Unbreakable Vow Mafia: Postgame

[Mekkah]

If I had to summarize this game in three words, they would be complication, interpretation and a headache. From the start I knew it would never be a completely clean game with everything going as it should, though, and I’m actually quite satisfied (as well as relieved) that it ended up being relatively fine.

I’m not going to go too in depth on the pacts made as to be honest it is just too complicated to think of what five separate teams were thinking, instead I will briefly summarize how it went.

The idea of having five factions and these pact limitations was that you had to fight to get pacts in. As long as an uneven amount of factions exists, there would always be at least one of them missing out on a kill every night. This was to encourage each team to be really aggressive. Unfortunately, it seemed the Heroes Who Couldn’t Resist Saving The Day didn’t get a whole lot done at all, while the Villains with Clichéd Plans and the Ones with Questionable Motives, led by Brain and dak respectively, actually did a lot. dak in particular was doing extremely well, killing off people left and right with loopholes and traps while dodging them by himself.

As of Brain’s death, Accent took over leading the Villains, and around that time me and thunda decided to simplify the game a lot as it was headache-inducing to keep track of all the promises made, not even regarding the personal interpretations. We left out some things like items and person-specific pacts thinking to start small, and in retrospect we should have started with microscope size. This seemed to have affected dak’s plans severely, and that combined with dak’s fairly bad luck role-wise (his kill on Accent got bodyguarded) the game shifted in the Villains favour.

If I were to do it again, I would probably go with my old idea of having more roles locked to persons, while two or three people per team would be role-less and thus free to execute pact roles or generally negotiate. I would also probably lessen the amount of roles: it seems the only roles that were really useful were persuader (which secured the lynch and made silencer obsolete), bodyguard (to guard an important player) and of course killer.

I was somewhat disappointed with some people’s activity to be honest. At the start it looked like we gathered the highest quality of sign-ups, but after a few cycles it seemed only a few people were really doing anything.

Best player awards go to Accent and dak for their plannings and predictions, as well as their high interest.
Worst player goes to Earthworm for getting himself godkilled for posting outside the UBV forums with his alias then reposting even after being told not to. Dumb Earthworm.

I would also like to thank thunda for the amazing flavour in this game as well as his huge help in co-hosting (particularly setting up the UBV forums in his DBZ domain), and everyone who showed interest. I’m not sure if there will be a pact game again, probably not in the near future but who knows!

 

[Accent]

Thanks again for the game hosts :)
I was asked to write something detailing how the game went from my point of view, and since it's quite long and took me some time, I'll just copy that instead of coming up with a shorter version (I always have trouble shortening what I write anyway). Just skip it if you don't feel like reading :)

When Unbreakable Vow began, the first thing that happened to me was a technical misfortune. I couldn't log into the DBZ forums, and this was only solved when Thunda gave me a rightful password, 'accentsux'. No better way to start a game! This newly found message of truth allowed me to enter my team's subforum and meet my teammates - Brain, Jumpluff, and Porygon3. You may wonder how is this related to the way the game went, but let me explain.

I must first mention that I was extremely pleased with my team, which probably had an important role in our eventual success as it motivated me to really be active and seek out pacts. However the team's composition also had an immediate effect in the first few nights and days: obviously, Brain was the Villains' "big name", and as such we first let him take hold of the leadership.
Brain wanted to focus on long-term pacts - he talked to Hipmonlee and Jackal, which led to a strange pact with the latter (one condition made sure that a specific pact was made between the two teams on the following night, but the punishment and an additional clause basically allowed both teams to ignore this condition). Soon after this however, Brain mentioned that he wanted to be subbed out, and didn't make any more pacts... that's when I started contacting other team members myself.

I knew that at first, loopholes would be the most crucial tactic. I kept this in mind when making my first pacts, during Night 2, assuming that at some point everybody would become super-careful and that such a deceitful strategy would stop working. As a result of this mindset, the second night was by far the most headache-inducing one in the game for me. I planned to kill RB-Golbat, and to get both Dak and Earthworm godkilled - the last target did the job himself so I aimed for Jackal instead. I even made a diagram in order to understand my own plans...

Anyway, when Night 2 ended, RB-Golbat died as planned... but Stoo, and, more importantly, Brain, did too. This was when we noticed that we hadn't read one line in the rules: "It is a good idea to specify the period of time for which Conditions and Punishments are in effect. Not doing so results into them lasting for the rest of the game!" Brain didn't do what he was asked to do in a Night 1 pact, so he was godkilled.
Things kept getting worse when evan, who was persuaded to vote for Jumpluff, well, voted for Jumpluff. This was probably one of my worse mistakes: a pact I had made with Dak said he would be notified by the hosts when a vote was cast on a Villain. At this point, he knew for sure that Jumpluff and I were on the same team, and Brain's role couldn't fit anywhere else.
Too many things happened during Day 2 to be told here, but after a short fight and a long discussion, we - Dak and I - agreed to lynch Gmax, for no real reason except the fact that he was on neither of our teams. At the end of the day, Jackal was godkilled as I had planned, but Dak used an obviously dishonest trick and saved his ass (not for long though). That was also when the rules were reworked to minimize the risk for loopholes based on personal interpretations of the pacts - this convinced me to make more legit pacts for the following nights.

Night 3 was, in contrast to the previous one, very successful. I knew what Dak wanted to do: kill one of the Villains. I assumed he would not target me as I was the most active player in the game along with him, and he would want to keep someone alive to make pacts with. I also assumed he would think that I had the same strategy, so I picked the most illogical target: Dak himself, and protected Jumpluff (Porygon3's alliance wasn't widely known at that point).
This Night was also the first one in which I applied the strategy which would get us the victory in the end: make sure we aren't lynched next day, and be friends with everyone (by killing everyone else). Yeah ok, this may be a very common strategy, but hey, it was my first time leading a team in a smogon mafia game. At that point I knew every player's alliance (I had some doubts but nothing too annoying), so I could offer good pacts to anyone I was talking to. When the sun rose, Dak was dead (and moot too but i had nothing to do with that).

Day 3 posed no problem since the pacts I'd made didn't allow our enemies to lynch us. I would have preferred a tie between Evan and Shade, but I didn't want to rush things, and Dak skillfully convinced me to focus on getting one successful lynch rather than taking any risk - so Evan was the only one to die. For Night 4, I used the same strategy: get one kill, one bg, and control the lynch. I used the bodyguard on myself which was a misprediction, since it turned out that Porygon3 was the one who was going to be killed - a shame, but Outlaw ended up dying too, so we were still in a position of strength. This night was also very important because I knew the end was approaching, and the pacts I made allowed us to do what we wanted during the next day. I used a loophole that the Ones With Questionable Motives thought of just a little bit too late, and not only we avoided any vote, but we also organized a tie - which was crucial, as you can imagine, since it left Jumpluff and myself against three players in different teams. I do regret one thing though: I was a bit too aggressive when talking to Shade, and this could have had very bad repercussions later in the game... but fortunately, it didn't.

Then, Night 5 came. There were two possibilities: either this was the last night and we won, or it wasn't and the game ended up in a tie (assuming every player left wasn't too dumb). First, I wanted to get a bg - this seemed impossible, but I knew one of the Villains would be targeted. Because we were the strongest faction, it was probable that the other three would team up on us (MI6 anyone?), so I needed to make sure that at least one of us stayed alive. Apart from the bg, I intended to focus on controlling the next lynch again, with a persuasion and clever conditions. However, I soon realized that the end was too near to continue making honest pacts, and I quickly found out that everyone was indeed planning to backstab as many enemies as possible. I was betraying Hipmonlee myself, assuring him that I was going to kill Umbreon Dan when in fact I never posted the corresponding pact. At some point, I was talking with Hipmonlee, Fishin and Umbreon Dan at the same time, trying to decide who was the most trustworthy and figuring out what everyone was doing behind my back. Eventually, UD told me that he had made a pact with Fishin to kill me... I don't know what convinced him to change his plans, but after a long and stressing talk, he agreed to make two pacts with me. These pacts would allow Jumpluff and me to stay alive (because we had a bg and because UD was faking a killing pact with Fishin, preventing him to get a working one), they forced Hipmonlee to vote for himself the next day, and they also comprised Fishin's death. In exchange, I promised Umbreon Dan to ask for a tie instead of simply lynching him. I guess I must have been very kind or something, because, after more than 48 hours of stressing and panicking and wondering if everything would go well, the night ended and Fishin was dead, and Hipmonlee was persuaded, and both Jumpluff and I were unharmed. You know the rest.

In the end, well, of course, I'm very happy that I was in the winning team, but even if I'd lost I would have loved the game. There are still lots of things to be fixed but the fact that we had to talk to other teams to actually get things done, and that no one could make more than one pact involving a specific action, made the overall game very good and encouraged discussion and sneaky tactics, which I enjoyed. I hope I was a good leader, I tried to make each of my plans perfectly clear to my team and listened to their suggestions - however, they didn't have the occasion to make a pact themselves, unfortunately. I also loved playing against Dak, Hip, Fishin, Shade, and UD - you were the best enemies guys. So, yeah, fantastic game, and I'm looking forward to the next one!

 

[Hipmonlee]

I didnt like this game. I saw that me and brain could have won this game by day 3 or something, and then it would have only been possible to do anything but tie with him unless one of us betrayed the other, and I wasnt willing to betray him. So the game suddenly lost all appeal and I stopped caring.

I'm sorry to be lame in your mafia like that, but IMO this game just didnt work.

Have a nice day.

 

[Fishin]

I'll be honest, I wasn't really a fan of this game either. The concept was interesting but, sort of like Viva la Mafia, whoever got targeted ended up being pretty random.

Also, both Shade dying due to a late update (I lynched as close to the deadline as I could due to class, and he would've lived if it was on time or if I had known the update was going to be late), and Umbreon Dan being an idiot and handing the game over to Villains when he still had a chance were pretty lame.

 

[Accent]

Fishin, Jumpluff didn't vote when Shade died. Both UD and her had connection problems - UD had planned to remove his vote before the actual deadline time, and it turned out that Jumpluff wouldn't be able to vote at the last minute. We had this lynch guaranteed - it would have been really unfair if the double lynch failed (as it would have been due to technical reasons) .

However, for your comment about UD, well, see with him...

 

[moot]

for the record, the reason i had died was that dak and i made a pact to kill jumpluff... i assume he made it so that she got protected that night and then i was killed in the crossfire, and then something happened that night as well making him die. whatever. i was really confused the whole game and thus wasn't hardly active at all.

 

[dak]

for the record, the reason i had died was that dak and i made a pact to kill jumpluff... i assume he made it so that she got protected that night and then i was killed in the crossfire, and then something happened that night as well making him die. whatever. i was really confused the whole game and thus wasn't hardly active at all.

nah you died because i made a pact with earthworm the night before containing a few loopohle. you were required to attempt to persuade the dead evan towards jumpluff and as you didnt you died.

the night i died was the biggest gamble and ultimately made us lose as moots kill failed and i had the wrong guy protected because of misprediction. if one of those two things wouldnt have occured, the game would have ended a lot differently imo

also if ud didnt tell accent about his plan, accent would have died and jumpluff would have been voted off, resulting in fishin vs ud vs hip, which would end up in a tie probably

i do think accent and i played about equally well but in the end it came down to prediction and/or public relations in both of which accent was superior, which ended up making him win

congratulations

 

[Umbreon Dan]

Fishin, I think it's unfair to say that that move was idiotic on my part. If I had gone with you and taken out the Villains with Cliched Plans, I know you would've pacted with Hip sooner or later and I'd have lost anyway.

Also (and this was the part I enjoyed most about this game) when it was down to the final five players, I was talking to Accent and Fishin both (I meant to get in touch with Hip but he left just before I could). I was planning to pact with Fishin, as would be the obvious thing to do, but Accent told me that Hipmonlee told him about our pact. That was when I realized - I was backstabbing Accent with Fishin, who was backstabbing me for Hipmonlee, who was backstabbing Fishin for Accent, who was backstabbing Hip for a pact with me. Heh. So when Accent offered to keep me alive, I knew that was more than I'd get from an alliance with Fishin. Pretty amazing finish imo. Accent, have you still got our log?

At the start of the game, I was pretty excited and intimidated at the same time. When I saw that my allies were Jackal, Stoo and Gmax, two thoughts went through my head at the same time: "Sweet, there's no way this team can lose!" and "fuck, I'm going to be the weak link". After my entire team was wiped out by Day 1, I realized that having a lesser name might actually have worked to my advantage. I was still alive at the end (though I'd like to attribute that to good play rather than being unknown...) and I still feel like I half-won even though mekkers says no.

Cool game, and I had loads of fun, but I agree that "it just didn't really work".

 

[Accent]

<umbreon_dan> they will most likely pact with each other anyway
<02Accent> Hip told me you were making a pact with Fishin to kill me
<umbreon_dan> total guesswork as to who's doing what
<02Accent> this is why I was being suspicious earlier
<umbreon_dan> um
<umbreon_dan> wow .-.
<umbreon_dan> well
<umbreon_dan> i'm not?
<umbreon_dan> uh hello
<02Accent> yeah I'm here
<02Accent> I'm thinking
<02Accent> I'm talking with Hip now
<02Accent> trying to fgure out the best way to trick him
<02Accent> ok
<02Accent> let's hook hip
<02Accent> sorry about this
<umbreon_dan> no, i'm sorry
<02Accent> ?
<umbreon_dan> and it is time for me to come clean i suppose
<umbreon_dan> i made a pact with fishin to kill you, man
<02Accent> oh
<02Accent> well you still have the choice
<umbreon_dan> here's what happened
<umbreon_dan> i was going to backstab you with fishin, because fishin is allied with shade
<umbreon_dan> and shade is a friend mine
<umbreon_dan> but, evidently
<umbreon_dan> fishin planned to backstab me with hipmonlee
<umbreon_dan> and he told hip of my pact
<umbreon_dan> hip, in turn, was going to backstab fishin
<umbreon_dan> and told you of the pact
<02Accent> and I was backstabbing hip
<02Accent> haha
<umbreon_dan> i can't be sure who you are backstabbing
<umbreon_dan> it is either me or hip 
<umbreon_dan> but
<umbreon_dan> i will pact with you
<02Accent> I'm not backstabbing you
<umbreon_dan> anyway, in this cycle
<umbreon_dan> somebody's got to trust somebody else
<02Accent> yes
<02Accent> I trust you
<umbreon_dan> the unfortunate thing
<umbreon_dan> is that i lose if i trust you, heh
<02Accent> ?
<02Accent> how is that
<umbreon_dan> because you are still a team of two and i'm alone here
<02Accent> one member of my team will die
<02Accent> it's certain
<02Accent> and it will be a tie
<umbreon_dan> how is that
<02Accent> everyone is aiming to kill me
<umbreon_dan> but there can only be one kill tonight
<02Accent> no
<02Accent> there can be two
<umbreon_dan> well, one is mine
<umbreon_dan> and it is on fishin
<umbreon_dan> so there can only be one kill aimed at you tonight
<02Accent> if you don't post your pact with fishin in which I'm supposed to die
<umbreon_dan> yes, you both live
<02Accent> no he dies
<02Accent> here's what I suggest
<umbreon_dan> fishin dies, yeah
<umbreon_dan> but you and pluff live
<02Accent> after this very touching declaration :'(
<02Accent> we trick Hip and Fishin
<02Accent> they die
<02Accent> and after that, we (pluff and I) let you live and finish this as a tie
<umbreon_dan> i <3 you accent
<02Accent> of course if I were you I'd have a hard time trusting this
<umbreon_dan> let's kick some ass y/n

Still brings a tear to my eye.

 

[Fishin]

Fishin, I think it's unfair to say that that move was idiotic on my part. If I had gone with you and taken out the Villains with Cliched Plans, I know you would've pacted with Hip sooner or later and I'd have lost anyway.

Not really, you still had a 33% chance of winning (actually more than that given the very high possibility of a draw) if you went against Villains and a 100% chance of losing if you allied with them, but you did it anyways. If you're not playing to win, you're unbalancing the game and shouldn't be playing at all.

I hadn't made plans to kill you with Hipmonlee or anything, but even if I had, believing the person who has the most to gain from it with no evidence is dumb.

Fishin, Jumpluff didn't vote when Shade died. Both UD and her had connection problems - UD had planned to remove his vote before the actual deadline time, and it turned out that Jumpluff wouldn't be able to vote at the last minute. We had this lynch guaranteed - it would have been really unfair if the double lynch failed (as it would have been due to technical reasons) .

So you were planning to turn it into a double lynch at the last minute? I probably still would've voted for Jedil anyways in case there was a mayor/negative vote I wasn't aware of. The fact that I couldn't lynch at the deadline was due to a technical reason as well, so...eh.

 

[Accent]

No, not at the last minute - Umbreon Dan had to change his vote at the last minute because Jumpluff couldn't be on (when I said "it turned out that Jumpluff wouldn't be able to vote at the last minute", I meant "at the last minute, it turned out that..."). What we had planned was vote for Shade if you voted for Jedil, and not vote if you didn't. So the only way to escape the double lynch was to post your vote at the very last minute.

Anyway, let's not argue over this...

If you're not playing to win, you're unbalancing the game and shouldn't be playing at all.

Before anything else, you should be playing for fun. I mean if I was in UD's shoes I would have prefered to do the same thing instead of ending it in a 3-way tie, which was a poor way to end the game... you could also look at it this way: he knew he wouldn't get anything better than a tie, so instead of risking to lose, he chose to make 100% sure he would get the second place.

 

[Jedil]

Okay so pretty much, i liked the concept of this game, just i felt like my teammates gave up kind of.. or just didn't have an interest, right after RB died.. no one did anything, evan did some, but hip was busy or didn't care.


I did sort of forget about this game a number of times, that was my fault. I am sorry if i ruined your game some mekkah. :(

 

[shade]

ud, as i said before accent, seemed quite willing to change his vote back, he was just cut short by the late deadline coming in.