultimate could have penetrated but without a reason to its unlikely it ever would have been pointed in that direction. The design almost reads like its intended for mafia to go out of their way to take the SK out for the town and if they don't town auto loses. I lol'd at the phaser being listed as examples of technology spot can't use though. Was that in the original role PM? In terms of town I didn't feel like they had much power at all. Most decent abilities had to be built to over multiple days and then were capable of being easily shut down. The entirety of Town's power seemed to rest on KoD's shoulders but it, combined with the vastly hidden role discrepancy, made it semi easy to paint him as non town in the end game. It probably would have been more successful without kosa's gambit but that's a story for a different paragraph.
Speaking of other paragraphs, let's talk players. Cyth did an excellent job early game of nabbing town pants. With the behavior of town in the game I can see why auto pilot was an option later, but even then nothing much was done that would really upset the ground work on those first couple of game days. Town wise brin, silver and kosa brought it home for me. Silver played an excellent game as town and was very rarely not on point in what I feel town should be doing with their time. Brin was right along those lines as well. While he wasn't in the game as much having died earlier and being a replacement player himself, I feel like his town game was just as strong. Kosa though is my favorite type of player. The risk taker. In terms of play kosa kept it more middle of the pack but it's those positions that let you do risky things like the end game gambit. More on that below. As for scum, I think everybody but fable put in a good bit of effort. DotA pre replacement included. Fable seemed pretty content to just **** about from the start, but yeah. My favorite scum bro will have to be DV though. We had good...anti-thread chemistry? We unpaired really well is what I'm saying.
@kosa, in terms of your end game gambit, I would have done the same thing to you from a town position as well. But that's mostly to do with the timing of your gambit. That late in the game it's extremely high risk of losing it all for town. By jumping right to the thread I forced the matter. From a town!me perspective all the reasons I stated would have been true, but there would have been the added possibility that you were a scum networker as well, providing even more incentive to force the issue because of timing. With that said I understand why it wasn't possible to play it earlier.
@KoD, I actually never gamed the mod because of your flavor. My first assumption was that it was from a non canon type novel since my own role was. I didn't see anything on the mirror universe odo's page to indicate that though so I was all like true or not I can make him look shady af with this.
@Tom, your play legitimately reads as third party aligned. I hope one day you actually are (iirc, you said you hadn't had a full third party role ja?) So that the most brilliant third party performance ever is realised. Until then we'll all just be shadows of what could be.
@annorax and crew, thanks for the game. It felt like home.
Disregard any typo-corrects in the above, I'm not proofing this one.
GG all, especially Cy.
Thanks Rax and Teia for hosting!
It's EXTREMELY unfair for town to have an anti-town role with such a heavy posting restriction. Town rely first and foremost on behavioral analysis to sort townies from anti-townies, and when you design an anti-town role with such a heavy PR, you just hand out all it needs to dodge that analysis: all Cyt had to do was hide herself behind her role PR, and voilà: a mod-gifted pass to victory. "Oh are there any discrepancies in what she's saying? Nah let's just disregard it, she's making an enormous effort to communicate, we're prolly not getting it.". It's the obvious conclusion anyone would reach, to see that effort as a proof of township and never question her on it.
The insult to injury is to make it immune to my role to further enhance he behavioral analysis virtual immunity. And if she's indeed bulletproof, then I see no way she would ever lose the game. Her obvtown status would never ever be questioned by scum, and she would sail to the endgame unhindered.
Aside that, great game everybody. I had tons of fun and it was the best comeback to Mafia I'd expect from our community (bar the lurking but oh well nothing is perfect).
And to answer the only relevant thing not answered, I'm not a pet, but you can sure pet me.
And pretty much everything else.
Yeah, Rax and I realized partway in that the bulletproof should've been one-shot, not permanent. There should also probably have been another check on the SK, too. We did our best to balance out such a complex game, but if something wound up a bit overtuned, then you have my apologies.
I guess I should've known that both CFC and H_T were scum after they went radio silent on my chat, but oh well. Good job playing the schizo player CFC hahahahah
It was that way early in the design phase, but a few changes made at the review stage led to this as a balance thing, which we completely botched. I'd say this is worse than the Spot from MU1
Between this and the ending putting Q on a rapidly exploding bus, I'm seriously considering ending the series here. Is it time to say "it's been a good nine years of this series, time to move on?"
https://twitch.tv/annorax10 (classic retro speedruns & occasional MTGO/MTGA screwaround streams)
https://twitch.tv/SwiftorCasino (yes, my team and I run live dealer games for the baldman using his channel points as chips)
The cat thing being impossible to deal with was the only sad note on this game. It was quite a fun game with a lot of twists and turns.
And pretty much everything else.
To be fair, I did give Q an out.
Oh yeah, just so I can be annoying to everyone about it, the ending was actually going to be determined by the faction that won. Town victory meant Q would've sealed the Pah Wraith away. Scum victory meant there'd be a new Cult of the Pah Wraiths, not an Emissary. Spot victory meant a new Emissary.
Most of the plot was written on the fly. There was little forethought beyond all that. I just abused the **** out of my ability to create pretty good settings, worlds, and plot essentially out of a stream of consciousness, so by the time the villain finally explained her master plan, it seemed like I was including plot elements way earlier than I'd ever thought of them. "BDSM Prophet" as I called her behind the scenes was a result of having to punish Necarg for breaking his Teia-themed posting restriction (she wasn't even a Pah Wraith then, just a Prophet vision taking a perverted role with a pervert). Her being an evil counterpart to Q came after that. The USS Event Horizon was just a means of exiling the modkills at first. And so on and so forth.
The tachyon particles were a Watchmen reference, for those who were wondering. Same thing Ozymandias did to Dr. Manhattan, just on a bigger scale.
I realize this is ***** only I care about, but come on, I wanna ramble so I'mma ramble.
Double-vote on non-town plus voteblock = MAJOR chance of ***** happening.
It wasn't as problematic as Legend of Lucian was, but I think it ended up happening just like it: a cornercase scenario that mods/reviewers dismiss believing it won't ever happen but it does. In this case, the phaser vig (aka SK balancing act) NK'ed N1 and the SK full bulletproofness.
As others have said, that didn't make the game less enjoyable or damned it (I had tons of fun regardless of the end result), but it's food for thought. Between 5 scum and such an OP SK, I don't think we'd ever win, even without the modkills.
I would have felt bad if we'd lost because of it getting him lynched, but it turns out that we lynched scum and still lost, so...
I feel you: I lied about the cop part of my role, that didn't exist at all. Now, knowing that I'd be killed overNight because I was more active than Wheat, imagine how desperately I wanted H_T to flip scum
I was just picturing H_T and CFC both flipping blue with me leading town to the worst loss ever.
That is all.
Well actually also GGz everyone and thank you Annorax and Teia for hosting.
Hi. We never got to meet.
And pretty much everything else.
Lol now in retrospect you actually were a main reason as to why Cyt was considered not scum. I had forgotten that.
No we didn't because I went on a suicide mission day 1. Hello
Which if anyone is curious about why I did that, it was because DoT seemed like he was ready to give up on day 1. Decided to be a distraction because I felt his role was more powerful than mine and thought I could get a few PRs to out in the process and save my team the trouble of role hunting which worked to a certain extent.
Would never do anything like that again though, overall probably wasn't worth it.
3 mafia on my 5 man wagon makes me feel a lot better about my lynch too.
really fun game.
@cyth you were incredible
@wheat it was a pleasure mindmelding with you so hard.
@kod i hope to play with you again. i will find a way to read you right through our personality clash.
@DV really well played. i would have continued not to suspect you if youd just bussed there.
@silver <3
Here's wolf chat.
And pretty much everything else.
I actually thought town had a chance up until realizing the cat was SK in the spectator thread. Then it was up in the air.
Either way, minus the buffed SK, this was a well balanced game as far as roles, flavor, and the subtlety of how they were written made it hard to get a solid read on which were obv!town/obv!scum.
Even if this is the last of the Star Trek series would like to see more of your designs Annorax and Teia (don't know how much each of you designed things so...)
Thanks to Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sigpic.
Spider-Man Mafia 3 (Off-Site: NGA)
Metroid Mafia (Off-Site: Mafia Universe)
Well, curiosity killed the cat, so what do you mean?
And pretty much everything else.
https://www.quicktopic.com/52/H/beZm3ZFkg4sgv
https://www.quicktopic.com/52/H/yiLZYGtGaaNb
Thanks to Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sigpic.
Spider-Man Mafia 3 (Off-Site: NGA)
Metroid Mafia (Off-Site: Mafia Universe)
Another example of me being ofF is Tom is(n't) Annorax.
Thanks to Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sigpic.
Spider-Man Mafia 3 (Off-Site: NGA)
Metroid Mafia (Off-Site: Mafia Universe)
Nope. I only exist here on MtGS. Rax asked me to play, and I did as a favor to him.
And pretty much everything else.
I was trying to narrow down the PoE and I really wanted to shoot CFC but I couldn't because she was a Ferengi.
Game might have ended up different if I had tried to shoot D_V and failed, though, since you were actually blocking kills. But I thought you were claiming vanilla when I asked if Rhand was roleblocked on N1.
Action log
Spectator thread
Kosakosa's Borg mason thread
Wheat/Killjoy's O'Brien mason thread
Scum QT
https://twitch.tv/annorax10 (classic retro speedruns & occasional MTGO/MTGA screwaround streams)
https://twitch.tv/SwiftorCasino (yes, my team and I run live dealer games for the baldman using his channel points as chips)
The idea was that the high level of planeswalker ultimates that would kill or mod-confirm scum would make it somewhat easier to eliminate them, to balance the high number. Didn't work out this way though, plus Tom getting lynched before he could ultimate removed the town's last way of figuring the cat out. The "cat gets the phaser" thing should've been included in the "cat can't use technology" rule that I made after MU2's Spot tried walking on buttons to type on the viewscreen, but didn't think to explicitly include in-game equipment in that. It was just enforced as a flavor restriction to stop the cat from using the Universal Translator to effectively lose the post restriction; that I think was the fatal flaw in this setup.
And the permanent bulletproof.
I actually think the double vote wasn't anywhere near as much a problem as the cat being able to use the phaser or the bulletproof not being 1-shot.
https://twitch.tv/annorax10 (classic retro speedruns & occasional MTGO/MTGA screwaround streams)
https://twitch.tv/SwiftorCasino (yes, my team and I run live dealer games for the baldman using his channel points as chips)
I went for the game winning play in my mind, the double voter thing is out of left field but what ever. How I saw that game going down is the SK assuming that I was an easy lynch after my hard vote on Tom, and therefore shooting Town for a scum victory.
I'll just say that the scum being able to use the Phaser is dumb. But other than that the role seemed ok or yeah remove the permanent invulnerability.
Also, Silver in my mind played this game excellently.
Mafia/spec chat were an entertaining read, as were all the mod flavor/character stand-ins. Had good laughters with Annorax earlier on when I was alone in chat and Teia's intermissions ITT.
All in all, I feel like the only thing that has changed in two years is the lower player base, which sucks, but it's great to see lots of familiar faces still around. Still feels pretty much like home
Iso reviewed this game, didn't he? I like to blame him for all imbalanced neutrals in general.
I've never been in a mindmeld of that degree before and it was awesome. I'm just sad I couldn't convince enough people that you were town.
I was wondering after Silver popped up not the SK if that was Cynth then or I was just wrong about an SK being in the game. I'm starting to think that SK's wins shouldn't make everyone else loose, specifically when they can have an accelerated win such as double voting.
Also for Wheat since you said you didn't know who would say on the scum team you were good when Fable mentioned it.
Keep in mind that this is mildly revisionist since I didn't actually keep any notes this game other than my chat log with Rax/Teia.
I agree with Kosakosa that having an anti-town role with a heavy posting restriction is definitely not something that should probably happen again. It would maybe have been fine if I was on the Mafia team, since at least that would generate some interactions with my teammates that could have led to me getting caught, but as an SK, I was functionally town to the scum and didn't really have to worry about many slips due to my restriction. I never actually felt like I was in danger of not winning, which probably isn't a good sign. That said, I was working under the assumption that the game could only support a 4-man Mafia team in addition to myself, so there is that. The only exception to not feeling in danger ever was when it was time to claim. I wasn't sure if people would buy that I was just a bulletproof cat, and was somewhat surprised when D_V didn't immediately circle back to calling me the SK like he did when he called me out for being Borg-immune. I also quickly realized that people thinking that I was trying to participate was being read as town, so a couple of the things that I said were literally meaningless and I wanted to see what people would ascribe to them. It seemed like a fairly safe way to fish perceptions out of other people since they brought their expectations to the thread when trying to interpret my charades. I think I only did this once or twice. The rest of what I said was pretty much all mechanical or raw reads, and no one ever seemed to notice that. I even stopped actually keeping track of who I was reading as scum after N2 (which was somewhat relevant since I almost punted the game N4).
In terms of my own play thoughts:
I decided very early on that I would save my double vote as an endgame tiebreaker when I verified that I wouldn't lose it during Lylo situations. That coupled with being bulletproof meant that I could pretty reliably win any endgame that I made it to, since even with 2 scum in endgame, all I had to do was race them to the thread since I could auto-lynch anyone in a 3-man scenario. This was, of course, amplified by the acquisition of the phaser, which could guarantee that in a 4-man endgame, I couldn't be lynched even if the other 3 were all scum.
Night-by-Night Decisions:
Night 1: I wasn't really sure what direction I wanted to take here, so I gave my fiancee the list of player names and let her choose. She chose col_mongoose because "cats and mongooses don't get along". This ended up being amazing since it resulted in me picking up the phaser so early. Unfortunately(ish), col_mongoose didn't charge it, but it was fine.
Night 2: During the TappingStones event, I came to the conclusion that if TappingStones wasn't scum, D_V had to be, because I couldn't see two town players digging in together so much. When TappingStones flipped town, I decided that I'd kill D_V. Unfortunately, this didn't happen because someone protected him, and I ended up losing track of this scum read when I started to coast. I also charged the phaser from 4 to 6 counters (col_mongoose didn't use it N1).
Night 3: At this point, I'd come to the conclusion that since 2 scum had been lynched and this was a 4-man scum team (incorrect), I didn't have to worry about them any more, so I shot into the outer ring of the town circle. I chose Brinatoo because he was one of the two players who was best able to interpret what I was trying to say (the other being tomsloger), and since he appeared to be paying more attention to what I was saying, I figured that I couldn't keep coasting as easily if he was alive. I almost switched back to tomsloger, but I didn't end up submitting a change before the deadline. I also charged the phaser to 8 counters.
Night 4: I spent a good amount of time during Day 4 trying to decide how I wanted to approach my remaining Night actions. Before Zinger and Killjoy were modkilled, I had planned to charge the phaser to 10 counters here and then double kill two Nights in a row. After the modkills, I realized that there weren't going to be enough Days for this to be relevant, so my initial Night actions were to use my factional kill on D_V and a -5 kill on Silvercrys (figuring that the scum would either kill Kosakosa or Wheat_Grinder, since there was talk about Silvercrys being the SK and I figured they'd want to try to have him lynched). After sitting on this for a day or so, I switched my actions to using my factional kill on Silvercrys and using a -7 on D_V to ensure that no shenanigans would let him survive again. My reasoning for the two kills were related to them being the two players I felt could most endanger my win:
-Silvercrys: Pretty straightforward - I didn't want to have to worry about being roleblocked over the last few Days. I had also briefly considered using the Heavy Shock on him instead.
-D_V: This had nothing to do with his claim and also nothing to do with my previous scum read on him (I thought he was probably town at this point). Although his end of day play was extremely questionable, I was still in coast mode. The reason that I chose to kill him is because of tomsloger's claim after he was hammered by D_V for reasons that no one else would have noticed (and that were also incorrect). I came to the conclusion that since he wasn't Ferengi but had loyalty-related abilities, he probably had an item. Since I knew from killing col_mongoose that an item transferred to the player who hammered or killed the player holding the item, that meant that D_V was potentially the owner of a cop shot. Given how he had been talking about how I might actually be scum, I decided that I couldn't take the risk. I switched my factional and phaser kill (and upgraded to a Vaporize) because I decided that I really couldn't risk getting copped.
Night 5: After Half_Time's lynch, I'd come to the conclusion that Chandra's Fiery Cat was definitely the last scum if one remained, because of how he prioritized himself as the last lynch despite being read poorly by everyone else. I figured that town would understand they would need to be removed from the lynch pool to ensure that the rest of the town was aligned for endgame. That being said, I still needed him to survive so that he could keep killing in case there were any stray abilities that I hadn't accounted for, so I opted to kill Kosakosa in case he actually could cop people. If everyone else ended up in a mason chat and he didn't get anything saying that one of them was scum, they could potentially align and lynch me if there weren't any other scum left. I also used Light Stun on KingofDominaria to swing the lynch voting in my favor. Arguably, I should have chosen Chandra's Fiery Cat here, but I figured that KingofDominaria was less likely to be killed than Wheat_Grinder, and removing a vote ensured that the scum couldn't be Kingmakered into a victory over me.
Thanks everyone for the game, and I'm sorry that it had to end this way.
Draft my cube! (630 cards)
I'd thought Cythare was being read as obv!town because the past three Spots were obv!town.
IfWhen MU5 happens, I'll have to give that more thought. There was a lot of talk around MU3 of me finally having the balls to make Spot scum, but with that out there, I couldn't just do exactly what was suggested, I had to make it a bit more unpredictable. The damn cat had one too many buffs, even before the phaser was looted.IfWhen I start exploratory design on a MU5, I'm thinking the Ferengi planeswalkers and the lootable/transferable equipment mechanics may become deciduous, if not evergreen. Those seemed to be received very, very well, although I'm thinking the planeswalkers may need to trend toward a 2-ability model.https://twitch.tv/annorax10 (classic retro speedruns & occasional MTGO/MTGA screwaround streams)
https://twitch.tv/SwiftorCasino (yes, my team and I run live dealer games for the baldman using his channel points as chips)
It didn't end up mattering, since I picked the wrong lurker.
Either way couple of more things here:
Just curious what would have happened if I failed to make my posting restriction.
The other thing, talked to Col_Mongoose, he said his computer went down, so he was guessing he was the lynch target of Day 1! Wonder how it would have gone if that happened. Either way, filled him in on a little.
Thanks to Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sigpic.
Spider-Man Mafia 3 (Off-Site: NGA)
Metroid Mafia (Off-Site: Mafia Universe)
Yeah, that was me trying to coverup I was a PR (while having perfect wording to be able to reveal my role later).
It didn't help the doctor role in this game was AWOL N1 and submitted no action, though I guess RB cancels that out
If Mongoose had been lynched, the hammerer would've looted the phaser.
If you hadn't "That's a stupid question." posted twice in any particular day, you would've been modkilled.
https://twitch.tv/annorax10 (classic retro speedruns & occasional MTGO/MTGA screwaround streams)
https://twitch.tv/SwiftorCasino (yes, my team and I run live dealer games for the baldman using his channel points as chips)
1. Scum can't kill Spot.
2. There's a logical reason why Spot isn't dead at endgame even if he is town.
3. Therefore the SK doesn't have to strike the normal balance of townish but not too town, and can just be very town.
It's the combination of being bulletproof and having the cat PR that makes the SK too strong I think.
To clarify point 2 above - it's because why would scum kill the cat when they can kill someone more outspoken?
Cythare played very strongly but the role was destined to have a high win-rate regardless.
First post game thoughts (talking bout design here). In terms of the SK, I think in terms of the mafia we were fairly well off against it. The town not so much though. In terms of the name cops, if I'm reading the function on the roles right KoD was the only one That'd get much there. Toms ultimate could have penetrated but without a reason to its unlikely it ever would have been pointed in that direction. The design almost reads like its intended for mafia to go out of their way to take the SK out for the town and if they don't town auto loses. I lol'd at the phaser being listed as examples of technology spot can't use though. Was that in the original role PM? In terms of town I didn't feel like they had much power at all. Most decent abilities had to be built to over multiple days and then were capable of being easily shut down. The entirety of Town's power seemed to rest on KoD's shoulders but it, combined with the vastly hidden role discrepancy, made it semi easy to paint him as non town in the end game. It probably would have been more successful without kosa's gambit but that's a story for a different paragraph.
Speaking of other paragraphs, let's talk players. Cyth did an excellent job early game of nabbing town pants. With the behavior of town in the game I can see why auto pilot was an option later, but even then nothing much was done that would really upset the ground work on those first couple of game days. Town wise brin, silver and kosa brought it home for me. Silver played an excellent game as town and was very rarely not on point in what I feel town should be doing with their time. Brin was right along those lines as well. While he wasn't in the game as much having died earlier and being a replacement player himself, I feel like his town game was just as strong. Kosa though is my favorite type of player. The risk taker. In terms of play kosa kept it more middle of the pack but it's those positions that let you do risky things like the end game gambit. More on that below. As for scum, I think everybody but fable put in a good bit of effort. DotA pre replacement included. Fable seemed pretty content to just **** about from the start, but yeah. My favorite scum bro will have to be DV though. We had good...anti-thread chemistry? We unpaired really well is what I'm saying.
@kosa, in terms of your end game gambit, I would have done the same thing to you from a town position as well. But that's mostly to do with the timing of your gambit. That late in the game it's extremely high risk of losing it all for town. By jumping right to the thread I forced the matter. From a town!me perspective all the reasons I stated would have been true, but there would have been the added possibility that you were a scum networker as well, providing even more incentive to force the issue because of timing. With that said I understand why it wasn't possible to play it earlier.
@KoD, I actually never gamed the mod because of your flavor. My first assumption was that it was from a non canon type novel since my own role was. I didn't see anything on the mirror universe odo's page to indicate that though so I was all like true or not I can make him look shady af with this.
@Tom, your play legitimately reads as third party aligned. I hope one day you actually are (iirc, you said you hadn't had a full third party role ja?) So that the most brilliant third party performance ever is realised. Until then we'll all just be shadows of what could be.
@annorax and crew, thanks for the game. It felt like home.
Disregard any typo-corrects in the above, I'm not proofing this one.
heh heh heh