I think the high salt levels played a part in your lynch. It can be hard to resist attitude-influenced PLing.
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
NOC Deathnote NOC Mafia - GAME OVER, Postgame in #714
- Thread starter Blazade
- Start date
- Status
This game was lost because people wanted to talk about game spec and what to do as certain roles instead of just naturally reading every single person during day 1.
after discord convo:
i dont think i played a perfect game, definitely some errors. its all g, im outtie of smogon noc for a bit, ill stick to ocs and games.to quote the mindset from king:
surgery in the morning :c
i dont think i played a perfect game, definitely some errors. its all g, im outtie of smogon noc for a bit, ill stick to ocs and games.to quote the mindset from king:
i disagree with that, i disagree with people saying my d2 was bad, and i disagree with a lot of other stuff, and being the sole person on a side of an argument is not a good place to be, so sticking to ms for nocs for now is a better plan. the fact im the only one who thinks i played close to optimally means i should throw in the towel here.
surgery in the morning :c
Gronk plays on MS and other sites so he's not really a newbie (as an fyi i just want people to know that he's a baller :D)
Like this is what I'm talking about:
TBH I think it's a huge cop out to say that you aren't going to play any more NOCs on here because "no one else thinks you played close to optimal." Like come on man lol. If you think the level of play here is so poor, why don't you come out and prove it to everyone by performing instead of just making excuses? That's weaksauce man and honestly it is a little disappointing to hear from you.
Yeah, I know I'm grilling you hard but it's a little saddening for me that you think the thing to do is quit instead of just coming around and trying again. I mean it is your decision (and ofc I'm no "NOC expert" so who knows how much my opinion is worth) but I would find it sad if you're going to give up as a result. :/
I think you're missing the point I'm trying to make here man. Like beyond w/e happened with merlin, with the setup, with whatever. my critique of you is how you talked to other people itg, and specifically on day 2. If you're making the case that you needed to act like that to have a chance of winning the game then...ok I guess? I really am not in a position to comment on that except to say that any time of claiming is bad. IDK the context though for this game. Although I would say that you got lynched in the end so I wouldn't consider that being successful at all.
Like this is what I'm talking about:
No bro, you made it hard on the town. You did an extremely poor job of giving people a reason to believe you at all. You didn't try to work with people or listen to them but instead went the route of being aggressive and attacking people. I'm saying that's not a good way to treat people that you're trying to ultimately convince to save your life! Sure, maybe that's the sort of shit that works on mafiascum because people there have no emotions so you really need to rile them up to get them to listen to you, but you don't need to resort to those sort of emotional appeals on here (namely because, they don't work). It has nothing to do with expecting too much from other people - it shouldn't fucking matter who you are playing with because part of the game of mafia is to convince others regardless of their experience/smarts/knowledge/whatever. I get that there are times when people are unreasonable - it has happened to me and I've been in similar situations. But you don't just collapse under the pressure, you need to try and work with them, see where they are coming from and work to try and change their mind. Part of being a good player I think is being able to adapt to your surroundings depending on the game type and who you are playing with imo.
TBH I think it's a huge cop out to say that you aren't going to play any more NOCs on here because "no one else thinks you played close to optimal." Like come on man lol. If you think the level of play here is so poor, why don't you come out and prove it to everyone by performing instead of just making excuses? That's weaksauce man and honestly it is a little disappointing to hear from you.
Yeah, I know I'm grilling you hard but it's a little saddening for me that you think the thing to do is quit instead of just coming around and trying again. I mean it is your decision (and ofc I'm no "NOC expert" so who knows how much my opinion is worth) but I would find it sad if you're going to give up as a result. :/
I agree with jalmont from what I read of the game tbh. I don't think Josh was factually wrong in his analysis of the game, but he was such a dick to everyone that people tuned him out (note: I only read parts of the last day phase)
Mafia is a social game, and part of being social is being able to persuade people to listen to you. On the flipside, being able to distance yourself from the emotion of "this guy is being an ass" is also a skill so the town failed too
Mafia is a social game, and part of being social is being able to persuade people to listen to you. On the flipside, being able to distance yourself from the emotion of "this guy is being an ass" is also a skill so the town failed too
my mouth was fine until i started trying to eat solids lol
had them removed uhhhhhh nine days ago
had them removed uhhhhhh nine days ago
POSTGAME
This game's been in the works since DBZ mafia had the fucking stupid rule of "only 4 people can claim all game in any way" which was a headache that hindered discussion in the late game, was pointlessly unclear, and forced the mod to make empty threats. It was completely unnatural, so I wanted to create a game with a lot of roles, but a natural game oriented motivated to stop claiming, not as a constraint, but as an optimal way of solving the setup. Metagame Mafia and it's few rolename tied kills basically sealed the idea for me.
The mathematics of this setup was really intriguing, because while figuring out how often Mafia kill correctly by guessing at random wasn't too hard, figuring out how useful the incorrect guesses were in narrowing down info was significantly harder. This is where the idea for the Identity Exchanger came up as a means of undermining past information and process of elimination. It was also kind of difficult to balance the game out so people get punished by their mistakes while still being offered counterplay options, but I think in the end I got close to the right note here.
Kind of an important thing to note balance and math wise is that I really didn't intend on any town getting any leeway to claim or make their role obvious for any reason. It's harsh, but it's also explicitly spelled out as the backbone of this game. Even 1 for 1 trades with the scum take you down to 8 town which is about a coin toss at 4-5 guesses with average luck on what roles die first. Games in which Merlin is outed or dies in some way are meant to be denser and faster, with good town play pivoting off of the revealed information they can take the game but don't have a lot of time to manage it. And don't get me wrong, mafia luck is possible and worth playing around: this is why you have to rein in every piece of guaranteed info you can.
That kind of pressure, where every townie's role and playstyle is critically important was a real goal of mine, but I didn't consider the other effects balancing around high level play would have. The game isn't friendly to newbies, which is unfortunate because I initially thought they would be happy to get more involved. You also get a lot of frustration when it's way harder for a good player to pick up the slack and start carrying than it is for those with loose lips to ruin town's chances. I feel like that contributed a bit to the emotional tension where everyone sees the game slipping away when others make bad calls.
Anyway, as far as hidden info this game, Twin requested any Town, Texas requested Percival MoodyCloud requested Tracer Bullet, Gronk requested Cop or a Twin, Aura Guardian requested Mafia Deathnote or Investigator. After that I randomized all the roles. Night 1, Haruno and Moody targeted Texas, Mafia invesitgated acid, acid swapped with Asek and saved him by doing so, Twin died on Hitmonleet, Gronk watched Asek and saw acid, Mithril idled, Blank Slate called Hitmonleet correctly but got hooked.
Role design and player comments
The Village
It's possible I could have given the village more guys but that starts to fall off in advantage after a certain amount of time anyway. Natural scumhunting gets really clunky, and info roles become more obvious especially when any one guy's chance of hitting scum is reduced. I could hhave made town's life easier for them in other ways by introducing more difficult to read roles like a JOAT, buffing the Janitor or Bodyguard, or further relaxing or removing the veteran entirely. But honestly, I thought town was really diverse and well designed to be able to share info and sleuth out scum without outing themselves. In a future iteration, town will probably be different, and might be more powerful, but this game their loss was well defined by their many critical mistakes. And hey, shoutouts to Twin for calling the town self destruct in pre game, right down to Merlin and Percival claiming.
The Twinmasters, aka Robet Mazur
Role Comments: This was the first role I designed, and I really like how it turned out. Very flavorful, inspired by the Hider (which can traditionally protect themselves by hiding behind a town but die when targeting mafia), this role was meant to hide other people and be a foil to the straightforward inspector. It also set the tone for town roles designed to more naturally clear each other than condemn scum so that people could set up chains. In longer games, this guy could be a truly uniting force for the town, fucking up mafia inspects for half the player list while crowding out the remaining without revealing more than the Disguise Artist himself. I kind of like the idea of using Robert Mazur for this because having the disguise be a state of mind is really cool.
Player Comments: Twin earned a solid townread and was rock solid on game intuition, far stronger at understanding how to play this setup than anyone else on the playerlist. He was too ballsy in going for high profile targets in hard 50-50, however, and didn't realize that he was more useful confirming himself to players not in the know and obstructing mafia inspects on people they might actually inspect (instead of, you know, the other half of the 50-50 the mafia definitely knows what their role is since they're not mafia). This call was pretty important too, and it's a damn shame.
Asek, aka Inferno Cop
Role Comments: I wanted to include protection in this game but not in a useless or broken way, and I think I hit it on the nose by not informing the mafia which target was protected, effectively confusing them on which guess was the false positive (which undermines past info and opens up more possibilities for them to fuck up). This wasn't really meant to protect people who claimed especially since doing that abandons all pretense of false positive WIFOM the role was designed for. The Final Guess wasn't something I was budging on either because for all of towns deception roles it was important that if the mafia knew every role for sure, they should win 100% of the time.
Player Comments: Though he couldn't know it, Asek should have had the foresight to realize that claiming might have snowballing reprecussions. He was actually hidden by the Identity Exchanger night 1 which not only protected him but also threw mafia off of the Merlin trail. He was also in the unique position to know that josh hadn't got 1, not 2, but 3 names correct DAY ONE as a claimed merlin and that getting Asek in the town pool is a stretch even as a Mafia Hooker. He traded himself for at best one scum that could have been lynched anyway and wasn't even right. He even scumcoached Hitmonleet on exactly what to say which was pretty silly. His argumentation was good as usual however, even with reduced activity.
Haruno, aka Elijah Baley
Role Comments: Tracker/Watcher twins were great utility roles, they'd get weaker info than most other counterparts and have an easier time sharing it through questioning or pushing their reads with the comfort of a twin potentially backing them. Unlike other informed roles bar a successful disguise artist, the clear is reciprocal so they also have an easier time hiding by voting and scumreading each other. Not the most original idea but definitely fits here.
Player Comments: Haruno earned a townread, kept his role under wraps, and pushed reads with logic and consistency which is saying a lot this game. I knew he'd be comfortable with this role when he rolled though, so I'm not exactly surprised. He is just wrong about Merlin claiming though, and the fact that it didn't gain more suspicion is a blessing. Like, not only is 2:3+a NSA guess bad for town you give up 2/3 of the crucial protective roles. Just a bad time all around.
Gronkasaurus Rex, aka R Daneel Olivaw
Role Comments: The other half of the pair, the Watcher would be a little OP if all the mafia kills got tracked so it was here that I implemented the rule that only one random successful kill gets tracked. This leaves the tracker just as able to get killers but the watcher more effective at gathering consistent info and catching kills on high profile targets when the town's play is tight. The Asimov Buddy Cop team is fucking classic as well, nuff said.
Player Comments: When Gronk posted, he posted strong and asked probing an interesting questions. Gronk felt bad after voting Josh at the end, but Josh's fakeclaim directly contradicted his watch info so it's hard to blame the guy. Maybe try to figure this kind of stuff out earlier than 2 minutes before deadline, but I doubt we'd have gotten much of a different result. I'm pretty sure that this kill was a random guess, making him the only player to die randomly all game.
MoodyCloud, aka Tracer Bullet
Role Comments: Standard Alliance Check is a little OP, Framer is a good balance for it but I wanted town inspects to be guaranteed because of the theme of strong village chains like I said earlier. There are a lot of roles that function kind of like Cop, so it''s not too obvious. Tracer Bullet is hilarious, especially the comic where he tries to solve a math question in the noir detective style.
Player Comments: MoodyCloud laid a little too low and tried to call shout the role that dies if it targets wrong drawing suspicion day 1. Now, his supposed plan actually does create a really strong chain but if Moody were mafia it takes a lot of important pieces out of the game night 1 and trades 1 for 2 in hard claims (which is bad for town no matter how much math you can't do). Not to mention that astute maifans will figure out Moody's role from his plan and know that their N1 inspect is correct since Disguise would be off them.
pancake, aka T.J. Christian
Role Comments: I really gotta stop doing this, where I design shit that makes the game more interesting but isn't fun for an individual player to play. I wanted to create tension by making Town have a role that would be pressured to claim or potentially harm them if they couldn't gamble correctly. I rewarded him by giving him more votes the longer he stuck around so that town had a naturally stronger voice (with the added side effect of making there be vote tension lest the mafia find out who the veteran is). But the veterna doesn't do anything at night, never picks up info, and has to worry about killing his friends and he isn't even night immune. Lame. Also I didn't realize the mafia could investigate their veteran guess each night and dodge all the effects. I did have the foresight to let the Disguise Artist target him though, since he dies on enough guys already and it gave town an out to clear him indirectly. By the way if you know who T.J. Christian it means you watched Spoony reviews back when he was good so we should talk.
Player Comments: pancake left the gun on night one and didn't shoot anyone which is exactly what needs to happen. He voted correctly D2 which almost forced a rolloff and had better reads than people give him credit for. He didn't want this role, but he pulled it off. Well done.
Josh, aka Merlin
Role Comments: Since this game is inspired by Resistance Avalon, I wanted to introduce a Merlin Percival dynamic. This was kind of difficult to pull off, since the deathnote mechanics forced every role to be unique and on average useful, so Merlin need to have lower stakes (losing the game) and lower benefits (knowing all but one mafia guaranteed) than in Resistance. I liked the decision to add 2 townies into the pool ala Norebo and Palm since if Merlin pushed wrong or claimed for no reason he could out town's important protective roles. Merlin's extra guess works during final guess to shut down massclaim in the last cycle. Like I said, I think I successfully designed it so Merlin claiming isn't favorable in almost any situation but Town could reasonably survive the role getting randed all the same. Oh, and yeah I used a different Merlin from one of my favorite sci fi book series of all time just to be cheeky, suck it.
Player Comments: Josh, I know you don't care what I think so if you need the cliff notes, yeah I think you played a good game, so you can stop saying no one else thinks that and you don't need to treat what follows as an argument with you. I'm just gonna be nitpicky because I know you can take it and I really want to have a discussion about playstyle and assumptions with someone who's pretty different from me but still smart.
While I think a lot of your decisions, especially your Day 2 made sense especially for the position you realized you were in, I don't think you realized how easy it was to scumread you in that position as well. It's not too much of a stretch for Mafia Hooker to guess the BG on Day 2 especially with an inspect in the game and even without that, betting that everyone's going to blindly believe what you say or has to to win tends to be a pretty self centered approach to the game. You even tried to move the lynch off of Hitmonleet onto townies for no apparent reason other than "town's gonna need me for this lynch". There's a mafiascum thread I like that makes the case against fakeclaiming as town basically because it tends to come from this desire to be a hero and win the game all on your own while also taking away town's ability to use logic effectively and giving scum more excuse to lie. While I don't necessarily agree with all that, I think there's a lot to be said for that sentiment. Saying town needs to sheep you all the time and that they're fucking stupid for not blindly going along with you is isn't something people are just going to accept, nor should they in my opinion. Whatever else as been said, I think the real reason mafiascum players play like this is to have easier scumgames. When you paint yourself as a "valuable" townie with good reads that don't need explaining you bus Day 1, act like an asshole, and win. Whatever alignment you are, making sure you don't get killed and your opinions are respected is a good way to succeed.
Anyway, enough rambling, more nitpicking. So yeah in retrospect, Josh was right in that looking back Percival was obvious, but at the time of Josh's claim there wasn't a whole lot of tact and even so Josh got suspected as Merlin before Texas got suspected as Percival for his high profile read. Josh Townreading Hitmonleet at the time (which fucked up a lot of discussion and about 2/3 of the night actions) outed Asek, which he still didn't get until beginning of Day 2 which contributed to Asek feeling the need to claim. "Unclaiming" Merlin wasn't entirely necessary to cover him up either, since the fact that he survived already confused the scum enough that they thought he was lying. Safer to make it explicit a lot of the time sure, but again his eventual claim contradicting multiple others was hard to swallow at times. Finally, I get that he was not looking at the Merlin names so he could develop genuine scumreads, but inadvertently picking up Arua Guardian (and reflexively townreading Htimonleet for it) gave scum the tools to accidentally guess him as Merlin. It takes a more conscious effort and some patience (waiting for Gronk to call out AG for instance) to avoid tells like that, because scum isn't gonna know that you figured it out naturally and just make the best guess they can.
He did his best to cover himself up, though, and in a situation where he truly believes he's getting read and not baited getting all the names out is a safe bet. He hinted at his plan all game, and was willing to toss the game on town not understanding him. Perhaps he doesn't make it to Final Guess, but he can ride the identity exchange and Mafia doubt to stall town enough if he lives as an unknown. Even if I thought town could win in situations where he's semi out but isn;t lynched, the reward for going balls out is clear. And really, Asek and Texas being uncooperative threw a wrench in all that. Not something I hope to see in future iterations of the game, but town's gonna have to come together as a team to make that happen... Josh was one of the only players with the fucking tact to at least TRY to hide his role and do some damage control after Day 1 had gotten away from him. I'm sorry this game put you off to Smogon NOC and I hope you return sometime soon.
Texas Cloverleaf, aka Percival
Role Comments: Percival's meant to know Merlin and a Mafia so he can either follow Merlin or potentially out them or get played by the spies. Neither Merlin nor Percival can receive protection simply because they can't get hooked since they don't have a role. I go by the philosophy of Cop-Doc-Roleblocker is appropriate or just Cop is, you can't tilt farther than that for town especially with inherently informed shit like this. Day 1 is particularly hard for merlin percy because they don't get hidden by other infor roles having information. Couldn't find a cheeky Percival to use, booooring.
Player Comments: Texas, like Josh, made Day 1 harder for themselves and everyone else, but Texas was a bigger offender here, just looking at his posts. He saw Josh pop a townread on Hitmonleet, went "does not compute" and did everything to resolve teh 50-50 ASAP and nothing else. Let this be a lesson, subtlety is a virtue in this setup.
Mithril, aka Will Hunting
Role Comments: A bunch of people came up to me and asked me why Janitor shouldn't always idle and in fact, Mithril idled N1. I suppose it wouldn't be much of a problem to have Mafia roles not get covered up by the Janitor, but then it gets too easy for people to pressure the Janitor to target who they want the day before which is lame. I thought it would be obvious that a successful janitoring is like a permanent Identity Exchange that turns the Janitor into an info role. This is an odd role, but a deceptively good goal to work toward. Janitor gets to act like info to try and get their target lynched, but they have to be careful about that too. I thought it was interesting by virtue of the situations and conflicts it creates, but I guess I can get too abstract or off book with this kind of thing and players aren't on the save wavelength when problem solving sometimes. Like the veteran, vig, and Identity Exchanger, this cycle of support benefited from reading the game and had only very limited ways to collect info themselves.
Player Comments: Not much to say about Mithril here, could have been more active on Day 1, missed the hint on Day 2 but put some more thought into it than others, argued well and was engaged. I'd say it was an overall average showing and I'm looking forward to seeing big plays in the future.
Blank Slate2356, aka Dirty Harry
Role Comments: Vigilante is dangerous in this game because it can promote a strategy of claiming or partial claiming cause you get to speed up the lynch process. I like the need for a specific target, since he can act as in info role either pinging Hooker suspects or trying to find the elusive Deathnote. Misshots are bad, but I thought it was a good tradeoff for the benefit of only having one name to guess when there's one mafia left. This role was kind of necessary to keep Merlin-outed games competitive and I liked the balance here.
Player Comments: Blank Slate kind of got nervous when one person voted him and felt he needed to hint at his role to be townread. Unfortunately, that was all the Mafia needed to get at him. He even called Hitmonleet correctly in spite of a mostly consensus townread at the time which I was really proud of.
acidphoenix, aka Jerome Eugene Morrow
Role Comments: This was a role I added in as I did more math and realized I needed to undermine past info, and outside of the Disguise Artist this was probably my most clever, flavorful, and innovative design. I love how it turned out, too, because it totally fucking worked to stall mafia guesses for potentially 2-3 cycles on really important roles and that's a big deal. I was considering changing it to allow it to exchange ANY two people but that was pretty OP as an infinite WIFOM that lets two people claim with some kind of impunity. (It's here you can tell how OCD I was about shutting down any game breaking shit that could possibly happen to choke out the scum by claiming even partially). Gattaca is a bad movie but this guy really fits the part for the role in a way so mundane it's worth a chuckle.
Player Comments: acid protecting Asek was the single most perceptive and influential night action in the whole game and while he laid low he needed to be inspected to get guessed. Not much more to say, but what he did was enough for me to commend him.
Overall, town definitely deserved their loss by giving ground at almost every opportunity they had to slip information, claim, or fight each other over dumb illogical bullshit. The setup is hard on them because I may have high standards for what high level play is, but this wasn't the game to push those boundaries and give me a lot of confidence about what I need to go back to the drawing board with. Anyway, if I run this again, don't fucking claim unless it's absolutely necessary and keep an eye out for how what you say can be interpreted.
The Mafia
King, aka Light Yagami
Role Comments: Kind of a boring role but he gets to be kind of a Godfather/Mordred since he's protected from Merlin and Percival. He also gets to take care fot eh final guess so he has to keep on his toes. Here I'll say that I had to include Light because this game was designed around the mechanics of the Death Note, but I couldn't find it in me to include anyone else from the series or commit to the theme. It just felt right to make a lot of Cops represent the information roles, write full role PMs, include pictures, and give everyone an identity to spice things up and make each role more fun to play and imagine. Since the game's about remembering rolenames it really helps to tie a name to a face, give people something fun to remember.
Player Comments: Knights played fine till he idled and subbed(which is unfortunate since I was curious about his scumgame and counting on his experience here), when King kept his cool and let town burn around him. He overly committed to the cop bit Day 2 which tipped a couple people off, but it worked on a few others and definitely distracted from the bigger issues. Good improvement here, looking forward to seeing more.
Hitmonleet, aka Anton Chigurh
Role Comments: Mafia needs a Hooker for the Vigilante, as a deterrent to claimed info roles, and as a wrench in the gears for town info. I made sure it couldn't stop Identity Exchange since that wasn't proactive but disruptive in an important way. I think the Mafia roles passing to each other on death is too important to deter town from doing claiming to try and cripple the team. Their toolkit is crucial, and reducing it basically kills their odds as successful lynches snowball. At least with a Hooker and and investigate they have a fighting chance against vig and tightly guarded info.
Player Comments: Hitmonleet wasn't very confident as scum and intentionally laid low. A lot. This is a hard role to play, and one I wouldn't have give to Hitmon if it wasn't randomized, so I can understand his situation. He gts attention from both Merlin and Percy and has to keep his cool, but noob armor and clever pushes by Aura Guardian helped him distance properly and passively fuck town up. I hope he plays more NOc and gets more comfortable arguing on both sides.
Aura Guardian, aka Sombra
Role Comments: I figured if town was playing really well basically behaving like VT, mafia would need something to resemble a delayed factional kill. Countered in the long game by Robert Mazur, I think the dynamic works, but can open up mafia information in the wrong hands. Definitely one of the things that could be changed.
Player Comments: Aura Guardian was arguably the best player on the Mafia because his show centered the discussion around claims and baited a ton of info in the long game. He was also very perceptive in working out roles off the tiniest tells and a strong mentor and organizing force. His overtly scummy posts were against his own teammates funny enough, but he got his fucking job done, and his contribution to the win can't be underestimated.
Overall, the Mafia got handed a win as much as they earned it, but they kept their cool and did what they needed to do to coast by and not fuck up which is commendable by itself considering the circumstances.
Conclusion
That's pretty much it I guess. I may run this again a while from now and you can feel free to steal the setup and run it somewhere else for kicks. It's open so there's not really a need to lock it down and I'm curious to see how it gets iterated or improved. I'd love to talk about what you would do to tweak roles if you have good ideas. Anyway, the game and the way people struggled to solve it seemed fun and interesting in action, and I hope it was enjoyable at least. Thanks for playing!
This game's been in the works since DBZ mafia had the fucking stupid rule of "only 4 people can claim all game in any way" which was a headache that hindered discussion in the late game, was pointlessly unclear, and forced the mod to make empty threats. It was completely unnatural, so I wanted to create a game with a lot of roles, but a natural game oriented motivated to stop claiming, not as a constraint, but as an optimal way of solving the setup. Metagame Mafia and it's few rolename tied kills basically sealed the idea for me.
The mathematics of this setup was really intriguing, because while figuring out how often Mafia kill correctly by guessing at random wasn't too hard, figuring out how useful the incorrect guesses were in narrowing down info was significantly harder. This is where the idea for the Identity Exchanger came up as a means of undermining past information and process of elimination. It was also kind of difficult to balance the game out so people get punished by their mistakes while still being offered counterplay options, but I think in the end I got close to the right note here.
Kind of an important thing to note balance and math wise is that I really didn't intend on any town getting any leeway to claim or make their role obvious for any reason. It's harsh, but it's also explicitly spelled out as the backbone of this game. Even 1 for 1 trades with the scum take you down to 8 town which is about a coin toss at 4-5 guesses with average luck on what roles die first. Games in which Merlin is outed or dies in some way are meant to be denser and faster, with good town play pivoting off of the revealed information they can take the game but don't have a lot of time to manage it. And don't get me wrong, mafia luck is possible and worth playing around: this is why you have to rein in every piece of guaranteed info you can.
That kind of pressure, where every townie's role and playstyle is critically important was a real goal of mine, but I didn't consider the other effects balancing around high level play would have. The game isn't friendly to newbies, which is unfortunate because I initially thought they would be happy to get more involved. You also get a lot of frustration when it's way harder for a good player to pick up the slack and start carrying than it is for those with loose lips to ruin town's chances. I feel like that contributed a bit to the emotional tension where everyone sees the game slipping away when others make bad calls.
Anyway, as far as hidden info this game, Twin requested any Town, Texas requested Percival MoodyCloud requested Tracer Bullet, Gronk requested Cop or a Twin, Aura Guardian requested Mafia Deathnote or Investigator. After that I randomized all the roles. Night 1, Haruno and Moody targeted Texas, Mafia invesitgated acid, acid swapped with Asek and saved him by doing so, Twin died on Hitmonleet, Gronk watched Asek and saw acid, Mithril idled, Blank Slate called Hitmonleet correctly but got hooked.
Role design and player comments
The Village
It's possible I could have given the village more guys but that starts to fall off in advantage after a certain amount of time anyway. Natural scumhunting gets really clunky, and info roles become more obvious especially when any one guy's chance of hitting scum is reduced. I could hhave made town's life easier for them in other ways by introducing more difficult to read roles like a JOAT, buffing the Janitor or Bodyguard, or further relaxing or removing the veteran entirely. But honestly, I thought town was really diverse and well designed to be able to share info and sleuth out scum without outing themselves. In a future iteration, town will probably be different, and might be more powerful, but this game their loss was well defined by their many critical mistakes. And hey, shoutouts to Twin for calling the town self destruct in pre game, right down to Merlin and Percival claiming.
The Twinmasters, aka Robet Mazur
Role Comments: This was the first role I designed, and I really like how it turned out. Very flavorful, inspired by the Hider (which can traditionally protect themselves by hiding behind a town but die when targeting mafia), this role was meant to hide other people and be a foil to the straightforward inspector. It also set the tone for town roles designed to more naturally clear each other than condemn scum so that people could set up chains. In longer games, this guy could be a truly uniting force for the town, fucking up mafia inspects for half the player list while crowding out the remaining without revealing more than the Disguise Artist himself. I kind of like the idea of using Robert Mazur for this because having the disguise be a state of mind is really cool.
Player Comments: Twin earned a solid townread and was rock solid on game intuition, far stronger at understanding how to play this setup than anyone else on the playerlist. He was too ballsy in going for high profile targets in hard 50-50, however, and didn't realize that he was more useful confirming himself to players not in the know and obstructing mafia inspects on people they might actually inspect (instead of, you know, the other half of the 50-50 the mafia definitely knows what their role is since they're not mafia). This call was pretty important too, and it's a damn shame.
Asek, aka Inferno Cop
Role Comments: I wanted to include protection in this game but not in a useless or broken way, and I think I hit it on the nose by not informing the mafia which target was protected, effectively confusing them on which guess was the false positive (which undermines past info and opens up more possibilities for them to fuck up). This wasn't really meant to protect people who claimed especially since doing that abandons all pretense of false positive WIFOM the role was designed for. The Final Guess wasn't something I was budging on either because for all of towns deception roles it was important that if the mafia knew every role for sure, they should win 100% of the time.
Player Comments: Though he couldn't know it, Asek should have had the foresight to realize that claiming might have snowballing reprecussions. He was actually hidden by the Identity Exchanger night 1 which not only protected him but also threw mafia off of the Merlin trail. He was also in the unique position to know that josh hadn't got 1, not 2, but 3 names correct DAY ONE as a claimed merlin and that getting Asek in the town pool is a stretch even as a Mafia Hooker. He traded himself for at best one scum that could have been lynched anyway and wasn't even right. He even scumcoached Hitmonleet on exactly what to say which was pretty silly. His argumentation was good as usual however, even with reduced activity.
Haruno, aka Elijah Baley
Role Comments: Tracker/Watcher twins were great utility roles, they'd get weaker info than most other counterparts and have an easier time sharing it through questioning or pushing their reads with the comfort of a twin potentially backing them. Unlike other informed roles bar a successful disguise artist, the clear is reciprocal so they also have an easier time hiding by voting and scumreading each other. Not the most original idea but definitely fits here.
Player Comments: Haruno earned a townread, kept his role under wraps, and pushed reads with logic and consistency which is saying a lot this game. I knew he'd be comfortable with this role when he rolled though, so I'm not exactly surprised. He is just wrong about Merlin claiming though, and the fact that it didn't gain more suspicion is a blessing. Like, not only is 2:3+a NSA guess bad for town you give up 2/3 of the crucial protective roles. Just a bad time all around.
Gronkasaurus Rex, aka R Daneel Olivaw
Role Comments: The other half of the pair, the Watcher would be a little OP if all the mafia kills got tracked so it was here that I implemented the rule that only one random successful kill gets tracked. This leaves the tracker just as able to get killers but the watcher more effective at gathering consistent info and catching kills on high profile targets when the town's play is tight. The Asimov Buddy Cop team is fucking classic as well, nuff said.
Player Comments: When Gronk posted, he posted strong and asked probing an interesting questions. Gronk felt bad after voting Josh at the end, but Josh's fakeclaim directly contradicted his watch info so it's hard to blame the guy. Maybe try to figure this kind of stuff out earlier than 2 minutes before deadline, but I doubt we'd have gotten much of a different result. I'm pretty sure that this kill was a random guess, making him the only player to die randomly all game.
MoodyCloud, aka Tracer Bullet
Role Comments: Standard Alliance Check is a little OP, Framer is a good balance for it but I wanted town inspects to be guaranteed because of the theme of strong village chains like I said earlier. There are a lot of roles that function kind of like Cop, so it''s not too obvious. Tracer Bullet is hilarious, especially the comic where he tries to solve a math question in the noir detective style.
Player Comments: MoodyCloud laid a little too low and tried to call shout the role that dies if it targets wrong drawing suspicion day 1. Now, his supposed plan actually does create a really strong chain but if Moody were mafia it takes a lot of important pieces out of the game night 1 and trades 1 for 2 in hard claims (which is bad for town no matter how much math you can't do). Not to mention that astute maifans will figure out Moody's role from his plan and know that their N1 inspect is correct since Disguise would be off them.
pancake, aka T.J. Christian
Role Comments: I really gotta stop doing this, where I design shit that makes the game more interesting but isn't fun for an individual player to play. I wanted to create tension by making Town have a role that would be pressured to claim or potentially harm them if they couldn't gamble correctly. I rewarded him by giving him more votes the longer he stuck around so that town had a naturally stronger voice (with the added side effect of making there be vote tension lest the mafia find out who the veteran is). But the veterna doesn't do anything at night, never picks up info, and has to worry about killing his friends and he isn't even night immune. Lame. Also I didn't realize the mafia could investigate their veteran guess each night and dodge all the effects. I did have the foresight to let the Disguise Artist target him though, since he dies on enough guys already and it gave town an out to clear him indirectly. By the way if you know who T.J. Christian it means you watched Spoony reviews back when he was good so we should talk.
Player Comments: pancake left the gun on night one and didn't shoot anyone which is exactly what needs to happen. He voted correctly D2 which almost forced a rolloff and had better reads than people give him credit for. He didn't want this role, but he pulled it off. Well done.
Josh, aka Merlin
Role Comments: Since this game is inspired by Resistance Avalon, I wanted to introduce a Merlin Percival dynamic. This was kind of difficult to pull off, since the deathnote mechanics forced every role to be unique and on average useful, so Merlin need to have lower stakes (losing the game) and lower benefits (knowing all but one mafia guaranteed) than in Resistance. I liked the decision to add 2 townies into the pool ala Norebo and Palm since if Merlin pushed wrong or claimed for no reason he could out town's important protective roles. Merlin's extra guess works during final guess to shut down massclaim in the last cycle. Like I said, I think I successfully designed it so Merlin claiming isn't favorable in almost any situation but Town could reasonably survive the role getting randed all the same. Oh, and yeah I used a different Merlin from one of my favorite sci fi book series of all time just to be cheeky, suck it.
Player Comments: Josh, I know you don't care what I think so if you need the cliff notes, yeah I think you played a good game, so you can stop saying no one else thinks that and you don't need to treat what follows as an argument with you. I'm just gonna be nitpicky because I know you can take it and I really want to have a discussion about playstyle and assumptions with someone who's pretty different from me but still smart.
While I think a lot of your decisions, especially your Day 2 made sense especially for the position you realized you were in, I don't think you realized how easy it was to scumread you in that position as well. It's not too much of a stretch for Mafia Hooker to guess the BG on Day 2 especially with an inspect in the game and even without that, betting that everyone's going to blindly believe what you say or has to to win tends to be a pretty self centered approach to the game. You even tried to move the lynch off of Hitmonleet onto townies for no apparent reason other than "town's gonna need me for this lynch". There's a mafiascum thread I like that makes the case against fakeclaiming as town basically because it tends to come from this desire to be a hero and win the game all on your own while also taking away town's ability to use logic effectively and giving scum more excuse to lie. While I don't necessarily agree with all that, I think there's a lot to be said for that sentiment. Saying town needs to sheep you all the time and that they're fucking stupid for not blindly going along with you is isn't something people are just going to accept, nor should they in my opinion. Whatever else as been said, I think the real reason mafiascum players play like this is to have easier scumgames. When you paint yourself as a "valuable" townie with good reads that don't need explaining you bus Day 1, act like an asshole, and win. Whatever alignment you are, making sure you don't get killed and your opinions are respected is a good way to succeed.
Anyway, enough rambling, more nitpicking. So yeah in retrospect, Josh was right in that looking back Percival was obvious, but at the time of Josh's claim there wasn't a whole lot of tact and even so Josh got suspected as Merlin before Texas got suspected as Percival for his high profile read. Josh Townreading Hitmonleet at the time (which fucked up a lot of discussion and about 2/3 of the night actions) outed Asek, which he still didn't get until beginning of Day 2 which contributed to Asek feeling the need to claim. "Unclaiming" Merlin wasn't entirely necessary to cover him up either, since the fact that he survived already confused the scum enough that they thought he was lying. Safer to make it explicit a lot of the time sure, but again his eventual claim contradicting multiple others was hard to swallow at times. Finally, I get that he was not looking at the Merlin names so he could develop genuine scumreads, but inadvertently picking up Arua Guardian (and reflexively townreading Htimonleet for it) gave scum the tools to accidentally guess him as Merlin. It takes a more conscious effort and some patience (waiting for Gronk to call out AG for instance) to avoid tells like that, because scum isn't gonna know that you figured it out naturally and just make the best guess they can.
He did his best to cover himself up, though, and in a situation where he truly believes he's getting read and not baited getting all the names out is a safe bet. He hinted at his plan all game, and was willing to toss the game on town not understanding him. Perhaps he doesn't make it to Final Guess, but he can ride the identity exchange and Mafia doubt to stall town enough if he lives as an unknown. Even if I thought town could win in situations where he's semi out but isn;t lynched, the reward for going balls out is clear. And really, Asek and Texas being uncooperative threw a wrench in all that. Not something I hope to see in future iterations of the game, but town's gonna have to come together as a team to make that happen... Josh was one of the only players with the fucking tact to at least TRY to hide his role and do some damage control after Day 1 had gotten away from him. I'm sorry this game put you off to Smogon NOC and I hope you return sometime soon.
Texas Cloverleaf, aka Percival
Role Comments: Percival's meant to know Merlin and a Mafia so he can either follow Merlin or potentially out them or get played by the spies. Neither Merlin nor Percival can receive protection simply because they can't get hooked since they don't have a role. I go by the philosophy of Cop-Doc-Roleblocker is appropriate or just Cop is, you can't tilt farther than that for town especially with inherently informed shit like this. Day 1 is particularly hard for merlin percy because they don't get hidden by other infor roles having information. Couldn't find a cheeky Percival to use, booooring.
Player Comments: Texas, like Josh, made Day 1 harder for themselves and everyone else, but Texas was a bigger offender here, just looking at his posts. He saw Josh pop a townread on Hitmonleet, went "does not compute" and did everything to resolve teh 50-50 ASAP and nothing else. Let this be a lesson, subtlety is a virtue in this setup.
Mithril, aka Will Hunting
Role Comments: A bunch of people came up to me and asked me why Janitor shouldn't always idle and in fact, Mithril idled N1. I suppose it wouldn't be much of a problem to have Mafia roles not get covered up by the Janitor, but then it gets too easy for people to pressure the Janitor to target who they want the day before which is lame. I thought it would be obvious that a successful janitoring is like a permanent Identity Exchange that turns the Janitor into an info role. This is an odd role, but a deceptively good goal to work toward. Janitor gets to act like info to try and get their target lynched, but they have to be careful about that too. I thought it was interesting by virtue of the situations and conflicts it creates, but I guess I can get too abstract or off book with this kind of thing and players aren't on the save wavelength when problem solving sometimes. Like the veteran, vig, and Identity Exchanger, this cycle of support benefited from reading the game and had only very limited ways to collect info themselves.
Player Comments: Not much to say about Mithril here, could have been more active on Day 1, missed the hint on Day 2 but put some more thought into it than others, argued well and was engaged. I'd say it was an overall average showing and I'm looking forward to seeing big plays in the future.
Blank Slate2356, aka Dirty Harry
Role Comments: Vigilante is dangerous in this game because it can promote a strategy of claiming or partial claiming cause you get to speed up the lynch process. I like the need for a specific target, since he can act as in info role either pinging Hooker suspects or trying to find the elusive Deathnote. Misshots are bad, but I thought it was a good tradeoff for the benefit of only having one name to guess when there's one mafia left. This role was kind of necessary to keep Merlin-outed games competitive and I liked the balance here.
Player Comments: Blank Slate kind of got nervous when one person voted him and felt he needed to hint at his role to be townread. Unfortunately, that was all the Mafia needed to get at him. He even called Hitmonleet correctly in spite of a mostly consensus townread at the time which I was really proud of.
acidphoenix, aka Jerome Eugene Morrow
Role Comments: This was a role I added in as I did more math and realized I needed to undermine past info, and outside of the Disguise Artist this was probably my most clever, flavorful, and innovative design. I love how it turned out, too, because it totally fucking worked to stall mafia guesses for potentially 2-3 cycles on really important roles and that's a big deal. I was considering changing it to allow it to exchange ANY two people but that was pretty OP as an infinite WIFOM that lets two people claim with some kind of impunity. (It's here you can tell how OCD I was about shutting down any game breaking shit that could possibly happen to choke out the scum by claiming even partially). Gattaca is a bad movie but this guy really fits the part for the role in a way so mundane it's worth a chuckle.
Player Comments: acid protecting Asek was the single most perceptive and influential night action in the whole game and while he laid low he needed to be inspected to get guessed. Not much more to say, but what he did was enough for me to commend him.
Overall, town definitely deserved their loss by giving ground at almost every opportunity they had to slip information, claim, or fight each other over dumb illogical bullshit. The setup is hard on them because I may have high standards for what high level play is, but this wasn't the game to push those boundaries and give me a lot of confidence about what I need to go back to the drawing board with. Anyway, if I run this again, don't fucking claim unless it's absolutely necessary and keep an eye out for how what you say can be interpreted.
The Mafia
King, aka Light Yagami
Role Comments: Kind of a boring role but he gets to be kind of a Godfather/Mordred since he's protected from Merlin and Percival. He also gets to take care fot eh final guess so he has to keep on his toes. Here I'll say that I had to include Light because this game was designed around the mechanics of the Death Note, but I couldn't find it in me to include anyone else from the series or commit to the theme. It just felt right to make a lot of Cops represent the information roles, write full role PMs, include pictures, and give everyone an identity to spice things up and make each role more fun to play and imagine. Since the game's about remembering rolenames it really helps to tie a name to a face, give people something fun to remember.
Player Comments: Knights played fine till he idled and subbed(which is unfortunate since I was curious about his scumgame and counting on his experience here), when King kept his cool and let town burn around him. He overly committed to the cop bit Day 2 which tipped a couple people off, but it worked on a few others and definitely distracted from the bigger issues. Good improvement here, looking forward to seeing more.
Hitmonleet, aka Anton Chigurh
Role Comments: Mafia needs a Hooker for the Vigilante, as a deterrent to claimed info roles, and as a wrench in the gears for town info. I made sure it couldn't stop Identity Exchange since that wasn't proactive but disruptive in an important way. I think the Mafia roles passing to each other on death is too important to deter town from doing claiming to try and cripple the team. Their toolkit is crucial, and reducing it basically kills their odds as successful lynches snowball. At least with a Hooker and and investigate they have a fighting chance against vig and tightly guarded info.
Player Comments: Hitmonleet wasn't very confident as scum and intentionally laid low. A lot. This is a hard role to play, and one I wouldn't have give to Hitmon if it wasn't randomized, so I can understand his situation. He gts attention from both Merlin and Percy and has to keep his cool, but noob armor and clever pushes by Aura Guardian helped him distance properly and passively fuck town up. I hope he plays more NOc and gets more comfortable arguing on both sides.
Aura Guardian, aka Sombra
Role Comments: I figured if town was playing really well basically behaving like VT, mafia would need something to resemble a delayed factional kill. Countered in the long game by Robert Mazur, I think the dynamic works, but can open up mafia information in the wrong hands. Definitely one of the things that could be changed.
Player Comments: Aura Guardian was arguably the best player on the Mafia because his show centered the discussion around claims and baited a ton of info in the long game. He was also very perceptive in working out roles off the tiniest tells and a strong mentor and organizing force. His overtly scummy posts were against his own teammates funny enough, but he got his fucking job done, and his contribution to the win can't be underestimated.
Overall, the Mafia got handed a win as much as they earned it, but they kept their cool and did what they needed to do to coast by and not fuck up which is commendable by itself considering the circumstances.
Conclusion
That's pretty much it I guess. I may run this again a while from now and you can feel free to steal the setup and run it somewhere else for kicks. It's open so there's not really a need to lock it down and I'm curious to see how it gets iterated or improved. I'd love to talk about what you would do to tweak roles if you have good ideas. Anyway, the game and the way people struggled to solve it seemed fun and interesting in action, and I hope it was enjoyable at least. Thanks for playing!
Last edited:
Yeah, call me surprised when I found out leet was hooker.
Townreading Hitmonleet was probably my biggest mistake itg. I like to townread noobies, it's a flaw I have, it should be noted i didn't clear Hitmonleet as I did twin. As for luring as town, I do that a lot. I fakeclaim prs and claim vt as prs when the situation calls for it. I just like the pressure :c
Ag would've been much better off if he had played d1 differently. I DEFINITELY could've gone for an asek lynch at that stage, I was having a lot of doubts around that
Ag would've been much better off if he had played d1 differently. I DEFINITELY could've gone for an asek lynch at that stage, I was having a lot of doubts around that
I mean AG wanted to bait identity exchange on you in the ultimate MLG predict play which got countered as hard as possible but aside from that I'm not how sure many others would have lynched Asek with Texas signaling as hard as he did and deadline kind of close so I thought AG trolling accomplished pretty much what he wanted to.
There were better lines of play, but I think his posting needed to be better and earn a more solid townread to pull them off.
There were better lines of play, but I think his posting needed to be better and earn a more solid townread to pull them off.
I think my play came down to a disagreement. I thought mathematically if scum killed me as Merlin the game was done. That was the justification for my play; desperation. I called it a scum win after percival and vig essentially claimed d1, I tried to fix it.
If I thought town could win with me dying I'd have played very differently.
If I thought town could win with me dying I'd have played very differently.
Yeah and that's another problem with this game and another reason 1 for 1 is bad. Lots of people if they get backed into a corner where they think mafia might know them and the rest of the game is lost otherwise (You, Josh, Asek) feel the need to claim if they can just get the scum they know about to die. What does it matter if they're already out? But the way protective roles work in this game, you don't give them a chance if you do that and the situation may not be as you see it. Plus if you have any misunderstanding a 1 for 1 can snowball by reactions alone if the playerlist isn't fucking Godlike
If you get lynched the game was done but if you manage to out to kill hitmonleet while protecting Asek's identity I think it's about 40-50% chance town can win from that spot. But that's one of many math mistakes people made this game and tbh after Asek was out your hail mary was the only protection town had.
If you get lynched the game was done but if you manage to out to kill hitmonleet while protecting Asek's identity I think it's about 40-50% chance town can win from that spot. But that's one of many math mistakes people made this game and tbh after Asek was out your hail mary was the only protection town had.
I maintain that I would have jumped in Hitmonleet even if I weren't scum, and even if he wasn't, based on that edit. It was over 2.5 years since my last NOC, and editing in it STILL infuriates me beyond reason. And I strongly disapprove of No Lynch.
And I actually did think ??? re: Texas when I FoS'ed him, just not mafia or village for obvious reasons.
Re: King pushing Cop: It was to bait the real cop, and without that, I wouldn't have noticed the tells enough to ID the real cop (suspected possibilities via poe that happen to click well, sure) but spotting Moody was VERY MUCH a joint effort - it was his distinct lack of support for Josh despite the hinting that made us decide "yes, this is the cop"
Finally: Well done, acidphoenix. You very nearly saved the town all by yourself night 1. We guessed the BG correctly and Merlin to be IE'd... and you made us ??? for a couple IRL days. Add in Josh's un-claim (with the failed BG kill and the DA being someone else) and we were all set to be REALLY pressed to figure it out.
And I actually did think ??? re: Texas when I FoS'ed him, just not mafia or village for obvious reasons.
Re: King pushing Cop: It was to bait the real cop, and without that, I wouldn't have noticed the tells enough to ID the real cop (suspected possibilities via poe that happen to click well, sure) but spotting Moody was VERY MUCH a joint effort - it was his distinct lack of support for Josh despite the hinting that made us decide "yes, this is the cop"
Finally: Well done, acidphoenix. You very nearly saved the town all by yourself night 1. We guessed the BG correctly and Merlin to be IE'd... and you made us ??? for a couple IRL days. Add in Josh's un-claim (with the failed BG kill and the DA being someone else) and we were all set to be REALLY pressed to figure it out.
Last edited:
Oh, one more thing: Gronk was not 100% randed. We went off of Josh saying that the watcher/tracker pair was obvious. We were far from sure, but there wasn't much Gronk could be other than one in the pair, and watcher was the one with the fewest options left. So, we had Watcher down to a few options, and we were virtually certain from reads and Josh that Gronk was ONE of the two, just not which. So, yeah, it was a bit of guesswork, but it wasn't random.org, either.
Pancake was our tracker guess during N1. We guessed Mithril as watcher N1 (tracker in the ghostwheel phase), to be sure.
Hi : )
Some brief thoughts;
The chief kinda thing I learnt (experientially, even if it's obvious in theory) is that mafia are just much more likely to pick up on the meaning behind what you say than town are. Obviously in this game they are looking really hard, and aura in particular was really great at that, but I think it holds true that mafia is more likely to know what you're talking and why about then your town teammates.
Cheers Josh. Jalmont is right in that I'm by no means new, but I suppose before your NOC I hadn't played for well over a year, and as always, am learning.
I was sad about lynching you and really want to take responsibility for town falling apart. I had thought I had to post something substantiative on hitmonleet vs Josh so because I had a big day with no time I avoided posted anything, and left it way too late for my bigger post and then my inquiry (obviously). It never left my mind that you were lying about not being Merlin (I had sent Blazade a message or two about it) - all the questions directed at you about Texas were trying to get you to say "I am Merlin" whilst maintaining the "but I'm not" face but that's kinda dumb and regardless I know I never would have gotten something 100% sufficient. Also I was so confused about your asek vote d2 and couldn't see that you were so trying to bluff not being merlin. Then your claim didn't match up with my result and gg. I wish I had stuck with what I'd said about 9 hours before and it seems as if we would have had a chance (according to AG) had we lynched Hitmonleet so I am sorry to all about that.
Mithril I think you played rather well, and I might have criticised your play style in game (and maybe still think it's a bit too cautious, especilaly d1) but I like that you genuinely search for the truth and you had it right in the end D2
I think acidphoenix also played well considering their role and the setup except for not delivering on "will post something later" kinda posts
Blazade; obviously the set-up can be tweaked, and it restricts elements of normal mafia gameplay that may make it more mafia sided, etc. etc. But it was well made and such a thought-provoking set-up and I am glad to have been a part of it : )
That's all for now I guess
Some brief thoughts;
The chief kinda thing I learnt (experientially, even if it's obvious in theory) is that mafia are just much more likely to pick up on the meaning behind what you say than town are. Obviously in this game they are looking really hard, and aura in particular was really great at that, but I think it holds true that mafia is more likely to know what you're talking and why about then your town teammates.
Cheers Josh. Jalmont is right in that I'm by no means new, but I suppose before your NOC I hadn't played for well over a year, and as always, am learning.
I was sad about lynching you and really want to take responsibility for town falling apart. I had thought I had to post something substantiative on hitmonleet vs Josh so because I had a big day with no time I avoided posted anything, and left it way too late for my bigger post and then my inquiry (obviously). It never left my mind that you were lying about not being Merlin (I had sent Blazade a message or two about it) - all the questions directed at you about Texas were trying to get you to say "I am Merlin" whilst maintaining the "but I'm not" face but that's kinda dumb and regardless I know I never would have gotten something 100% sufficient. Also I was so confused about your asek vote d2 and couldn't see that you were so trying to bluff not being merlin. Then your claim didn't match up with my result and gg. I wish I had stuck with what I'd said about 9 hours before and it seems as if we would have had a chance (according to AG) had we lynched Hitmonleet so I am sorry to all about that.
Mithril I think you played rather well, and I might have criticised your play style in game (and maybe still think it's a bit too cautious, especilaly d1) but I like that you genuinely search for the truth and you had it right in the end D2
I think acidphoenix also played well considering their role and the setup except for not delivering on "will post something later" kinda posts
Blazade; obviously the set-up can be tweaked, and it restricts elements of normal mafia gameplay that may make it more mafia sided, etc. etc. But it was well made and such a thought-provoking set-up and I am glad to have been a part of it : )
That's all for now I guess
I agree that town deserved the loss, but also still say the setup was definitely quite scumsided
honestly for this game not even opening your role pm until n1 might be a good idea q.q, although opening it then intentionally faking another role likely even better
i think the problem with josh trying to pretend he wasn't merlin d2 is that he clearly was, and the mafia clearly realized he was. in retrospect it didn't mean anything(like, anything whatsoever) but that + josh salting led to lynching him which led to loss
imo town's path to a win d2 basically had to rely on me playing a game of 50/50 with the mafia + us then getting the correct one the next day
for the record i think lynching josh was a mistake for town(and not just 'because he was actually merlin'), but i still think that josh lying was a mistake, but not one that should have amttered
honestly for this game not even opening your role pm until n1 might be a good idea q.q, although opening it then intentionally faking another role likely even better
i think the problem with josh trying to pretend he wasn't merlin d2 is that he clearly was, and the mafia clearly realized he was. in retrospect it didn't mean anything(like, anything whatsoever) but that + josh salting led to lynching him which led to loss
imo town's path to a win d2 basically had to rely on me playing a game of 50/50 with the mafia + us then getting the correct one the next day
for the record i think lynching josh was a mistake for town(and not just 'because he was actually merlin'), but i still think that josh lying was a mistake, but not one that should have amttered
- Status