Persona Mafia Postgame
So this game actually came to me on a whim in the middle of Underground Mafia. I really liked the role Joshua and how it was supposed to theoretically play out with his win condition. The assumption was that if one player in one of the two partnerships would die, then he would have a chance to ally himself with the remaining partner. The idea of a reverse lynch-pin sparked the idea of a mass lynch-pin set up. In the mass lynch-pin set up, everyone was under the assumption that they were village. No kidding. Everyone. They’re win conditions would basically start out with “You are allied with the village, you win if you remove all other threats.” However, once a person died, then whoever was “secretly” allied with that person would break off from the main village in a lynch-pin alliance. The idea to put HP into the game became obvious when I thought that there should be a way to slightly delay these from happening. The theme came up while I was thinking of concepts to throw into the game. The idea of Personas and fusions made me giddy and I wanted to try it out in the game. The Expert label became a must due to the complexity of all of the concepts that were going to be used in the game, as I didn’t want another “Sir” experience like in Underground Mafia where the noobs dropped out due to difficulty. However, in order to get the game going, I need a cohost to give me good feedback. Originally I had Midou hop on board, but as soon as billymills told me that my cohost needed to be a strong one, I dropped him (sorry Midou) in favor of Jumpluff who offered to help cohost one of my games earlier which never ended up coming into fruition. So then I dove into making the game.
The game itself was built from the top-down. In other words all the stats, mechanics, and such were worked out before win conditions became official. The reason why I kept the win conditions for last was to make sure that the Personas would be fairly balanced out early on in tandem with the win conditions. I also felt it was necessary to put strong contemplation into win conditions so that all the problems could be tweaked out. Fusion mechanics were also left last so that a proper fusion mechanic could be developed. After around a month of working on both this game and my Mafia Article, I was pretty much finished. However, the only remaining things were win conditions and a few last things pertaining fusions. Now, I don’t have anything against jumpluff, and I hope she doesn’t have anything against me, but it was hard to get a good time to talk with her so that we could finish up the win conditions, as I felt that the win conditions were supposed to be the most important aspect in the making of this game. She’s a busy gal, and I’m a busy guy. What could we do? In any event, my impatience got the better of me as summer was getting really close, and so I decided to put up signups. During the middle of signups, I decided to use an idea I had during one of the few conversations I had with her of putting players into partnerships into a semi-FFA game. However, I really rushed pushing out a win condition, and as such made a huge sloppy mistake.
And so, I will say that this game is one where everything that could go wrong did.
A deeper look at the concepts
Personas: Personas were the easiest thing to generate for the game. Using the idea I had with Pins and Levelling Up from Underground Mafia and FFV Mafia respectively, I decided to fuse the two ideas to create the idea behind Personas (the pun is very much intended).
Stats: I had worked with Attack and HP in the past, but never worked with the concept of Defense that Paper Mario Mafia introduced or the concept of Speed (which is just a RPG concept in general). And so I thought using those two stat types would be create something fresh and new, not to mention make the game feel very RPGish.
Day/Night Cycles: Many of you questioned the reason why the cycles followed a strange pattern early on, i.e. D0, N0, N1, D1, etc. The reason for N1 immediately followed N0 was due to the original idea of the mass lynch-pin set up, so that players would be encouraged to discuss who to lynch during the NOC phase in public rather in private. The bonuses of the days were added since the theme was Persona and you can’t have Persona without a “weather”-like concept involved. Nights were meant to be set-ups while days were to involve intense exchanges. Thus the reason why Fusions only happened during night cycles and Persona purchases were day only.
Fusion: This is where things got a little tough and why earlygame there was a lot of confusion pertaining fusion results, mostly due to something huge that I overlooked. Now remember that fusion chart that I linked in the topic of the chat early on? Originally when I looked at the chart, I just skimmed it without putting too much thought into it and thought the whole chart showed how fusions happened. If I was a little smarter I would’ve looked at my Persona 3:FES handbook, but I didn’t and so I didn’t see that in fine print in the legend that orange colored fusions were as a result of Triangle fusions. Had I seen that, I am quite sure that there wouldn’t have been as much hassle over how fusions would work out. If you look at the spreadsheet (which I provided in a link a little further down), you will notice that in the Legend Tab it discusses how Persona fusions are worked out. So pretty much the reason some people were disappointed over their fusion result was due to how I originally read the chart. Yeah, I feel a bit foolish admitting it, but it’s true.
Win Conditions: Win conditions, as I noted, went through intense scrutiny by yours truly, but when I came across a mental block, I just couldn’t get over it and my imagination failed to give me a good idea about how to write them up. As such, I slopilly created the win conditions you saw ingame.
Persona Mafia collection:
Persona Mafia Folder
The Game Thread
The players: at a glance
Since the game was Expert, I had a better chance at getting a strong playerlist, and this one, no doubt, was strong.
Role PMs
I think this was the first time Fate actually played one of my games, so I was pretty thrilled to have him on board. I knew he was a quality player so he was one of my top picks. I chose to put him together with Ditto because I figured that the two of them would be able to do some crazy antics with one another due to the good sense of humor each of them had. The Fool Arcana was one of the two powerhouse arcanas that was strong early on in terms of stats, but had a lack of many abilities.
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theangryscientist has played every game I ever hosted, and as such I felt he was a good pick for this game. He did fairly good early on, however people targetted him early ala Underground Mafia, and as such poor tas died too early to see any good action. However, the fact that the two had a few issues with timezones and tas being busy early-game meant that they had a little harder time in coordinating actions with one another. The Magician Arcana was meant to be weak defensively but strong offensively with good damage dealing abilities and okay speed.
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Ace Emerald wasn’t one of my first picks due to the amount of strong players that originally joined the game, but I put him in because I remembered that he did a good job in many games in the past. I don’t recall talking to him too much about the game, so I wouldn’t know if there were any good moves that he made during the game. The Priestess arcana was meant to be take the role of bard duty - boosting defenses and making sure that other players had a harder time dealing with anyone allied with the Priestess.
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Flamestrike was another one of the originals who played in all of my games. Flamestrike was a good player who knew how my games usually worked, and as such he was one of my first picks. I put together with imperfectluck because I thought that ipl would need a strong partner in order to stay alive long enough in this game (more on ipl later 9.9). The Empress arcana was meant to be a hybrid role - providing healing and damage at the same time. Leanan Sidhe was such a popular choice that about one-third of the players in the game chose the arcana, due to its strong flexibility.
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I think the last time aska was in any of my games was in FF3, and so having him come back was really nice. I put him together with little gk since I knew they both hung out a lot in #moo a lot with Johann, so I thought, “Hey, they would be pretty decent partners!” Unfortunately, the two weren’t able to establish themselves early on too well due to both being out and about doing they’re own irl stuff. So there wasn’t much they could do against B_T’s crew. The Emperor arcana was meant to be a strong offensive role with good defenses and low speed.
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Having Lightwolf on board was another great thing about the playerlist. I gave Lightwolf a strong supporting role in tandem with tas’s fragility. He played pretty well, staying active and even attempting to guess what Personas would result from fusions (of which I think he got only one - Satan, lol). The Hierophant arcana was an all-over-the-place arcana, having no specific goal in terms of abilities.
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/me huggles Ditto. Yep, I put Ditto in the Lovers arcana for a reason. ;D In any event, Ditto was paired up with Fatecrashers for reasons I mentioned earlier. Due to the fragility of the Lovers arcana, he was meant to support Fate, while Fate would bring in the beatdown. Ditto, however, managed to get strong fusion combinations buy purchasing Yatagarasu and Nekomata, which resulted in him obtaining Byakko late game (and thanks to the number of offensive abilities he gathered, he could’ve potentially dealt 15 damage alone (which is one of the reasons I called game early). The Lovers Arcana was meant to be a defensive clerical role, having strong healing abilities and providing strong support.
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The leader of #thebowl alliance. He and Paperblade managed to gather a rag-tag group of people and managed to get every one of them to win as well. I remember him doing something similar in FFV, and so it was fun to watch him gather a good roster of people around him. I also gave him the Chariot because I figured he would like a heavy-hitting role early which would provide him with a strong lynch early game. Lynches were moot point, sadly, and as such there really was no point to the role except for fusion experimenting. The Chariot was meant to be a strong offensively with the final fusion, Thor sitting at one of the highest attack stats in the game. Combined with Vorpal Blade, this role would be a wrecking ball, taking out players one by one.
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p3 played very well during this game, and as such I was sad to see him lose. Alas, my idiotic changes to the win conditions created such an environment where good players failed even when they did a great job in-game. The Justice Arcana was meant to be a poke role with versatility such as Marin Karin and Provoke.
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The impossible win condition. Due to my original thoughts on this game, I was under the impression things would be over by around Night 5. Unfortunately I misjudged how fast this game would be and as such this win condition became impossible. Probably would’ve been better off making it two partnerships and Night 3, but even then the game went by too fast. The Hermit Arcana was another jack-of-all trades role with high speed to make sure that its priority was always above others.
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If I recall correctly, I gave Aura Guardian the Fortuna role because he said he enjoyed playing information roles in the Mafia social group. Aura Guardian was another player who did a fair job at staying involved in the game. He made sure he covered his bases when it came to fusions and purchases, and he was fairly inquisitive about the game. The Fortune Arcana was hugely an information role with fair defenses.
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little gk played in FFIII and FFV, so having him come back to play in Persona Mafia was a treat. I paired him up with askaninjask for reasons I already stated above. He was fairly uninvolved early on in the game, so when the game actually began to roll, he was a little behind. Strength Arcana was meant to be a bulky, yet heavy hitter.
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So yeah, HD’s birthday was around the time I put up postgame, so this game was like, 10% dedicated to that. Anyways, I paired HD up with Altair because the two had done stuff in FFIII together iirc, so I thought it would be cool to see them work together this time. HD and Altair did a fair job, although HD managed to die before he could win...Anyways, the Hanged Man Arcana was meant to be a frail, but fast damage dealer.
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ginganinja was another fun addition, bringing in his Susan Coffeyness to the game. Unfortunately, he and Aura Guardian got the short end of the stick when it came to the win conditions, since Blue_Tornado’s team was able to get the upper hand. ginganinja did do a fine job playing, staying quite actively involved in the game, so to see him lose didn’t feel right. The Death Arcana was purely a preventative arcana, having abilities such as Pulinpa, Evil Smile, and Bewilder in its roster.
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Layell’s decent performance in Underground Mafia in coupled with his activity meant he was another great pick for this game. I put him with Crux because I thought that Crux’s experience would be able to bring something strong to the table for their partnership. Unfortunately, because Crux dropped out, I had to sub kingofkongs in instead. The two of them did a fine job, managing to make friends with the #thebowl alliance and were able to win - even with the fact that the two of them were revealed, publicly, to be partners. The Temperance arcana was meant to be a bulky attacker, with abilities such as Invigorate 2, Endure, and Vorpal Blade.
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RaRe555 was replaced by Walrein fairly early on, due to some irl stuff that rare had going on. Anyways, Walrein was able to barely keep up with the game due to him being busy with LoL and other unexplained things (fapping maybe? anyone?). He didn’t even know that you could purchase Personas in order to fuse (he was under the impression that you fused with your partner...lol). Anyways, the Devil arcana was another elemental attacking arcana, but with fair defense (Lilim was the suckiest out of the three to be honest though...).
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Poor imperfectluck. He always ends up dying too early in many games because people are scared of him. He didn’t even do much this time around!! However, one thing I would like to note is that we made a minor error midgame, and he wasn’t supposed to die the cycle that he did, (Daenym forgot what Endure did...Daenymsux). Nevertheless, I think even if he didn’t die, the game would’ve ended close to the time that it did. Anyways, the Tower Arcana was a purely defensive role, having Endure, Regenerate, and even both Invigorates.
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As I mentioned earlier, the initial roster for this game was amazingly strong with a tight group of good mafia players. Crux was no exception, however, due to circumstances unseen, Crux had to sub out of the game early on. I had kingofkongs take over for Crux, and he did a great job working with Layell to capture that win. The Star Arcana was mainly a non-offensive role with preventative abilities and great passives, along with high speed.
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Perhaps one of the only players whose partner died but still managed to win, all in the same cycle. Altair and HD worked together well, but due to HD being targetted by #thebowl alliance, HD wasn’t able to win. The Moon arcana was primarily an offensive role, with both elemental and normal attacks.
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One of the stronger earlygame roles, Paperblade’s role was perhaps one of the best received ones for #thebowl alliance, due to the fact that he had Full Analysis early on. By working together with B_T and the rest of #thebowl, they were able to clinch victory. The Sun Arcana was primarily an information gathering arcana (that had the highest speed in the game), with the exception of the final fusion
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Agape never was in any of my games before, so it was interesting to have him join in. He was fairly inquisitive, and remained fairly active until his death. The Judgement Arcana was one of the most defensive arcanas, having a high defense, great defensive passives, and the only unique fusion in the game - Messiah, which could only be obtained by fusing Orpheus and Thanatos.
Things that could be changed/worked on
Win Conditions: Enemies could be mutual between partners. That is one thing that would’ve made more sense. If your partner died, you should have also been able to keep playing, just having the responsibility of taking out your partner’s enemies as well.
OR
Carry over the idea I originally had and build it up so that it would actually make sense.
Higher Base HP or Def: Personas needed more Def and players should have started with at least 6 base HP if not 8 base HP, so that players would have more survivability, not to mention, increasing the length of the game (which is a good thing in this case due to the fact that the game ran for such a short time).
Abilities: The stat boosters, particularily the Def stat booster should’ve been more effective. Abilities that prevented other abilities from happening, such as hooks (or a BG like ability or SG like ability), would have been worth adding in. There was a huge number of offensive abilities which meant that players would die too quickly. A decrease in that amount would’ve been good as well.
Fusions and Purchasing: Fusions should’ve been based on the normal fusion portion of the chart, not including the triangle fusion portion. This would’ve eliminated a bit of randomness and added more reliability and would have given players the ability to plan better. Night cycles could’ve happened once every 2 days instead of 3 so that players could fuse more often. This would’ve worked with Purchasing much better, since players would be able to purchase 2 Personas, max out their Persona count, then follow up with a fusion the following cycle.
NOC: The NOC portion could’ve been eliminated as well, unless win conditions followed what I originally planned.
A strong cohost: Boy do I love the word strong right now. A cohost who is capable of organizing things in their spare time would’ve been very helpful. The cohost didn’t need to do updates, basically do what Daenym did, but put a little more devotion into it, so that if either host went AWOL, the other would be able to keep up. Unfortunately, I was at fault this time myself, but there are things you can’t control IRL, so I can’t blame myself (for going AWOL that is), Daenym, or even jumpluff for that matter on how the game went.
Patience on my part: This would’ve been more productive, and would’ve made the game much more enjoyable for everyone else, as it was because I wanted to get this game going that things sort of ended the way that they did. I hate being a Debbie downer, but really, this game sucked compared to the others I have hosted in the past (Underground being my best, FFV being a clustefuck yet bearable, and FFIII being my newb hosting game).
And many more things I may or may not have missed.
Awards and stuff:
MVP: Blue_Tornado
Best Luck: Altair
Worst Luck: imperfectluck (oh the irony of a username)
Best Play: Killing HD
Worst Play: Walrein not buying Personas and fusing (sorry this wasn’t expanded bro, not entirely your fault)
Best Partnership: Tie between B_T/Paperblade and Fatecrashers/Ditto
Cutest User: Ditto