MTG Salvation

I have no idea.

I just kind of post whatever I'm thinking.
I'm basically using the thread as my notes, I don't really keep notes outside of the game outside of vote counts in my spreadsheet.
Well, after D1 anyway. I usually hold my cards close until the first lynch so I don't ruin interactions and things.
Most of the time the interactions between scum happen before the first lynch, I think, so after that it's a matter of getting a scum flip and looking over D1 again.

It made this game especially difficult and ruled me out as Merlin early probably.

@shadow:
Nah. Well, maybe. What's going to happen is, I'll roll scum eventually and fold hard. Then people will figure out my playstyle isn't made for scum at all.
Or I'll bus the crap out of my buddies and be like Voxx, but.

Oh, and going way back to this:

Quote from Cantripmancer »

Quote from shadowlancerx »

Quote from Cantripmancer »

Quote from Rhand »

I suddenly stopped trusting Cantrip lol

Not cool, Rand. But totally understandable.

It's not MY fault that my scum game looks the same as my town game. (It's totally my fault.)

I absolutely love this exchange. Not sure what it means for alignments, but I love it.

I'm going to stop this conversation thread right here to ensure that we're not impinging on the "talking about other games" rule, but please remind me when this game is done that I want to have a conversation.

I can't quite remember all of the conversation I wanted to have when this was over, but I know I wanted to ask Rhand if he would have caught me if Overwatch hadn't been a thing. I strongly suspected that I would be "caught" here because of my play in Overwatch, and then Rhand subsequently called me out. It was sorta frustrating that good play in one game pushed the balance of the scales against me in another game. I even wondered if it wouldn't have been as bad if Overwatch had ended before Avalon started. (This is going to continue to be a point of curiosity for me over my next few games, regardless of alignment.)

I was also concerned because I posted my response to Rhand, and then immediately felt like I might have crossed a line/implied my alignment in this game unintentionally/misleadingly.

Oh, that not being transparent on day 1 thing is why I almost always draw a wagon early but so far I've managed to disperse it.
The only time I actually almost got lynched for it was BareBones and I caught tom off of it, so...

Quote from shadowlancerx »

@Cantrip: what was your post game thoughts you mentioned right as Overwatch ended? Also the way you phrased that post made me pretty sure you were scum when I went back over it later that day.

CARP. CARPCARPCARP. Yeah, I knew I should have kept my big mouth shut. Couldn't resist, though.

I am very interested in the psychological trappings of how players who have just had a good game (or a perceived good game) are read in subsequent games.

Yeah, I didn't know until zomg spilled it, I was kind of floored you were scum again to be honest. Most of that post Q2 stuff was just my paranoia combined with the fact that I really, really couldn't figure out why you were so insistent on sitting off of quests instead of figuring out if it was me or D_V.

I think ultimately my own towniness screwed that up because it gave you and D_V free reign to point the finger at each other without much explanation.

But anyway. Yeah. Good game but I'm glad it's over. I probably won't play another Avalon at mini size. Maybe as a micro or something lol.

I wanted to wait for Iso to officially end it, but Bur posted so I'm jumping in too.

I've been reading along with this game the whole way and it was a fascinating read. I was pretty convinced by the end that Osie was Merlin and scum team was DV/Terry/Proph. Silver was the player I was most confindent in my read (well behind Vaimes as Percival) as a knight. Like he's said there were a couple of posts that couldn't have come from merlin that were made. That said I think he still played a good game and lowering the Merlin pool by 1 isn't the end of the world. I think having such a clearly town player to put on quests and be able to give reads without having to worry too much about obfuscating them is an asset. I couldn't figure out the last slot or Oberon. I had a weird tinfoil world where Silver was playing an incredible Oberon game and passing quests to set up a fail later that I was like 30% sure of.

I have no idea how that last quest got passed. Terry and DV were from my POV relatively easy to pick out as scum, but played it really well to keep grinding and playing hard. Blown away by Mindreaver being scum. Had me completely and utterly fooled so well played.

On the setup it seems like a really fun game, but not with the deadline lengths here. I think this would be a good game to have a much quicker pace for. Maybe a hard 48/72 hour limit would work. I think after this there won't be a huge groundswell of desire to fire another Avalon game right away, but I would definitely be up for trying one!

Well, I pretty much knew Brinatoo was there at the end. I just didn't figure out he could be Oberon and that would mean Osi could be town.

Partly because I was so sure Oberon was on Q3. I blame Mindreaver entirely.

Quote from Bur »

I'm really surprised that no one figured out that my slot was scum from my participation (or more like, lack of it) in this game...

I completely forgot that Brinatoo had replaced you and that you'd been in the game at all... When you said you'd replaced out and were Oberon I thought ohh Phroph was Oberon that makes complete sense the way he was playing.

Quote from Silvercrys3467 »

Well, I pretty much knew Brinatoo was there at the end. I just didn't figure out he could be Oberon and that would mean Osi could be town.

Partly because I was so sure Oberon was on Q3. I blame Mindreaver entirely.

I think I had a post telling Rhand (Or was it Cantrip?) that Brinatoo was Oberon, but deleted that part of it since I wanted to see if they came to that conclusion themselves.

Oh ya, I was also still planning on claiming Oberon at that point.

I was also going to claim Oberon. I figured it couldn't hurt.

Also, that was what made me pretty sure you were town lol. I had exactly the same thought, I just wasn't going to say anything until after we passed three quests because it wouldn't matter until then.

Quote from shadowlancerx »

Quote from AtheistGod »

Oh ya, I was also still planning on claiming Oberon at that point.

I was planning to claim Oberon if it came to me.

That would have been hilarious to have them all out themselves, but I probably would have snapped to be honest.

Quote from shadowlancerx »

Quote from AtheistGod »

Oh ya, I was also still planning on claiming Oberon at that point.

I was planning to claim Oberon if it came to me.

My "everybody claim Oberon" came about because I was fairly certain I'd essentially proven to the scum that I wasn't Oberon. If the scum wouldn't believe my claim anyways, might as well make certain everyone knows the plan.

Quote from shadowlancerx »

Oh Mind, that italicized "post the scum!shadow would totally make" was about if quests had multiple scum on them but still wanted to appear only to have 1. Basically I would have openly wolfed a plan that just the first person alphabetically would fail the quest, and Oberon would pass vote until town had 2 passes.

That's back in the beginning when I was tying to figure out how to signal

Eventually gave it up, and figured it would be better to just make it impossible for people to even try. The risks were too great.

Quote from AtheistGod »

Quote from shadowlancerx »

Quote from AtheistGod »

Oh ya, I was also still planning on claiming Oberon at that point.

I was planning to claim Oberon if it came to me.

My "everybody claim Oberon" came about because I was fairly certain I'd essentially proven to the scum that I wasn't Oberon. If the scum wouldn't believe my claim anyways, might as well make certain everyone knows the plan.

There were too many reasonable reasons to include you, you were a natural compromise and it truly was lucky the propose order was what it was. When I ever looked and saw you, osi, shadow; and you wanted to add shadow, I was like "omg, I can totally make the argument that this is all we get, and we shouldn't risk everything on shadow's iffy alignment". Who are the choices then? Nothing good. AG can't propose himself, shadow and osi are nobo, brin is absent, D_V/Cantrip/Terry are scum. I knew as soon as that was out there, you were screwed. The fact that you took so long, and came up with such an unorthodox solution, gave me lots of pause about your merlin status. Even though it was a failing quest, it came damn close to getting voted down (although D_V and Cantrip could have hammered like 12 hours earlier, but I understand why they waited for Silver; a quick vote by Vaimes would have derailed it).

Quote from shadowlancerx »

Osie: Knowing that you said this as town makes it that much better.

Quote from osieorb18 »

Shadow, you're beautiful. I got a tear in my eye. Whichever team you're on, you're doing a fantastic job.

That post bothered the ***** out of me, because I could not figure you out (I was leaning town at that point) and silver's argument was annoying. Eventually I caved... And then silver swapped on that later and it freaked me the hell out.

Also, I agree that this would be better as a micro.

Vaimes, Mindreaver, Rhand, TheRealStinkyJoeTerry, shadowlancerx, Silvercrys3467

Yes (6): shadowlancerx, Rhand, Mindreaver, TheRealStinkyJoeTerry, Silvercrys3467, Cantripmancer
No (3): osieorb18, Prophylaxis, D_V


The quest has been approved.

Additionally, the quest has been failed with 2 fail votes.

Mordred's forces are victorious. The Knights of Camelot have lost.

Proph was Merlin, Brinatoo was Oberon. Thoughts to come once I'm done reading the last two pages.

Obligatory boooo.

Anyway. It probably got buried but thanks again for hosting Iso.

Quote from Silvercrys3467 »

Obligatory boooo.

Seconded. Proph as Merlin is frustrating. Though I'm glad I managed to make the Assassin think that I was Merlin instead. That's something, at least.

Quote from Silvercrys3467 »

Anyway. It probably got buried but thanks again for hosting Iso.

And the same. Despite the timing and moments of frustration, this was all-in-all a good game.

Alright, postmortem.

I'd played a bit of Avalon with Seppel IRL and enjoyed it, finding it rather similar to Mafia. Instead of flips, players had quest results to analyze, which were slightly like flips but with less certainty attached. I feel like that was information the town did not utilize strongly enough. I also didn't see much vote analysis based on quest proposals vs. quest fails. Obviously Avalon isn't Mafia, but we were short on Minis (which is why I went with 12), and I wanted to share this game with everyone since I had a lot of fun playing it. I had help from an IRL friend who had a lot of Avalon experience in deciding the balance for 12-man. I think the numbers show we had the right amount of each alignment in play, and that Oberon was necessary to include. I also wanted to run Avalon because the way I structured the deadlines, the game would basically run itself. I wanted there to be plenty of time with which to discuss a team proposal, especially on Quest 1, and figured it would be reasonable to have a decreasing deadline for each time a quest proposal was shot down. I don't think the game went on too long, and if any of the phases were arduous-seeming, it was probably due to my busy schedule + the lack of flips.

I made a series of executive decisions prior to the game starting and shortly into the game starting to combat a few issues I saw when I thought a little more about things.

Firstly, I decided that the scum would not be allowed to talk amongst themselves until an Assassin target was being determined. This was partially to emulate the IRL style of play for Avalon, and partially to balance the large number of scum compared to town. It made it slightly harder for the scum to coordinate their fails, but given that they still won, it clearly wasn't a decision that crippled their team, and I think it was the right call, accordingly.

Secondly, I knew my games have pervasive activity issues, partially due to my own busy schedule, and partially for reasons I still haven't figured out. The scum literally automatically win this game if lurking runs rampant, so I decided to favor the town with the rule where if the deadline was met, all non-voters chose to be in favor. This addressed a few things: It meant that the scum couldn't automatically win from questing parties not getting enough votes to be approved, it meant that lurking town couldn't hurt their team due to inactivity, and it meant scum couldn't screw up quest proposals and pass/fails by lurking past deadline. Policing activity in my games is one of my least favorite things to do, and in spite of the handful of replacements, I think this rule + the deadline system prevented activity from dying down too hard (sans Proph and Vaimes, of course) and addressed the rules in place that favor the scum without weighing the game too heavily in their favor.

Finally, I felt that players shouldn't be allowed to self-nominate or vote on quests they proposed. The reason for the former is because it requires less critical thinking - which is the opposite of what the game encourages, as everyone would just auto-in themselves in their own quest - and the reason for the latter is because there is no reason not to approve your own proposed quest both as scum or town. As scum, you want to look like you believe your reads. As town, you believe your reads. I feel like removing the quest proposer's ability to self-nominate and self-vote was a decision beneficial to the overall health of the game.

I didn't follow the votes or discussion too closely - after all, time is a thing and I ran this setup for a reason - but it felt like the town took too long to get their bearings and then were too fatigued to follow them through in the end. I can get behind arguments in favor of a smaller Avalon setup for that reason.

I'm disappointed that Vaimes felt like he couldn't post after he was outed as Percival, and that Merlin, himself, was not invested in the game, either. That said, I felt like Proph did a good job of organically fabricating and growing his reads as the game went on so as to not draw scum eyes to his slot.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the game. Thanks for playing, and see you next time~ Let me know if you guys have any questions. (No, there was not a spec chat, either.)

Nah, I appreciate the input. It's just hard enough to get my games to fill so it's rare that I can find a co-mod.

I do definitely need some time off, though.

Quote from Prophylaxis »

Huge apologies for just. Not Playing The Game, guys, and I'd like to extend sincerest apologies to shadow and osieorb, as well as Iso, for directly harming the gamestate due to my lurking as Merlin.

It's okay. I understand the reasons behind lurking a little too well. I did like your entrance a lot, at least.

Quote from Prophylaxis »

I tried my best to really get into the game by posting the huge wall post at the start when I replaced in but I just could never ever get into the game when I knew most of all the scum. Then I just got extremely extremely busy with school and stuff and just stopped posting in the game altogether. There are times where mafia feels like a chore to do at times, but I stick it out because I hate replacing from games and have never really done it.

Yeah, this kinda happened to me as well in the mid-late game (not to mention other more personal issues that affected things on the moderation side as well). I think the fact that

Quote from Prophylaxis »

Also, this game just wasn't mafia, and the amount of mechanics/EV discussion kind of turned me off as well when I was reading? Stuff like "oh, there is stuff online that talks about the best mechanical plays, but I'm not going to share it because it helps the scumteam" or "I'm going to talk in codes to make the scum confused" or "Here's this analysis but I'm not going to post it in the thread" was just hugely demoralizing since I'm not a mechanical player at all. I get that some players enjoy this thing a lot, but I don't, and it was my mistake to replace in when I should have known all this.

definitely didn't help things there. I'm somewhere in the middle. I like mechanical games to some degree (heck, that's the main reason I like Magic). But especially when I'm getting introduced to a game, information overload can kinda happen if I don't have enough interest in the game beyond the basic mechanics, hence why I also avoided jumping into Mafia for a while after becoming a mod. Though that may have also had something to do with several people telling me it was a bad idea. Not the first thing where people might consider me a masochist.

Quote from Prophylaxis »

osieorb in particular was a pleasure to play with and I was impressed at how he improved at the game from when the game started to now. Hope to play more games with him.

Thanks. Realizing that if I just tried to act like I knew what I was doing despite not really being certain, it would not work in my favor, helped.

The code-speaking was somewhat of an element of trying to keep the game interesting, especially at the point when read walls were suggested to be a generally bad idea.

Not trying to backseat mod (MTGS mod, not game mod) for iso is a lesson that may or may not have been learned here as well.

I'll need to get used to the more basic forum Mafia games, which will come mostly with time and experience. At the moment it still sometimes feels like I'm reading gobbledegook when looking at even a basic thread, which is unfortunate. But I've been working on it since a little before signups for this game, and am joining in on another game (Revolution Mafia), which should prove interesting. I get the theory behind the game reasonably well, though, so that helps out. I have some ideas for games in and of themselves, so I'll probably be around, unless something comes up IRL that keeps me off MTGS for a while. (Certainly possible... ) Not sure how I'd do at hosting, but that also is very dependent on IRL schedule whether or not it happens.

I did want to respond to at least this one comment from a little while back:

Quote from TheRealStinkyJoeTerry »

Osi, You have a gift of making your posts completely unreadable and even harder to respond to.

Forsooth, thy plight doth move mine heart. Thou hath presented a claim of some veracity. Lack of regularity being present in such a manner of speech results from that which hath been imparted unto myself. A sad eye one turns toward thy critique, for naught that it be undue, but that it not present an entirely just portrayal of reasons for misconception.

Sorry. If you want hard to read...

I'm not entirely sure what about my posts leads to them being hard for you to read. But maybe it'll get better in the future. I'm guessing that it's mostly a stylistic thing. You're not the first person to tell me that about how I post or speak, though, and you probably won't be the last.

I may comment on a few other random things from throughout the game some time today (Wednesday, March 8th) or tomorrow.

I like how one of my very first comments in this thread, which was basically a Knight claim, went mostly unnoticed:

Quote from osieorb18 »

I'm down with this plan. Vote Bur.

I won't betray you, fair Mindreaver!

Gah we should've sticked to Q3+Shadow after all :/
I'm sad that Proph rolled Merlin. I think that's what caused him to not post. As Merlin, crafting the analysis posts that I was looking for from him would be a heavy chore.
And that's what took me off Mind, which I should've never allowed myself to do.
Although I feel like I played well and was one of the engines to keep the game rolling, I also think I'm to blame for our loss by being too sure of my reads in the end.

Quote from osieorb18 »

I may comment on a few other random things from throughout the game some time today (Wednesday, March 8th) or tomorrow.

I like how one of my very first comments in this thread, which was basically a Knight claim, went mostly unnoticed:

Quote from osieorb18 »

I'm down with this plan. Vote Bur.

I won't betray you, fair Mindreaver!

I considered that. But scum have to claim knight, and merlin would as well

Quote from osieorb18 »

I did want to respond to at least this one comment from a little while back:

Quote from TheRealStinkyJoeTerry »

Osi, You have a gift of making your posts completely unreadable and even harder to respond to.

Forsooth, thy plight doth move mine heart. Thou hath presented a claim of some veracity. Lack of regularity being present in such a manner of speech results from that which hath been imparted unto myself. A sad eye one turns toward thy critique, for naught that it be undue, but that it not present an entirely just portrayal of reasons for misconception.

Sorry. If you want hard to read...

I'm not entirely sure what about my posts leads to them being hard for you to read. But maybe it'll get better in the future. I'm guessing that it's mostly a stylistic thing. You're not the first person to tell me that about how I post or speak, though, and you probably won't be the last.

I know that was a bit harsh, but it was in character. It was really about your quote walls being hard to go through point for point and there was some lack of clarity on what you were actually getting at.

Quote from TheRealStinkyJoeTerry »

I know that was a bit harsh, but it was in character. It was really about your quote walls being hard to go through point for point and there was some lack of clarity on what you were actually getting at.

Nah, it's all in good fun. I know my posts are sometimes pretty lengthy and complex. I was mostly just amused at your comment, not really bothered by it.