Hey guys :/
Sorry for the whole “disappeared for months” deal. Essentially I ragequat because I was tired of the “this game is so terrible” sentiment. Then, when I would’ve come back, school work and applying for work after I graduate came crashing down on me all at once and persisted until finals week, which just ended.
Anyway.
First off, big thanks to Quagsires for being awesome and finishing the game for me (from memory, since I had actually taken him off of the sheet at some point). By the time I left, it was pretty clear who would win, but there was just enough variability that some insane upset could’ve happened.
I’ll try to be brief on the postgame. Mostly because I only sorta remember stuff.
So here we have the master sheet:
Right here
And along with that, the role PMs:
Right here
I realize they’re both listed as “Wolf Mafia.” That was the working title. billy told me I had to change it, and when I asked Eep for a random word, “turnip” was what I got.
The idea behind the game:
So the initial idea behind this game was “All vs. One.” Instead of 1v1, 2v1, 1v2, multifaction, or free-for-all, the premise was just to have one “super wolf” type of role, and then the whole village would go up against him. (The early parts of the movie “Cry Wolf” are actually highly relevant to that idea, prior to it turning into a shitty horror movie.)
So the key problem there is that the wolf would have to be given some kind of LPV to screw up the village. But any LPV strong enough to protect the wolf long-term would be horribly broken, and making it X-use would be pretty silly. So that’s where the second bad guy role, the Villain, came into play.
After that, the village was given a HUGE numbers advantage. Most games on Smogon have something like 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of Village : Mafia. This game had a 7:1 ratio. I could have maybe thrown in another couple of villagers, but any more and it would’ve made the task of eliminating the village too big for the Werewolf/Villain, I thought.
The Village’s numbers advantage was offset by some “anti-Village” power roles, two Millers (these never actually came into play, since they were never checked by the Sheriff), and just a bunch of generally underpowered characters. That’s pretty much where it could be said the game backfired, I guess.
Some notes on the roles:
In general, I felt that the layout of the roles for the game wasn’t the problem, despite the fact that it seemed that way during gameplay.
The Werewolf
This really wasn’t too wildly broken. I should’ve put some kind of limiter on the number of times the Convert could be used. It wasn’t actually a problem during the game, but it could’ve been, I guess.
For the record, the way to kill the Werewolf (and win the game for the Village) was the following:
Lynch Villain and he redirects
Lynch Villain again
Lynch Werewolf
Lynch Wolf (assuming there is one)
The Villain
This was the role that made the most people rage, obviously. Infinite lynch redirects (only if the Werewolf was the target), along with one redirect from anyone. It’s pretty much the reason the village lost.
It really came down to (and it kills me to say this) luck. Eep using his Watcher ability N1 revealed that BT had a night action when he had claimed Vanillager. That started the multiple lynches on BT. Meanwhile, neither of the roles that could identify the Villain as evil (Burglar and Sheriff) targeted zorbees, despite him giving a fairly poor claim for his role. (“The Merchant” was given to him as a safeclaim, but his ability of “randhook a baddie” was kind of preposterous and should have been a big red flag to any village leader to at least check him out).
The Wolf
This was a fun little extra concern for the Werewolf. The Convert ability wasn’t really utilized as fully as I expected. I had some grand vision of the Werewolf converting someone suspicious, lynching him to look really pro-Village, and then going from there. Sadly, because of the whole Watcher business N1, the Werewolf was pretty much exposed from the early game, so nothing cool like that could happen.
The Orphan
This role was the one role that I should’ve changed completely. It was dumb. Instead, it should have been a lynchguard or something, preventing [player] from being killed during the Day by lynch or lynch redirect.
The Mortician
The whole “No cardflip” business definitely got people angry early on. This role was always meant to die/sacrifice himself. I assumed that, once a village leader heard someone claim they were preventing cardflip, they would either lynch him or try and trick the enemies into killing him off. Maybe baiting them into thinking they were killing a power role, then using the Watcher to easily identify the killer.
Apothecary
I felt slightly guilty about GS’s role (Conversion Block). It seemed like a BG, but I couldn’t really be more specific about the role without obviously giving away that the Werewolf could convert people.
Jailer/Coward/Maiden/Blacksmith
This was a combo that could’ve been pretty great, but was missed out on. Maiden and Blacksmith were two pretty crucial roles for the Village, but had no Night actions. Then the Coward hides behind whoever is protected, thus getting a double-BG.
Protecting the Maiden should’ve been more of a concern for the Village, I thought, because the whole “lose a lynch” thing should have been a big loss. But, when your lynch is always redirected anyway, I suppose it’s not too much of a loss?
Had ginga not fakeclaimed a Blacksmith role that was WAY stronger than his actual role, he probably wouldn’t have been such a massive target for zorbees’ lynch redirect. In addition to making a BG (without the Jailer’s Hook drawback) or a full PM Inspector (pretty much a foolproof way to reveal either of the baddies), ginga could’ve eventually revealed BT as a non-Villager if he tried to give the “item” to him. Obviously that wasn’t an issue, since BT was already outed long before that would’ve happened.
Terra hiding behind GS when GS was killed was honestly just really, really shitty luck on his part. It made for some great confusion D2, however, since it looked like there was a Wolf+Mafia with the doublekill.
iiMK’s use of the Jailer was disappointing. Actually, really disappointing. He knew it was a hook, pretty much everyone knew BT was evil and had a Night action, and he NEVER tried to hook him. Had he done that at any point, there would have been a kill-free Night, since BT always submitted a kill target (if BT didn’t submit anything, shinyskarmory’s kill target would have been killed, but as long as BT submitted something, SS’s kill failed).
The Rest
The other roles didn’t do anything unexpected. Beggar/Sheriff/Burglar gave the Village some info (any problems resulting from this were because of unlucky targeting), Drunk could’ve been a good combo with Coward/Jailer on its off nights, and Vanillagers were basicaly just sitting around waiting for the Blacksmith (though they didn’t know it). Had reyscarface not been kind of difficult with people, leading them to think he was scum, the Burglar would’ve been able to coordinate with the other info roles earlier on.
Important points in the game:
It’s been a while, so I don’t really remember too well, but let’s see...
Eep’s Watch of ginga on N1
If you’ve read pretty much any of the rest of this post, this doesn’t need much explanation. Eep outed the fact that BT had a Night action, despite him claiming Vanillager. This made him an obvious lynch target. It was all pretty much downhill from there. The logic behind all of this was solid - it was the questionable play later on that really screwed everyone over.
BT killing Terrador N1
This was funny to watch, because it gave the illusion that there were two killers on the loose. And with no cardflip because of Mortician, people couldn’t have known otherwise. The fact that people operated under the assumption there was a mafia and a wolf for the majority of the game was definitely something that messed them up.
The third BT lynch
Why? WHY?! Lynching him once: excellent choice. Again: LPVs happen, let’s do it. Third time: Stupid. Having 2 LPVs on someone and expecting the village to know to lynch 3 times would be really poor on the host’s part, so someone should have said “Look, he can’t be lynched. Let’s move on.”
After checking through some logs, Yeti did actually have some decent logic behind the third lynch, I suppose. Her thought was that the redirect was based on voting order. So whoever voted first would be killed off. It happened to work out that way in the previous redirects. It actually makes sense, but it goes against something I like to keep in mind, which is to avoid anything that is based on when a player is able to get online and post. Since most people couldn’t know that, it can’t be helped, obviously. The other issue with that is that, if the Werewolf was doing the redirects on his own, it would make him unkillable, which would’ve been a pretty massive oversight.
The attempted lynch of zorbees
I felt bad for this one. Had it not come right after the third BT lynch attempt, it wouldn’t have seemed so overwhelmingly broken. I did make it pretty clear in the flavor that it was a one-shot, unlike the prior redirects. At this point, though, the game was nearly done anyway.
Closing thoughts:
This game suffered from a handful of roles that should have been tweaked a bit more, some poor choices made by the players (both individually and as a group), and, by far the worst, luck.
Now, that said, I still don’t find it quite as bad as the majority of players (and non-players) found it during gameplay. At some level, I think mafia games should be frustrating, though this one definitely did appear to err more on the side of futile than frustrating.
It was an attempt to play with a player layout different than what’s been done, and, in that regard, it was a success. Up until N5 the game was completely up in the air, and could’ve been turned around pretty drastically if a few things had gone only a little differently.
Anyway, as someone who has a whole pile of mafia concepts lying around in gdocs, I feel like going for a somewhat radical concept and the game ending up unbalanced isn’t the worst thing out there. It’s a matter of finding the middle ground between pioneering a new idea to keep things interesting and using time-tested elements to have balance.
If I do another game in the future, it’ll end up going toward the other end of the spectrum, as I’d have a lot of public info and more standard roles, but with a much more different approach in other areas. And I’ll make sure to get a cohost for that game.
I feel like everyone who cared about this game has already posted their thoughts in the main thread, but feel free to go nuts. I’ll try not to ragequit again :/
Sorry for the whole “disappeared for months” deal. Essentially I ragequat because I was tired of the “this game is so terrible” sentiment. Then, when I would’ve come back, school work and applying for work after I graduate came crashing down on me all at once and persisted until finals week, which just ended.
Anyway.
First off, big thanks to Quagsires for being awesome and finishing the game for me (from memory, since I had actually taken him off of the sheet at some point). By the time I left, it was pretty clear who would win, but there was just enough variability that some insane upset could’ve happened.
I’ll try to be brief on the postgame. Mostly because I only sorta remember stuff.
So here we have the master sheet:
Right here
And along with that, the role PMs:
Right here
I realize they’re both listed as “Wolf Mafia.” That was the working title. billy told me I had to change it, and when I asked Eep for a random word, “turnip” was what I got.
The idea behind the game:
So the initial idea behind this game was “All vs. One.” Instead of 1v1, 2v1, 1v2, multifaction, or free-for-all, the premise was just to have one “super wolf” type of role, and then the whole village would go up against him. (The early parts of the movie “Cry Wolf” are actually highly relevant to that idea, prior to it turning into a shitty horror movie.)
So the key problem there is that the wolf would have to be given some kind of LPV to screw up the village. But any LPV strong enough to protect the wolf long-term would be horribly broken, and making it X-use would be pretty silly. So that’s where the second bad guy role, the Villain, came into play.
After that, the village was given a HUGE numbers advantage. Most games on Smogon have something like 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of Village : Mafia. This game had a 7:1 ratio. I could have maybe thrown in another couple of villagers, but any more and it would’ve made the task of eliminating the village too big for the Werewolf/Villain, I thought.
The Village’s numbers advantage was offset by some “anti-Village” power roles, two Millers (these never actually came into play, since they were never checked by the Sheriff), and just a bunch of generally underpowered characters. That’s pretty much where it could be said the game backfired, I guess.
Some notes on the roles:
In general, I felt that the layout of the roles for the game wasn’t the problem, despite the fact that it seemed that way during gameplay.
The Werewolf
This really wasn’t too wildly broken. I should’ve put some kind of limiter on the number of times the Convert could be used. It wasn’t actually a problem during the game, but it could’ve been, I guess.
For the record, the way to kill the Werewolf (and win the game for the Village) was the following:
Lynch Villain and he redirects
Lynch Villain again
Lynch Werewolf
Lynch Wolf (assuming there is one)
The Villain
This was the role that made the most people rage, obviously. Infinite lynch redirects (only if the Werewolf was the target), along with one redirect from anyone. It’s pretty much the reason the village lost.
It really came down to (and it kills me to say this) luck. Eep using his Watcher ability N1 revealed that BT had a night action when he had claimed Vanillager. That started the multiple lynches on BT. Meanwhile, neither of the roles that could identify the Villain as evil (Burglar and Sheriff) targeted zorbees, despite him giving a fairly poor claim for his role. (“The Merchant” was given to him as a safeclaim, but his ability of “randhook a baddie” was kind of preposterous and should have been a big red flag to any village leader to at least check him out).
The Wolf
This was a fun little extra concern for the Werewolf. The Convert ability wasn’t really utilized as fully as I expected. I had some grand vision of the Werewolf converting someone suspicious, lynching him to look really pro-Village, and then going from there. Sadly, because of the whole Watcher business N1, the Werewolf was pretty much exposed from the early game, so nothing cool like that could happen.
The Orphan
This role was the one role that I should’ve changed completely. It was dumb. Instead, it should have been a lynchguard or something, preventing [player] from being killed during the Day by lynch or lynch redirect.
The Mortician
The whole “No cardflip” business definitely got people angry early on. This role was always meant to die/sacrifice himself. I assumed that, once a village leader heard someone claim they were preventing cardflip, they would either lynch him or try and trick the enemies into killing him off. Maybe baiting them into thinking they were killing a power role, then using the Watcher to easily identify the killer.
Apothecary
I felt slightly guilty about GS’s role (Conversion Block). It seemed like a BG, but I couldn’t really be more specific about the role without obviously giving away that the Werewolf could convert people.
Jailer/Coward/Maiden/Blacksmith
This was a combo that could’ve been pretty great, but was missed out on. Maiden and Blacksmith were two pretty crucial roles for the Village, but had no Night actions. Then the Coward hides behind whoever is protected, thus getting a double-BG.
Protecting the Maiden should’ve been more of a concern for the Village, I thought, because the whole “lose a lynch” thing should have been a big loss. But, when your lynch is always redirected anyway, I suppose it’s not too much of a loss?
Had ginga not fakeclaimed a Blacksmith role that was WAY stronger than his actual role, he probably wouldn’t have been such a massive target for zorbees’ lynch redirect. In addition to making a BG (without the Jailer’s Hook drawback) or a full PM Inspector (pretty much a foolproof way to reveal either of the baddies), ginga could’ve eventually revealed BT as a non-Villager if he tried to give the “item” to him. Obviously that wasn’t an issue, since BT was already outed long before that would’ve happened.
Terra hiding behind GS when GS was killed was honestly just really, really shitty luck on his part. It made for some great confusion D2, however, since it looked like there was a Wolf+Mafia with the doublekill.
iiMK’s use of the Jailer was disappointing. Actually, really disappointing. He knew it was a hook, pretty much everyone knew BT was evil and had a Night action, and he NEVER tried to hook him. Had he done that at any point, there would have been a kill-free Night, since BT always submitted a kill target (if BT didn’t submit anything, shinyskarmory’s kill target would have been killed, but as long as BT submitted something, SS’s kill failed).
The Rest
The other roles didn’t do anything unexpected. Beggar/Sheriff/Burglar gave the Village some info (any problems resulting from this were because of unlucky targeting), Drunk could’ve been a good combo with Coward/Jailer on its off nights, and Vanillagers were basicaly just sitting around waiting for the Blacksmith (though they didn’t know it). Had reyscarface not been kind of difficult with people, leading them to think he was scum, the Burglar would’ve been able to coordinate with the other info roles earlier on.
Important points in the game:
It’s been a while, so I don’t really remember too well, but let’s see...
Eep’s Watch of ginga on N1
If you’ve read pretty much any of the rest of this post, this doesn’t need much explanation. Eep outed the fact that BT had a Night action, despite him claiming Vanillager. This made him an obvious lynch target. It was all pretty much downhill from there. The logic behind all of this was solid - it was the questionable play later on that really screwed everyone over.
BT killing Terrador N1
This was funny to watch, because it gave the illusion that there were two killers on the loose. And with no cardflip because of Mortician, people couldn’t have known otherwise. The fact that people operated under the assumption there was a mafia and a wolf for the majority of the game was definitely something that messed them up.
The third BT lynch
Why? WHY?! Lynching him once: excellent choice. Again: LPVs happen, let’s do it. Third time: Stupid. Having 2 LPVs on someone and expecting the village to know to lynch 3 times would be really poor on the host’s part, so someone should have said “Look, he can’t be lynched. Let’s move on.”
After checking through some logs, Yeti did actually have some decent logic behind the third lynch, I suppose. Her thought was that the redirect was based on voting order. So whoever voted first would be killed off. It happened to work out that way in the previous redirects. It actually makes sense, but it goes against something I like to keep in mind, which is to avoid anything that is based on when a player is able to get online and post. Since most people couldn’t know that, it can’t be helped, obviously. The other issue with that is that, if the Werewolf was doing the redirects on his own, it would make him unkillable, which would’ve been a pretty massive oversight.
The attempted lynch of zorbees
I felt bad for this one. Had it not come right after the third BT lynch attempt, it wouldn’t have seemed so overwhelmingly broken. I did make it pretty clear in the flavor that it was a one-shot, unlike the prior redirects. At this point, though, the game was nearly done anyway.
Closing thoughts:
This game suffered from a handful of roles that should have been tweaked a bit more, some poor choices made by the players (both individually and as a group), and, by far the worst, luck.
Now, that said, I still don’t find it quite as bad as the majority of players (and non-players) found it during gameplay. At some level, I think mafia games should be frustrating, though this one definitely did appear to err more on the side of futile than frustrating.
It was an attempt to play with a player layout different than what’s been done, and, in that regard, it was a success. Up until N5 the game was completely up in the air, and could’ve been turned around pretty drastically if a few things had gone only a little differently.
Anyway, as someone who has a whole pile of mafia concepts lying around in gdocs, I feel like going for a somewhat radical concept and the game ending up unbalanced isn’t the worst thing out there. It’s a matter of finding the middle ground between pioneering a new idea to keep things interesting and using time-tested elements to have balance.
If I do another game in the future, it’ll end up going toward the other end of the spectrum, as I’d have a lot of public info and more standard roles, but with a much more different approach in other areas. And I’ll make sure to get a cohost for that game.
I feel like everyone who cared about this game has already posted their thoughts in the main thread, but feel free to go nuts. I’ll try not to ragequit again :/
