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[Expert] SANDSEMONIUM - Postgame Up! Winners: MEDS and MUDS
- Thread starter Yeti
- Start date
POSTGAME
What can I say? This game ended like 10 days after a year since the original SANDS masterpiece of shrewd trollery and utter disjointed confusion took its final bow and ginganinja, for the first time, was gunned down as the last of his faction.
That game was one of the last Gmax approved, so LightWolf and billymills weren’t even mods when SANDS the original began its infamous run of “what the <snip> is even going on in this stupid game?” Kind of odd to think there were people in SANDSEMONIUM who have never played a game during a time when the Circus mods WEREN’T LW and billy. It is arguable SANDS was the best game in its line - at least, if you were on the Really Bad Idling Problems and Rageguy Variants, you might say it was, having enjoyed the endgame.
It had neutral problems galore, and I don’t think anyone would have known how to balance out the neutral WCs as they were. 10 neutrals LOL. But SANDS the classic was a good game overall, however, it blatantly needed work. Some neutrals were almost handed wins. Some were nearly impossible to complete as it turned out, but I’m not sure that could have been foreseen. (In addition, the largest faction being three people really hurt activity, since if anyone was randed it was pretty much gg.) wtf are you talking about Quag SANDS was a highly-active game and had all PMs in usually, you are a noob, it hurt a faction’s shot at winning but it never really harmed activity. Lazy people will always be lazy.
Then we hit RotS, which was of course one of the dumbest games ever. You can all thank billymills for not catching the alliance system had a fair few fatal errors to reasonability’s sake, and LightWolf for telling me not to update early with all actions but like 1 or 2 of the ally PMs and thus jewing the two teams. (emphasizing, the alliance system was Yeti’s idea and should never be used in multifaction or most standard formats outside of ffa). MUDS was a more balanced, but simplistic version, of RotS, with a equally problematic wolf system. However, I still hated the neutrals and felt they had, yet again, no chance (although in walrein’s copy clone many came close and would’ve won had people talked more). MUDS also duped LightWolf into thinking it was a standard for a fair bit of its development stages, despite the almost identical roles on factions and wolves.
Fast forward to SANDSEMONIUM, which was approved months and months ago by me asking Mekkah if Quag and I stood a shot at hosting an expert, and him saying “yeah if there’s nobody else I’m game.” I am pretty sure the lower two mods had no idea the game was approved and in existence for quite a while and perhaps would have halted production if they were aware.
However, Quag had a good sub-cohosting record (and decent hosting record), and though every game my cohosts got worse, I guess I’d simply been around these parts for long enough I was ruled fit for the task.
Well one of us was fit for the task and the other was abuffoon. focusing on real life (buffoon)
UncleSam had “why is this theme still being used” Metroid Expert also fairly ready to deploy, and he asked us if he could go first in hosting experts at a point where we were the only two really on the list, after LN’s big ended. Then he vanished for months but we waited it out, thinking he would show up with the game ready, and we didn’t want to be imposing on him if he did come on to start it! Also my classes were just very long into the afternoon so I wasn’t in a particularly receptive position to have my usual earlier deadlines.
This meant that the completed SANDSEMONIUM spreadsheet, minus Role PMs and a few details, sat for probably half a year without much work. I think the “last updated by” date was over 200 days when we finally sat to work finalizing it for deployment (a lot happened around the middle/end of August)
I admit, this was highly unfortunate. Though we both HAVE the logs of the original conversations, the effort to sort through them and see what was intended by certain roles and words was simply put, too great (Quagsires’ll put what he has at the end).
The Post Restrictors were originally Kidnappers, then Yeti looked at the sheet and said “dude kidnaps are so annoying though, everyone hated No-Contact kidnaps in RotS, delete these (they never were, but we both agreed NOC kidnaps were bad) and, since we had wanted more to be centered around the lynch, we put spaces to sit as “lynch ?” in the spread until the game was over and that didn’t look totally presentable! He kinda decided they would be post restriction roles, and I said k. Then I asked what all the weirdly-named destination roles were, because I just, couldn’t recall.
He said THEY were the RotS-style kidnaps (note that we originally had two kidnaps, one giving the possible items and the other being a kidnap, but that was deemed WAY too many).
Eventually the five team kidnaps were turned into Adventures. These silenced the player from the thread, made them unable to use their action, and unable to be lynched or killed while away. The “lynch ?” became post restricts..
I am somewhat hesitant to admit there were some roles I still had no idea what they did. Dr. Horrible originally had some ridiculous nonsense as his actions that made Quagsires have to write his PM because I had no clue what that mess was. Quag also had added some items to the shop and I just ????ed at why they were needed. I think they wound up messing with my originally-reasonable profit calculations, for how much people should be able to make and then spend. By flooding so many items in, I think it just looked overwhelming to me and defeated the purpose.
Now, let’s review the ‘unique’ and ever so useful mechanics that went into this game:
UNUNITED FOR THE SAKE OF MOLES
Yes LightWolf I can hear your complaints ~everybody does this~ and it sucks equally as hard every time. Revenge of the SANDS being copied by Walrein, albeit from him apparently working ‘forwards’ from the beginner he won in a stunningly-close endgame, MUDS, to actually go ‘backwards’ in my opinion, and my yelling at LW “HOW U APPROVE BAD GAME DESIGN, Y U DO DIS” despite him apparently having never looked at the game either actually prompted his thread.
Most people thought he was just furious he couldn’t unite an hour after he got all claims.
I think that, at the time this game was crafted, and Quagsires, the original RotS cohost, signed on to make EXPERTS (which was at THAT time called SANDS the THIRDS, only to be pushed back and lose the numerical title), ununited factions were much more of a novelty than they are now. The numerous months in between led to several games of the sort, and none have been particularly stunning. SANDS and MUDS were both united, and outside of the fact ENTIRE FACTIONS WERE IDLERS WHO DID NOTHING, were a lot more cohesive and less problematic.
Quagsires wanted to make it as hard as possible to find the moles, because “this is an expert.” lmao I am pretty sure the only person who would have bothered to work to root out trickier moles would have been LW, if he hadn’t been killed N1 before he could (moles that are actually moles, hooker/bg moles that people would blindly trust, moleception, etc.) I was also against giving post restricts to unite, and instead having nothing and no clue what they are or what to do). I wanted to give them post restrictions, because, PRs are always fun, and it would allow two forced moles into each circle (which is probably more than would’ve happened otherwise, since if people aren’t forced to mole they often don’t). This meant that it didn’t rely on people in the game making fakes and executing that, which previously was honestly not too successful - most people just wound up telling the truth on who they were with. Eight people would be designated moles with safeclaims and an in to the faction that meant their own screw ups didn’t immediately out them.
Lining up all the post restrictions was actually fairly tricky. It took me a while of charting them all to make sure each faction was linked properly, and it wasn’t 5 and 2 or something, and the moles were included properly. Some people wound up being surrounded by moles, like Flamestrike, who was known by the VOCALOID mole and knew the MUDS mole. LightWolf knew the MEDS mole into the SNOWS and was known by ginga, the SANDS mole into his team.
This also meant someone REALLY clever who managed to gain everyone’s PR circles couldn’t figure where the mole is in one circle and use that for every circle, because the moles were integrated at various intervals, and “the bodyguard knows the VOC mole” didn’t particularly apply.
I... don’t think this played out stunningly well. It, combined with the clone of the game this is the sequel to, got a thread posted raging about this mechanic.
And the PRs wound up being used so at least four people could suicide (Ditto died from not using the restriction placed on him, wick was silenced and posted, Spiffy was randkilled on his adventure). Which also ended the game.
I think I would have removed the PR requirement after a team was united, or at the least, not godkilled for forgetting it, and certainly not intentionally trying to off yourself by leaving it out. It was rather tempting to not godkill them and make the scrubs play it out, but, obviously they were Defeatisting waaaaaay earlier than need be, and ipl’s team had 0 chance of winning anyway, so meh, I let them, to laugh when the plan failed because the VOCALOIDS simply didn’t know, and couldn’t be told by a host, the faction WCs and rule 19 I believe, meant they had to be dead.
All in all, ununited didn’t add anything particularly smashing to the game, and in fact after MP2 was ALSO ununited, I think there was a huge “meh” factor at the games’ similar formats. That wasn’t really Sam’s fault, or ours, but I do wish he had TOLD US he wasn’t going to host until his winter break, so we could have gone in the interval. I feel like it just caused a massive inactivity and disinterest fest at the opening of the game, and allowed the VOCALOIDS to get ridiculously deep into every faction, beyond the MEDS.
I can’t hold that against the VOCALOIDS, they deployed themselves quickly and effectively to mole their factions and assembled their fakes suitably well. Spoon rushed to claim for the MUDS and had a ton of their info pretty quickly, which let them sort out the rest of the game pretty darn efficiently. It did annoy me GREATLY they went after LightWolf and billymills N0-N1, who were undeniably the biggest names in the game. This was an expert, so it was fairly disappointing to see such blatant name targeting, which they tried to write off as “we’re policy inspecting and killing inspectors.” This did actually work as an explanation for both, as they conveniently turned out to be their factions’ inspectors!
However, the general complacency of everyone else, and lax attitude, as the moles organized actions and ‘uniting’ efforts, led this game to be really painful for me to watch in the early stages. It was absolutely not playing out well - the VOCALOIDS had overpowered protection imo and I thought for sure they would never be found out by the time they got rid of LW.
Meh, if someone wants to make an ununited faction game, I mean, go ahead, but, I don’t recommend it. Like I said in the thread about it, just think up inventive WCs and objectives to add in some difficultly and flair to the game. Ununited is horrible when people are inactive, idle or complacent. I felt like some of the PRs were stupid as well in the end, and a lot of people didn’t commit to them. The ones where people incorporated them well were fun, but just tacked onto the end was meh. I think I’d do PRs again, but at some point make them “you cannot intentionally kill your entire team off by neglecting them” in the course of the game, and try to shape them so people can’t just tack a word on and be done with it.
PROFIT
A lot of this game was inspired by Strategic Influence threads, suggesting new methods to add fun elements to games, or tossing out concepts that needed to be tried. In fact, at the time, complaints of “village vs mafia is soooo overdone and boring” were rampant, however, by the time this game began, it was ununited multifaction whose novelty and intrigue had worn off, and the game itself was actually somewhat dated.
There was a shop in FE5, but the money system and the shop’s stock weren’t nearly so complex. I thought, why not, let’s see what money can do for a game!
Note to all people who want to do profit/shops/etc later: Please do, it’s pretty fun and a good mechanic! However, a. watch your item stock b. no cheap hookers c. don’t bother adding a ton of superfluous items.
The early-day fake ALLCAPS items were staple troll items, though, and I feel they were even more critical to have in the shop than the Day 5 real WC items. What’s the point of a goosechase for ALLCAPS if you don’t have infinite decoys available?!
However, nobody knew if Captain Planet was real or not to fork over the price, plus the final piece, which was the DEADS WC item, was missing. This item was also probably one of the few clues beyond kill flavor Amy Winehouse would have been in the game. More on her later. And Quagsires wasn’t even able to answer what the heck CP did. He didn’t think anyone would buy it anyway, so I am fairly certain he never fully thought it through, and when questioned about his statements, would later claim he “thought you meant the D7 lynch.”
Herp derp.
I personally did most of the profit mechanic charting. I figured out how much everyone would need to get per night to be able to pool and afford a good array of the items for sale, and have some fun bidding wars in the later days. I did not, however, either remember my solution for a faction whose numbers plummeted rapidly, or what would happen when factions only got 400 per day/night cycle as a team instead of 1000 like early game, or I had simply never thought up this scenario and how to fix it.
This meant the STARS were permanently crippled with regards to the shop, not helped by their team idling for a couple cycles straight as we hunted for a sub and tried to prod them to get back into the swing of things. Unfortunately, it wasn’t entirely fair to just add 300 every night or day for the dead team to the eventual bank because there were simply no PMs coming in, and if someone’s income was doubled, that was an immediate “oh welp you must not be the mole!” tell. So either way, with things ununited at the start, there was no good solution to the “the rich get richer” problem encountered by comparing the MEDS and STARS’ gains early on, and similar things.
Everyone started with 50 profit and, I thought gained 50, but that turned out looking really too low for how many stupid items Quag put in, so they gained 100 after that. The dual VOCALOID moles began with 100, 50 for each faction.
Gaining profit per action I think was ABSOLUTELY, COMPLETELY REASONABLE. The only problem was, some of the roles, namely those Quag designed/intended, actually.. had no role per cycle. Maybe we never communicated that to each other, that people would NEED something that sent a PM. LightWolf’s role was apparently just supposed to get a PM after every night, but I wrote it as he needed to send the PM. So this meant you had to send us a friendly PM on IRC saying “gimme money, if I had a role I’d use it” if you didn’t have an action stated in your PM, which I don’t think was too unreasonable or horrid either, we’re friendly people!
If you couldn’t PM and you did have an action, you’re a scrub loser and why this game wound up 10-5 when it was called. Idlers for MEDS/MUDS MVP.
I am fairly sad we never got to the later-day items. They got pricier and better, but that was overshadowed by how many dumb ones were in for cheap earlier. I really do regret soooo many early-game cheap items. 10 hooks the worst. I blame that on Quag because I don’t remember being so callous and loose with Shop stock.
In addition, the profit on a dead person went to their killer, until it went into the banks, and then it was protected. If someone was godkilled, it just went poof if they weren’t collecting interest yet (not that interest was a thing).
Speaking of, that sounds like an intriguing idea - a bank system where you can risk someone will rob it, or the economy will flop, etc etc, but you do get a nice chunk of interest for what you do put in the bank. Someone should try that. Money is definitely a fun element of mafia and can help add that special something to your multifaction, united game you think is otherwise “gdi everyone has seen this before.”
Final conclusion: more people should involve money in mafias! However, be sure you work out a way that even if factions get unequal numbers, their income doesn’t suffer nearly exponentially compared to someone at maximum steam. Also, don’t flood your buying options with trolls, underpriced items with overzealous quantities, and crap that throws off the game en masse. It’s better to have a few but very pricy game-impacting items, or several moderately-priced medium or low impacting items, than a ton of crap that looks like “just a hook” on paper but winds up with 10+ people hooked/kidnapped/etc IN ONE NIGHT.
The lynches also awarded profit. That was another way to gain it - but I’ll talk about the lynches next in their own section.
LYNCHES
A thread was made talking about lynches, and how in multifaction, they are kind of maybe useless?? True, there is no uninformed majority with slim pickings on how to kill otherwise. Also true, it is really useless earlygame because nobody wants to out their team, defend someone not on their team, and make an enemy particularly early.
Thus, the passive rewards! You don’t actually die, so you want to win the lynch!!
Only time billy would be happy to be rolled.
Most of the rewards were profit, but I heard complaints the monetary values were kind of lackluster for the effort to out ones members for the vote. I agree, I think in the end, 100 and 150 as rewards were just sort of.. “okay” and there wasn’t much spice to them. The BPV and LPV, I thought, were nice rewards. If you could fool enough people, or convince your allies, to vote you, bam, some kill protection.
These rewards were not items, but instead became a part of your role. So it was like it was built into your role PM.
I designed the Lynch sheet of the spread myself, so that was all me. The only touch of Quags was the revive that never happened. I admit that waiting until D5 for the first killing lynch made a lot of people bloodthirsty for a means to off someone during the day, and perhaps it should have been the D3 or D4 reward. But, I wasn’t really sure if people would have a definite enemy in site by that point, or if they’d want to wait until further on down the road.
Maybe giving 3 options, and having people include a vote on what they wanted the lynch reward to be the next day with their night action, would have been better? That way the majority get to decide what prize they want to shoot for, as they’re probably active enough to be voting as well.
Having seen what US did with the lynch, I think I might do it this way next time - D2 or D3, introduce a two part lynch. You vote for one person to be killed, and another like 2 or 3 in a certain order to get the positive rewards on the side. This allows factions to work together to two goals, and maybe even stab on one vote, but not the other, so you can stay safely neutral for longer. D1 and maybe D2 would still just have positive votes, as in a multifaction game, those early killing lynches are a bit tedious and nobody is particularly invested, unless they have a wolf to ring the neck of.
This did mean that General Spoon could stay alive and unhooked, if he SGed himself, until D5, as he was a perma BPV and Night Safeguard. But I think that was only fair to the VOCs they would have someone who could last a while (though it did make their two LPVs somewhat less useful) after they got ousted from their roosts because, come on, the moles weren’t going to hide forever.
D2 and D4 definitely had the best rewards. One faction was able to utilize that - the MEDS, who wound up winning both, thus giving kok an unremovable BPV and LW a LPV (somewhat superfluous, as he was being SGed holding a BPV item so they passed him the LPV item to keep it safe).
LOL’d at D1 lynch where people still failed. You wouldn’t even be outed as a member of any specific faction if you all participated, though it DID throw the SANDS off, because as a secret voter, Crux did not post, yet they still completed it. In retrospect, I think I would have done more with secret votes, etc, to throw people off on who their mole was.
Overall, I am fairly happy with the lynch system. I think it worked better than randlynching D1 and D2 in multifaction, and making enemies too fast/neutering a team pointlessly, but, of course there is room for improvement.
I WEAR MY SUNGLASSES AT NIGHT
This is about weather, not the 10 almost-free inspects milling about.
Weather, weather, weather. Many people talk about it. They speculate weather in a mafia could be interesting! But nobody particularly does anything about it. So, meh, we tossed it in.
It was really kind of a crappy half-effort, though, at the start. Quag wanted weather, so we had the weather-specific roles (hello I am a member of your faction if you read the OP >_o), and I put TMs into the shop to activate them. And, that was it. The concept stagnated because, probably like everyone else “how do you incorporate this?” was a big concern. You don’t want it overpowered, and you don’t want it favoring any one team, or pointlessly needless excess text because it does nothing, and since no mods were reviewing our spread, I didn’t want to have a ridiculous weather system that wasn’t proofed beyond “hey we thought this was cool.”
Pretty much the night before the game started I decided this was weak and we should toss more weather incentives in. This led to:
well w/e I can’t find the logs Quag changes nicks too many gd times
BUT, we decided to, beyond raised priority, which was what the role always was, toss in the slowed priority for a team with bad weather (even having a bad weather was added here), and duplicate someone’s role.
I would definitely have liked to think weather through better, and put in more stuff. Maybe even having “somewhat positive weather” and “somewhat negative weather” that had a lot more effects than what we saw, which really just let the MUDS spam 2 kidnaps and like 6 hooks with max priority. ~_~
The fallout of this? Weather was really underutilized. The SANDS I think tried to buy the remaining Defog TMs, so they couldn’t be used by the MEDS. Nobody really activated weather, except the MEDS to stop Sandstorm, though the SANDS didn’t use it that night. This let the MUDS just roll with it, saving their own TMs but they did have problems telling us who was using it... I actually had to have LightWolf ‘submit’ the MUDS’ action of not using their Rain Dance, because Agape had originally sent he was, then sent another PM with no mention of it, and the MUDS were all idle or “ask billy”ing so I assumed they would do what LW had told them to...
I would recommend more weather! But, definitely try to work it into the game. Here it was kind of just, tossed on top, like a frosting, and thus glossed over. It wasn’t particularly integrated or interesting. Maybe try smaller games with weather, to see how it impacts things? I dunno, but definitely hosts, do weather!! Start it from the beginning in your planning though, as a central shaft of game design, so it weaves in and out, and doesn’t look like a bad extra.
ADVENTURES
These are the kidnaps from RotS, only with less no contact, don’t tell anyone about it, and more places to go. Quag told me to make the “Death” results a lot less clear this time around, so people might actually pick them.
You can see all the choices and what they resulted in on the spread. A surprising amount of people picked the Continued Adventure choices, maybe assuming the last option would never be death?
LW was slightly disappointed his team of 5 safeguards could never be kidnapped to adventure themselves.
A few had results of +/- profit, which should have been in greater quantity of reward and in more results, some had “hooked” as a consequence, and most just gave items. I thought this was fair, as you had to pick right to get a good reward, and it kept you from dying through players targeting you, but meant you were no help to your team that day.
LW taking on Staraptor Call’s role meant that, despite his death, there was still The Well kidnap in the game. I’m not sure the SANDS ever connected one of them had actually been kidnapped by their own now-dead kidnapper’s role lol. In retrospect, this let the MEDS have two kidnaps as long as BT was alive and kidnappers were dead.The MUDS had two while Rain was up, because the RNG picked HD. Who only had one action to be duplicated anyway.
The Continued Adventures had 3 roads - one that led to the 50/50 death, one that just gave an item or nothing, and one that ended the adventure right there. The CA deaths were hilarious choices - “Go Up for Air” killing you, vs. “Trying on Dresses” and “Grind on a Mummy” not.
Spiffy was clever enough to realize IT’S A TRAP, and he picked the Mummy. He died, however, when askaninjask used his one-time rand to prove himself, and we randomized his action. Quag got 1, and I later ran it myself and also got 1. If I’d received 2 I’d have asked a mod to run it once to break the tie, because I didn’t want accusations we intentionally killed Spiffy, etc etc.
billymills also outsmarted it. It was like he had the spread, because he knew precisely what was going to happen next. By the time he got to the end, he was well aware that the wine was PROBABLY poisoned, and thus not a good thing to drink. So smart. The only way it could’ve been funnier is if trying on Civil War-era dresses led to you being suffocated from too tight of a corset and he died that way.
The only kidnap death was Spiffy - nobody picked one of the avenues of death, and even then, he didn’t, the randomizer did. He did later change to the pharaoh, but only because at that point we had randed him and were “rip spiffy” teasing him, so he got scared. We wouldn’t have taunted him if his fate hadn’t been sealed, though.
I like adventures. I think it’s somewhat more interesting than a regular kidnap, and if you factor in more profit-based rewards (maybe taxing or interest) to them in a game with money, they could prove to be big parts of the game! More people should include them, but, MAYBE not something that keeps you away for 4 consecutive cycles. Your team just might need your action.
PROBLEMS
I think that’s summed up all the unique or new things in the game, or at least mechanics that aren’t particularly common, so let’s review some stuff that didn’t go QUITE right:
- We hadn’t looked at this game in MONTHS, and when we did, there wasn’t exactly enough time to really give it a thorough once-over. However, we should have pushed its starting time out a week or two, to provide a cooldown period from MP2, while we fine-tuned things in this. Maybe after not seeing it for so long, fresh eyes would have corrected a lot more with the proper amount of time. Plus we had forgotten a lot of stuff. Meh, at least there weren’t 10 kidnappers lololol.
- Slowsires and my power going out. The combined factor of “Quag promised he’d have his PMs done and I wouldn’t have to write them” with the snow storm knocking my power out for the entirety of the day meant the game sort of awkwardly stumbled out of the gate. While I had my set of the PMs ready to deploy, he had like, half or less of his. This included billymills’ PM, which I was quite irate about, because come on, you don’t have one of the mods’ PMs done?? 8\ The N0 update also went with me on a dying cellphone, unable to do much of anything. Daenym tried to help Quag, however, somewhat problematically this was “my game” more than Quag’s and a LOT of it was in my head. Normally not a problem, because anyone who has played my games knows I almost always am there for the updates, if not the only host doing them. A fair few people missed the N0 deadline, but not enough to warrant extending it, really. Extensions always slowly erode activity. Quag would go on to paste the Scavenge Suction part of Paperblade’s Role PM into the MUDS’ first channel (#dogrock which Spoon had made), allowing billy to think Spoon was the scavenger and not Spoon, but still. He also never helped calculate results whenever I’d ask, as many of you can attest my yelling at him in channels “Quag plz go figure the results” to which he’d say “I thought they were right, blank space meant success” which was... so so wrong. Luckily by this point I’m pretty skilled at figuring results, etc. myself so his constant idling wasn’t a big deal! However, a lot of the PMs he did write were shoddily written - billy thought he had a twin b/c of the flavor, some were just plain incomplete when sent, and the format DID NOT MATCH THE ORIGINAL PM HE WROTE FOR ME TO COPY, so they weren’t uniform at all, which I think is a big “stop irl” in expert games to have such sloppy inconsistencies between PMs, as if someone looks closely enough, they could think someone wrote a bad fake when it was really just Quag being screwy. Not to rag on Quag TOO much, he was still a good cohost and an important part of this game design, but, he for sure dropped the ball at a few relevant points (billy’s first inspect result wasn’t on the spread for me to send, etc.) that I think he should have had covered.
- PROFIT became UNBALANCED when a faction lost too many people, and being ununited, there was no clean way to fix this up. While I encourage the use of money, maybe don’t put it in a game that is ununited multifaction, because one team who gets culled quickly will just plain never keep up. The STARS could barely afford their WC item at that point due to inactivity and the deaths.
- Weather just didn’t do much and wasn’t interwoven very well. I’m not sure this was any significant detriment to the gameplay, but for me as a host, I can see where it should have tied in better and been more of a feature than it was, so this is more like a “do better next time” message for future hosts to use weather, but start incorporating it from the ground up of your game design.
- Lynch rewards weren’t significant monetarily, and the killing lynch came too late. I can see both these problems. The lynch rewards for factions was, I think, best suited to adapting around “only 1 voter, you’ll have fewer voters by this point, etc.” as far as profit-earning methods go, but, the actual sums of money for the person with the most votes were somewhat chump change. Killing lynch should be earlier, or as I mentioned, a two-part lynch. I wouldn’t do MP2’s style personally because that means, as we did indeed try to do, and succeeded at! you can get someone in second or third for a good prize to be throttled into first. By the time people catch on, you will get a lot of “same person x3” to avoid this, and I would for sure make the killing lynch a different vote than the positive, and even some negative if we were to expand this, rewards.
- Inactivity. This was the biggest detriment early-game, imo. For me, it looked like “VOCALOIDS throttling everyone and successfully moling, LightWolf only other person putting in any effort” for the first couple days of the game. A lot of people slacked on their votes/PMs, and this game had more inactivity early on than I have seen in my games, I think. Which was shocking to me as this is an ‘expert’ but you guys apparently are too lazy to send PMs. I would not make an ununited multifaction game again looking at the current playerbase on Smogon and how much of a nusiance inactivity has been, but that is me personally.
- Defeatist Alliance/Suicide Pact. lmao lmao lmao this didn’t work in MP2 it wasn’t going to work right here either. The problem was, the VOCALOIDS thought they could make the MEDS/MUDS lose if their enemy factions died before they got the ITEMS, not realizing that the five named factions NEEDED THE VOCALOIDS/WOLF FACTION DEAD AS WELL LIKE IN EVERY OTHER GAME LOL. When the SANDS refused to accept General Spoon’s premise “we don’t have a reason why we should win really..” Spoon offered to suicide HIMSELF so nobody won. Also a stupid premise. We let it happen because the other factions were in a relatively bad position to fight back against the 10-person, top priority, hooks-galore M@DS, and this way the game ended with people who ‘deserved’ to win not getting haxed, aside from the SANDS who were making a valiant effort to not get boned but could not win alongside the MEDS, who I thought should get the win. Future hosts, put some kind of failsafe in your games against this ~_~
PLAYER COMMENTS
A certain user requested his thoughts be included in the postgame.
(12:31:50 pm) <~LightWolf> "Car crashes"
(12:32:24 pm) <~LightWolf> "SNOWS, SANDS, STARS and VOCALOIDS die"
(12:32:43 pm) <~LightWolf> "Police suspects a doctor"
I am not sure if this is supposed to be a haiku or not, maybe it is a weird communist satellite country format haiku because in my “200 words for rain” northwest dialect it doesn’t quite fit the syllables but, it is fairly true... the paranoid might of LightWolf, a BPV, and two LPVs made the VOCALOIDS give up the go and an hero, taking the STARS and SNOWS with them.
I would like to hear your thoughts on this game, what worked, and what didn’t! This will help future hosts as well take the variety of experimental concepts in this and shape them to better work in mafias. Also just to see where this went wrong, and right, and what concepts you’re all fans of. EXPERTS 2, though a very distant thought, will happen someday!!
THE ROLES & PLAYERS
Yeti-thoughts will be in this, Quag-thoughts will be in this, and explanation of the role (which are also Yeti-thoughts for the most part) will be in this.
THE MEDS
Lightwolf was one of the people who requested a weak role and dominated with it, even though the VOCALOIDS attempted to kill him night 1 and he survived due to the strength of billymills. He was always complained about as inactive, yet he was probably the head on the shoulders of his faction, and probably the biggest MEDS responsible for uniting and coordinating. Almost certainly the MVP of them, he was probably one of the biggest reasons they won, despite the fact that he really couldn’t do much and that the copier was clearly something that never should’ve been put into this game, though it was balanced because we expected an early death from him (and nearly got it).
It is an entirely trufax statement to say LW knew more about the game and was a superior cohost than Quagsires. I think a fair few people knew of my undying love for the only person who was actually, you know, doing anything in this game besides the VOCALOIDS at the start. LW was without a doubt his team’s most important player. I was the second one, because his team made me PM LW and tell him everything, instead of doing it themselves, like a bunch of noobs. The VOCALOIDS knew he was the only one paranoid/involved enough to not be moled, so they gave up on trying to leech anything out of the MEDS when they inspected him. He was waiting to see who his link in the chain was before coming forward and claiming if nobody else did (which Paperblade couldn’t due to moling two teams), however, kingofkongs thought he was being clever by not posting, so they were at an impasse until kok was forced to post. After that, LW got claims from his team, and through simple deduction (and tricking me into ‘confirming’ they had a bodyguard by asking if he could BG the BG with his ability herp derp u tricky snoop u!!!!) was able to get his team united before anyone else in the game, though beyond the STARS who aren’t even a factor I think they were the last to make the effort. Following the fact nobody was able to ever successfully kill this guy, though I know the VOCALOIDS tried so, so hard, before he got a BPV and TWO LPVs on himself, and gaining a very nice array of roles to absorb (herp derp this is turning problematic..), he swept.
I think he entirely deserves this win as such, since, you know, he was the only guy who didn’t get moled and spilled his team’s info. The VOCs had to inspect BT to figure out who he was with. I also had to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of his team whining he wasn’t on 24/7, and that maybe he should be subbed. The next time anyone demands someone like LW or billy get subbed I am subbing them. LW is probably the most dedicated player once he gets into a game who will work for the win regardless of his circumstances, and it showed, as while everyone else was bumming around getting bummed by the moles, the mole faction was furiously raging they couldn’t get rid of him. Compared to most everyone else in this game, LW played a lot better. First of all he wasn’t moled, second of all he didn’t kill himself or tell his team to, third he wasn’t a moron, fourth the game didn’t progress to the point where he could make a fatal error. Instead, he lucked out the combined WC power of 10 vs however many scrubs weren’t ending their misery let the game conclude. The only complaint I could really have is that he tended to not tell his team much, and while it was likely for the best he did all their actions himself and felt SO confident with his BPV and LPV and the SG on him, he wouldn’t be dying for a while, I know that when you’re a somewhat new player, or at least not a veteran of expert games, it’s nice to be included in the loop so you can see what’s going on, and LW tended to leave some of his team in the dark about what the plans were. Not that there was any spectacularly sneaky plans at this point, but still.
LW was also rather fun to talk to about not-mafia, and culturally-insensitive user katya and I enjoyed laughing at his poor European country. lol jk kinda but no really it was a pleasure. PS Wolfy take my advice it is 101% fool proof!!!!
Yeti’ll probably be kinder than me, but all I really say him do was mole the SNOWS successfully, since every SNOWS seemed to trust the moles more than the people actually in their faction! Kingofkongs was the idiot player that was supposed to balance the MEDS’ playerbase, but instead he actually played DECENTLY and was basically accepted as a MEDS and a SNOWS. The only thing he really did badly was not send in actions and failing to silence often, though he was able to godkill wick
Not sure if kingofkongs was good mole, or team he moled was really stupid. He was trusted by LW fairly quickly because a. LW figured as he was the only mole claim FOR the MEDS, he was sure to be safe, and b. he was the PR LightWolf knew. However, before they united, this led to needyfag kingofkongs whining endlessly for me to tell LW everything. Noob. kingofkongs did manage to get numerous SNOWS role PMs after Accent wrongly thought their unite effort cleaned him and a fair bit of info on their team, which allowed the MEDS to kill the SNOWS bodyguard swiftly. While kok was not a genius in this game, he did manage to get more role PMs and info than any other named-faction mole, as well as not really blowing anything for his own team, so admirable play overall, boosted when the team was united and LW could do everything... nah jk, kok was a fairly sharp player who was never a real detriment to the team except he didn’t vote the day before when they were talking about wanting him to and he’d miss the early deadline.
Aska there really isn’t that much to say about. He didn’t expect to be active, he wasn’t active, yet he won due to active partners. I really will just let Yeti fill in the rest.
askaninjask requested a team with some active players, maybe even LightWolf, who he wanted the chance to work with. This resulted in LW’s declaration “too many good people on this team” which while true, did not mean aska wasn’t really on it. He was a bit loose-lipped around Paperblade, as they had claimed the same night role and thus were both the subject of LW’s distrust, so as “MEDS” on the outskirts of the faction, aska tended to tell him a BIT more than he should. But it was never any particularly vital information, so that was a positive. aska was on, and did his part after being united, but like Quag said, he wasn’t particularly active.
Ace was probably the weakest link of all the MEDS, giving away too much information, being too trusting, basically some of the same mistakes he has made in the past. While he definitely wasn’t the worst player in this game, he definitely fought for that position yet used his hook efficiently throughout the game and was active enough to make sure they had enough PROFIT.
Ace was definitely not the BEST player, but he did try to be involved and active, so we can’t fault him for that. He did spill a fair few beans to Spiffy, but luckily, Spiffy could win with the MEDS anyway, so at least it wasn’t an enemy. He was put on the MEDS because, well quite plainly they had a very nice playerbase besides him, and I hoped he wouldn’t be entirely terrible. He followed orders once united, and definitely tried to be a good player. Keep working at not being quite so trusting and open, Ace.
Best flavor ever.
Yet another member of the MEDS that was unable to communicate much due to timezones, he was really not doing much besides kidnapping Ginganinja throughout the entire game (which is why the kidnaps need more flavor besides the same options again and again).
I think BT helped LW with planning because their shoddy European timezones allowed them to be on together. He did his part, voting when needed, and kidnapped ginga numerous times. BT never really let anything slip or leaked anything, so while there’s not much to note, he was a capable player.
THE MUDS
I (Yeti the champ) campaigned for Empoof to be in over other newfags, simply because he had never screwed up to any great degree. I thought he would be a good asset to a team in what was likely to be a low-key role, and as a mole, I didn’t think he would look particularly suspicious because, why would this new guy be mole in an expert?? So I gave Empoof mole, and he wasn’t particularly active to make use of it. He didn’t really make himself a target, but, the SANDS definitely weren’t notably trusting of him, I think maybe because DLE hinted he was a mole knowing it from Spoon, and he just wasn’t on. As a MUDS, Empoof showed up when needed to do his work, and bossed it up, but he wasn’t the brains of the operation. Still, I’m glad we let him in the game, and once again he’s proved himself more intelligent than many a mafia player by not ruining anything.
HD I never really saw play a huge role in the MUDS, although with the roles he was given there really wasn’t much that he could do. While he was eventually figured out to be real, it took awhile for people to not believe Empoof and GS’ alliances due to the active role that General Spoon took in creating their channel and organizing them. He was never able to use his ability either, and his kidnaps only ended up preventing the actions of the SANDS and others.
HD did work in the team channel they didn’t invite Quags to (lmao), and was probably second in command to billy on deciding things. He was pretty active in the chan, so no huge complaints. I think he was suspected of being not-MUDS for a bit, but, eventually it was ruled he probably was. He actually kidnapped himself via a reflective SG, and earned some $ for his team designing bills.
Agape was one of the less original rolenames, although I do regret writing his pm incorrectly in regards to the safeguard. However, it didn’t really matter, since he was able tow in anyways and no one really targeted him for some reason. Besides that he didn’t do much, although timezones were an issue in talking to others.
Agape was never particularly active, but he didn’t screw anything up either. He just sent us PMs he changed 3 or 4 times when billy decided to dance to the beat of a different drum. Not too much to say.
Apologies for the confusing post restrict, but I never did find a good way to phrase that. However, although I was quite disappointed with what Walrein was doing in regards to trolling, however, Jalmont and Walrein both played competently within the MUDS, although they did not do much in order to make sure they won.
Walrein made some bizarre restrictions while he was in the game and got hit with a few himself, then due to his chronic jerking off had to sub, and jalmont came in. Walrein asked for the funniest restriction, so we figured letting him ‘troll’ would allow him to do this. Yeah posting your MAG posts wasn’t quite there. jalmont was worried he didn’t know how to troll, but holy piss, the MEDS sexy nurse PM was actually a posting restriction wickdaggler made, but oh man, jalmont posting it the instant he subbed got the MEDS so mad and flustered. aska thought jalmont was legit with them, I’m pretty sure, and his “what is a safeguard” was pretty good vs. Walrein’s material. 10/10 trole pm. jalmont was on a fair bit and did what the MUDS needed him to, but his role honestly sucked a lot.
billymills really let GS control the first part of the game, taking more of a backseat role, but once he realized GS was not part of the MUDS, he took charge of the faction and led them pretty much to victory, trying to make sure General Spoon did not realize that he had no control over the faction while it was being run behind his back almost until the suicides during the last day.
Oh birrymirrs, even the VOCALOIDS could tell you were phoning it in at the start of this game. Perhaps you were tired of putting in so much effort last game (to come out with a narrow victory despite letting mistakes get your allies killed lololol truck the DA and their easy WC) and just decided to coast while, due to me mixing up you and Spoon’s flavor which Quag wrote incorrectly (you were the madame of the MUDS, their go-to hooker, not the wife), you let “clean MUD” Spoon lead and do everything. Then we finally got you on the right track you had some MOLE problems and you called the exterminator and took over. Since you knew LW was MEDS, or rather, he’d inspected you then stepped up to lead, you two could work together against the SANDS, and you never had any particularly strong inclination to unite with the moron SNOWS, which is probably for the best. While I’m glad you finally started doing work at the end, earlygame you were a bit of a let down.
THE SANDS
Somehow this role became Arabian instead of Indian, but I can fully blame Yeti for that. Staraptor Call was one of the SANDS that was just inactive, there really isn’t much more to say than that.
SCall requested the role: thief. lol. So he got this. I was considering giving LW or billy this role, just for the laughs of the flavor, but that meant LW got a role he didn’t want that was clearly quite vital to the team, and also shuffling LW around if we didn’t want him vs. billy. He was never notably active, and was the first SANDS killed, actually by the VOCALOIDS when they were planning on rushing the MUDS’ WC. He was around, but never a huge part of the SANDS planning when they united, so not a ton to say.
Crux was more active than I thought he would be, although it doesn’t seem like his head was truly in the game. The hooking and the late pm seemed to do a number on how much he cared, and it showed in his team completely not trusting him as well. Overall this just lead him to be able to do next to nothing besides correctly choose the option on his adventure I was half sure no one would choose.
Crux was a bit miffed his ROLE PM WAS MISSING A CHUNK thanks Quagsires good freakin JOB. It didn’t have the PR fully completed when it was sent. As such, he was never super active, and his lack of public voting due to the secret vote while the SANDS completed the lynch D1 made him very excluded from the team. Then, GK realized it was probably DLE who is the mole, and Crux has a secret vote, and he sent a solo test unite effort. Crux was fairly active once they did unite and present in their channel, so while I guess he could have done more (like almost everyone else), he certainly could have done less.
I’ll just let Yeti talk here
^ Evidence my cohost is useless. GK is the one who allowed the SANDS to unite, by finally guessing the right combo of people. He tried to put some ridic PC+1 restrictions on people, but, every time he was thwarted by being hooked/kidnapped himself if his target wasn’t. Poor GK :( You had some good ones. Making NJaggles post 30 times lololol. GK was fairly active and helped send united actions, and agreed the suicide pact was stupid, so he played fairly well I think.
(2:18:44 pm) <little_gk> man i bet crux is a secret voter
(2:18:46 pm) <little_gk> and dle is the mole
(2:18:49 pm) <little_gk> i hope it
(2:18:53 pm) <little_gk> it'd make me feel smart
(2:18:54 pm) <Yeti> well ginga's on
(2:18:57 pm) <little_gk> for guessing right
(2:18:58 pm) <little_gk> i know
(2:19:00 pm) <little_gk> he's afk
(2:19:00 pm) <Yeti> lol
(2:19:01 pm) <Yeti> oof
(2:19:36 pm) <Yeti> get the log for the billy pr
(2:19:38 pm) <little_gk> [21:13] <little_gk> i'm gonna use my pr role on mr mills
(2:19:38 pm) <little_gk> [21:13] <little_gk> he must spend four posts trying to start a billy roll and aruging for its completion
(2:19:46 pm) <Yeti> lol
(2:19:46 pm) <little_gk> throughout the day etc
While he wasn’t the most active of players, Flamestrike had the best real role for leading his faction, and it really cost his team to see him sit out on the sidelines due to wanting to winInternet RotS clone .
Flame was a bit reluctant to step up for his team, because he was leading in Internet, and didn’t like taking on too much responsibility, which is a good thing to be aware of. He sometimes idled, so his activity wasn’t top notch, but he never ruined things for the team, and he was also against suiciding. I definitely think he played better last expert, but, if he was doing work in another mafia as well, I can’t hold it against him for not being super active. He was on enough once they united.
One of the more resilient against the suicides.
^Freakin lazy cohost. ginga has been in numerous SANDS games, and is always kept alive as a SANDS-friendly man, until the last, when he finally gets beasted through some hax. One-kill tank, broken alliance system, everyone else suiciding leaving him as SANDS to face another 10-person alliance... Well, bad luck for ginga, but at least he’s a good sport. He managed to convince the VOCs to suicide first, and his team would follow, but he had no intention of doing so, because the SANDS fight to the bitter end, only to never win one of their namesake games. He was fairly active, but he did mess up in telling LW he got his PM late, as all the MEDS PMs were written by me, and if LW showed them to kok I think kok would have noticed that, and thus it made no sense why a PM SENT BY me as well would come late, but LW said he didn’t notice that had been said. Otherwise, he was pretty good at being thrown into a volcano again... maybe next time ginga :(
THE SNOWS
Probably one of the Best result flavors with the BG, although it was sadly never used, Brammi was one of the better players on the SNOWS, although considering their lack of success despite their activity that’s not saying much. In addition, he was convinced, as many of them were, that kingofkongs and DLE were real and legitimate, despite the fact that DLE had never done a role claim, a fact found out when SDS subbed in for him. He wasn’t able to do much to help his faction due to his early death, although I doubt he could’ve helped them much had he lived.
Brammi gave his role PM to kok, and was later killed because the MEDS knew their enemy’s bodyguard. He wasn’t particularly assertive in the SNOWS world, but he also wasn’t notably stupid either. I wouldn’t say he was tremendously active or a big player for the SNOWS, likely because due to his roles he was laying low, but he wasn’t much of a detriment at all.
One of my favorite roles to add to this game, I kinda regretted putting him in due to him being somewhat inactive, since he was probably the most inactive SNOWS (though that isn’t saying much), although he was eventually owning the SNOWS channel and playing a major role within the SNOWS. He was also one of the few who was never agreeing to defeatist tactics, which is commendable, though he eventually suicided after everyone else already had killed his faction.
NJig had been SNOWS in the past, so he reprised his role on the team, and was unfortunately not particularly assertive or active earlygame either. Which was the main problem of the SNOWS - they all turned out to be inactive. NJaggles had a slip up, where he was talking to Spiffy and Spiffy typo’d the faction name, and “confirmed NJig was SNOWS inspector” to Spiffy. Well, SNOWS at the least was right... NJig gotta be sneakier! By the time the team united, after he wasn’t trusted particularly much, he picked up his activity. He bought himself some sunglasses and inspected DLE, which was really a very smart play, as he was suspicious of the people claiming to be on his team, and sent everyone else in the circle the Scumbuddy PM (explained under the VOCs), which actually made kingofkongs second-guess the spread LW had and think DLE was SNOWS while NJig was VOCALOID. Nah. NJig finally gave up the go after his team had 2 of 5 left, and broke his no-posting kidnap. =\
Rare was yet another person whose getting into the game was difficult and close to not happening, especially after he was subbed out last expert (though he later showed that he was going to be active later in the game, though not paying attention). However, he was able to do decently, albeit naively, and was actually doing alright until Acklow subbed in for him.
Rare was never particularly active, but I’m not singling him out on his team by any means! He sort of just did the minimum needed, and then went on vacation and requested to be subbed. This let Acklow, who had been on the fence, come on board, and he was able to FINALLY, thankfully, unite the SNOWS, who were the first team to make an effort. And then they tried again, and again, and AGAIN, and sent like 3 different PMs a day. Yeesh. I knew a fresh pair of eyes would probably let the SNOWS unite after realizing what was up. So props to Acklow for getting that straight, though he wasn’t SUPER into the planning and etc, not like LightWolf and billy did after their teams united. He was still a great asset to the SNOWS before his death, which was also due to the MEDS.
This was a role I regret putting into the game, as it just created more unnecessary items and really was not represented on all the other factions save the MEDS with Lightwolf’s copier (although Yeti grossly misinterperted what I meant, I meant for it not to be items and only apply to him once per night, not be given out to people to be used at the next action to target them), but in the end it made no difference, as the SNOWS were too terrible apparently to live for long. Accent didn’t do that well, being one of the people the SNOWS thought of as not part of them, nor was he able to be moling STARS, but in the end they were able to fine each other.
Accent :( After your win as the main GFed contact in MP2 (LUMINOTH FOR BEST), I figured that when we shifted the SNOWS playerlist a bit to remove billy vs LW from killing each other asap, you would be their driving force and the strongman behind them. Unfortunately you never did PARTICULARLY much, and I have certainly been in your shoes where you wound up being ‘that bigname guy’ on your team only not really knowing it and thus dragging your feet a bit. You never played particularly bad, and in fact you were quite effective at moling the STARS as you got into their channel, but because the STARS all died so quickly and then went inactive, you never got the chance to make much use of that (they never trusted you anyways).
Well wickdaggler was an accidental suicide, he forgot he had been silenced for the following night and day, and posted during both. Logs confirmed he had “accepted” the silence, thus he was godkilled, leaving the SNOWS with 2 out of 5 which is really a horrible, horrible place to be, as anyone can tell you. 3 looks a lot better than 2. wick was actually a driving force behind the united SNOWS, and though he again tried to look TOO COOL FOR MAFIA he did try to send in all their actions and make sure things were cohesive. Fairly smart planning, unfortunately, the M@DS were just too mad. Not bad play once he got united, and at least he tried.
THE STARS
More obscure wow look at this musically-uncultured noob. Quag sux. Ditto didn’t particularly notice his PR was “post this or die” which was Quags’ bad wording, but, considering the lynch was “everyone vote” he honestly had NO excuse to fail his faction on that front and not include the PR. Bad play Ditto, but I know you can be better.
zorbees was never too into this game and it showed. He subbed once again, after his faction had lost 3 people (but I'm not sure that was the full reason, rather, he was just never giving it much of a go and his team absolutely did not need that with the state they wound up in), and was pretty much doomed, kind of like he subbed in MAG when it came down to kingmaker. Thus, ipl came in, to a bad situation. The MEDS had inspected him the night before (his Dickens was day only) and this allowed him to work with his buddy LW, but, it also meant he never gained much information at all, and pretty much just did what LW asked, something the VOCALOIDS rolled their eyes at. Thanks for subbing in to a bad spot ipl, unfortunately, with your buds the SANDS never knowing about you or reaching out, you had no good means of offing the MUDS before they, or the VOCs, came for you.
He requested a Dr. Who role, so we have him that and then changed the role name. Hr really was probably the most unlucky user, since not only was he unable to unite the STARS, bu he was also unable to really do anything at all.
What the heck are you talking about Quagsires? “Doctor Who” the role, was the STARS mole, but Snype asked to not be the mole, so we had to change the Doctor Who role iirc to The Sun. This one was always Canis Majoris. Look at this buffoon cohost. Anyway, Snype realized he had some massive irl obligations and time commitments, so he subbed out before he could do anything particularly notable. He made some effort to unite the STARS, claiming first, but not all of them came forward, and he died N1 at the hands of the MUDS thanks to the VOCs’ instructions, though billy tried to counterkill Paperblade lolol, after being subbed for Nachos, who never did particularly much before the N1 kill. A shame, if Snype had stayed in or Nachos hadn’t died, perhaps the STARS could have united much faster.
Yeti gave him this just for the post restriction, and in the end it was all for naught, as he died before he was really able to post much (although he was able to unite with some of the members of his faction). He was the victim of something very unfortunate in the adventure, though we can say, he chose everything leading up to it.
Oh Spiffy, if only aska hadn’t randomized. You were going to live, but, the randomizer decided it was time for you to die. You didn’t do a WHOLE lot while you were alive with your own faction, but you certainly went out to find info on the others, slipping up and tricking NJig to expose his alliance (though incorrect role) and AE to admit he was MEDS. I know you said you were going to inspect PBlade once you got back, so you could start trying to unite your team, however waiting proved to remove you from doing anything productive as you died. I was honestly kind of sad you couldn’t post more with the PR, because it was pretty amusing to have a scrawny white punk like you spouting BLACK PRIDE.
Probably one of the few people who had a leginimate reason to say that they played this game fine and were crushed and destroyed after his faction lost the first three people.
tas lost interest after his team died, but he perked up a bit when we gave him ipl to work with. Sadly, he never really got into the game, but he did start sending his actions after that. His team was destroyed early on and riddled with moles in the fray, so he just didn’t have much of a chance, up until the MUDS finally ended his suffering, and the last STAR ended the team’s.
THE VOCALOIDS
Paperblade was a good VOCALOID, and a strong addition to their team, until he decided becoming an hero was the only way this game would go ‘well’ for him. Nope. He was certainly less whiny than Spoon, and generally took things with grace, though he liked to stay in the know I think. I don’t regret giving him the role, beyond his blatant name-targeting and suicide effort. He never really got to mole, because he knew LightWolf would be as impossible to penetrate as a 15th-century princess’ chastity-belt-covered vagina, and the STARS bit the dust so quickly the team fizzled and he had nobody to talk to. He was on to plan, and talk through ideas, so his activity level was great. No complaints about Paperblade’s play for the most part, he already knows what I thought was shoddy.
Da Letter El was probably the VOCALOID with the worst luck, as any chances of his attempted uniting were thwarted with billymills deleting one of his posts (though to be frank, there were some issues with it that were making the page next to impossible to load.)
DLE was a solid asset to the VOCALOIDS, but decided to sub due to how busy he was irl. While SDS never made any mistakes, he wasn’t nearly as active as his predecessor, and was ousted from the SNOWS’ graces by Acklow fairly quickly. DLE still showed up to check in on things, an admirable man indeed. DLE moled the SNOWS a lot harder than the SANDS, and was able to troll billy quite effectively. gg.
Quality logs:
(6:05:38 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <billymills> if you are a med
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <billymills> tell me
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <billymills> !!!
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <daletterel> hello
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <daletterel> my name is
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <daletterel> dr greenthumb
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <daletterel> i'd like to tell you
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <daletterel> just where i'm from
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [20:02] <daletterel> ok you are clearly not meds have a nice day
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [20:02] <billymills> huh
(6:05:40 pm) <daletterel> [20:02] <billymills> nope i'm not med
(6:05:41 pm) <daletterel> [20:02] <billymills> but I want to find a med!
(6:05:42 pm) <daletterel> [20:02] <daletterel> ic
(6:05:43 pm) <daletterel> [20:02] <daletterel> what would you want to do with a med
(6:05:44 pm) <daletterel> [20:02] <billymills> depends how easy it is to find a med
(6:05:45 pm) <daletterel> [20:03] <daletterel> oic
(6:05:46 pm) <daletterel> [20:03] <billymills> and how decent a person they are
(6:05:47 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <billymills> are you claiming to be med
(6:05:48 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <billymills> o.o
(6:05:49 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> icncndt
(6:05:50 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> but
(6:05:54 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> my name is
(6:05:54 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> dr greenthumb
(6:05:54 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> i'd like to tell you
(6:05:54 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> just where i'm from
(6:05:54 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <billymills> honestly that is not helping me whatsoever
(6:05:56 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> HELLO
(6:05:57 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> MY NAME IS
(6:05:58 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <billymills> I do not know the reference in the slightest
(6:05:59 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> DR GREENTHUMB
(6:06:00 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> I'D LIKE TO TELL YOU
(6:06:01 pm) <daletterel> [20:05] <daletterel> JUST WHERE I'M FROM
(6:06:02 pm) <daletterel> [20:05] <billymills> oh
(6:06:03 pm) <daletterel> [20:05] <billymills> you're TREES
(6:06:04 pm) <daletterel> [20:05] <daletterel> billy is onto something
(6:06:04 pm) <daletterel> [20:05] <billymills> still lost
(6:06:06 pm) <daletterel> [20:05] <billymills> are you trying to sell me drugs
(6:06:10 pm) <daletterel> [20:05] <billymills> long distance?
(6:09:32 pm) <daletterel> [20:09] <billymills> I have no reason to believe you are meds
(6:09:32 pm) <daletterel> [20:09] <billymills> apart from some song
(6:09:33 pm) <daletterel> damn
(6:09:45 pm) <daletterel> so close
He came back for more:
(3:56:04 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> you can ask billymills for my claim spiffy
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> unless you want it
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> from me
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <Spiffy> i want it from you tbh
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> ok
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> hello
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> my name is
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> dr greenthumb
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> i'd like to tell you
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> just where i'm from
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <Spiffy> you know what
(3:56:06 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> you can just forward it to me!
(3:56:07 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> HELLO
(3:56:08 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> MY NAME IS
(3:56:09 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> DR GREENTHUMB
(3:56:10 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> OK
(3:56:11 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> TELL ME
(3:56:12 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> I'D LIKE TO TELL YOU
(3:56:13 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> JUST WHERE I'M FROM
(3:56:14 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> IM LISTENING
(3:56:15 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> YOU MAY CONTINUE
(3:56:16 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> HELLO
(3:56:16 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> MY NAME IS
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> DR GREENTHUMB
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> STOP
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> STOP
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> STOP
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> STOP
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> STOP
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> I'D LIKE TO TELL YOU
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> JUST WHERE I'M FROM
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:55] <daletterel> I am from the Bahamas.
(3:56:35 pm) <daletterel> [17:55] * Disconnected
10/10.
Spoon was quite effective and efficient as a mole, he claimed quickly and got the MUDS lined up, then managed to put off adding them to spreads and uniting for a while until we prodded some of them to take notice. He WAS aided by me mixing up his and billy’s roles, which made him think the MUDS leader’s daughter was a legitimate role as opposed to a safeclaim. However, GS tried to talk to his ally factions’ leaders, mostly to arrange things to his benefit, although LW was told the MUDS had figured out he was a mole. Spoon himself didn’t realize that for quite a while, as the MUDS let him stay in #dogrock while they planned in #dogrock2. Then he got the bright idea to rush a faction’s WC without reading Rule 19 carefully enough, and this led to him sending us numerous bad plan PMs, and also some whiny crap about wanting a good sub for DLE, or ELSE. In the end, his metagaming theorymon schemes led to him suiciding when he was being lynched, after the MEDS stole his LPV (he had no reason to pass it, his team had LPVs, he was the only one vulnerable at day), taking ipl, the SNOWS, and even his own team out with him. Oh Spoon, you overthought it.
AWARDS
Best SANDS: Kind of a tie between GoldenKnight and ginga imo (I lean towards ginga, but both did well for their situation)
Best MUDS: billymills
Best STARS: (Do we really need to give this out?)
Best VOCALOIDS: General Spoon
Best SNOWS: Acklow (if only because wick accidentally suicided and Acklow got the uniting straightened out)
Best MEDS: LightWolf
Best Luck: billymills saving himself and LW from dying N1
Worst Luck: Spiffy, who sux.
Best Play: M@DS kidnapping an entire faction and hooking the rest of the game
Worst Play: the seppuku the last day
Best Mole:
Well the best fakeclaim was Da Letter El, but you can CALL HIM DR GREENTHUMB
The most efficient and effective was General Spoon
The luckiest was kingofkongs because Accent had a derp
Worst Mole (this is a Quag award): kingofkongs. No explanation needed. Just look above.
Worst Player (this is also a Quag award): Ditto. All he had to do was post he was wanting to unite his own faction...And he didn’t. On the day when everyone needed to vote. @.@
Best Spread: The most complete/accurate the soonest is the VOCALOIDS:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhpIpUc0mrHgdFZDbjlzV3dyZ08xR25mX0w5aXhRa0E#gid=0
But it was ugly as sin, so the prettiest is the MEDS since LW is fussy and anal as heck about his spreads (like I care about prettiest, VOCALOIDS moled so well in the beginnigng that they had nearly everything by the first night) (well you like anal sex with monkeys too so whatever uglycolorsires!!!):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiIpd8Ll7g21dEc1RlBhZV9yamdZNWh4LWZ0ZWN0SWc#gid=0
Worst Spread:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aknab5xiIuLRdHZnYnZLSHIzcXhVOVZLOXRFX2kzcGc#gid=0
Best (Winning) Faction: The MEDS, since they were alive at the end, got info via their mole, weren't moled themselves, and were united first
Best Losing Faction: The SANDS, who had the balls to not suicide and try to tough it out. Sorry VOCALOIDS, you guys played well up until you decided trying to convince 4 teams to off themselves, including yourself, was a good idea
Besthost lazy scrub who bums himself with a carrot: Quagsires (loling so hard at failed effort to not suck) (if this isn’t sarcasm I don’t know what is)
MVP: Do we really need to tell you it’s LightWolf? One of the VOCs would probably be a close second had they not decided to kill themselves for being (BAN ME PLEASE)s
That wraps up SANDSEMONIUM! Thanks to everyone who played and subbed in - sorry it wasn't QUITE perfect and it ended sooner than RotS due to the same exact thing >_o
Thanks to Quagsires for cohosting even if you did get yelled at a lot by me and everyone else, this game wouldn't have been designed without you or been executed, but you gotta remember to not get lazy when hosting!!
My next project is Red Panda Mafia with Empoof, and then AQUANAfia, both standards. EXPERTS 2 is a loooooong way off, but I do have a spread if anyone wants to sign on to cohost! I'll announce the AQUA cohost soon enough. I also have a small expert NOC in the works, so if anyone wants to be involved with not-multifaction, but a very, very complex game with many twists and turns, please contact me about that, it's not a SANDS game and will be quite different in flavor from them, and will also be my next expert, but no ETA on that game.
I think Quag has a standard or two in the works.. p sure he's on expert-hosting hiatus, and hopefully he does serious work in his next standard!
Thanks everyone for playing and reading and to those who didn't godkill themselves, u da best.
What can I say? This game ended like 10 days after a year since the original SANDS masterpiece of shrewd trollery and utter disjointed confusion took its final bow and ginganinja, for the first time, was gunned down as the last of his faction.
That game was one of the last Gmax approved, so LightWolf and billymills weren’t even mods when SANDS the original began its infamous run of “what the <snip> is even going on in this stupid game?” Kind of odd to think there were people in SANDSEMONIUM who have never played a game during a time when the Circus mods WEREN’T LW and billy. It is arguable SANDS was the best game in its line - at least, if you were on the Really Bad Idling Problems and Rageguy Variants, you might say it was, having enjoyed the endgame.
It had neutral problems galore, and I don’t think anyone would have known how to balance out the neutral WCs as they were. 10 neutrals LOL. But SANDS the classic was a good game overall, however, it blatantly needed work. Some neutrals were almost handed wins. Some were nearly impossible to complete as it turned out, but I’m not sure that could have been foreseen. (In addition, the largest faction being three people really hurt activity, since if anyone was randed it was pretty much gg.) wtf are you talking about Quag SANDS was a highly-active game and had all PMs in usually, you are a noob, it hurt a faction’s shot at winning but it never really harmed activity. Lazy people will always be lazy.
Then we hit RotS, which was of course one of the dumbest games ever. You can all thank billymills for not catching the alliance system had a fair few fatal errors to reasonability’s sake, and LightWolf for telling me not to update early with all actions but like 1 or 2 of the ally PMs and thus jewing the two teams. (emphasizing, the alliance system was Yeti’s idea and should never be used in multifaction or most standard formats outside of ffa). MUDS was a more balanced, but simplistic version, of RotS, with a equally problematic wolf system. However, I still hated the neutrals and felt they had, yet again, no chance (although in walrein’s copy clone many came close and would’ve won had people talked more). MUDS also duped LightWolf into thinking it was a standard for a fair bit of its development stages, despite the almost identical roles on factions and wolves.
Fast forward to SANDSEMONIUM, which was approved months and months ago by me asking Mekkah if Quag and I stood a shot at hosting an expert, and him saying “yeah if there’s nobody else I’m game.” I am pretty sure the lower two mods had no idea the game was approved and in existence for quite a while and perhaps would have halted production if they were aware.
However, Quag had a good sub-cohosting record (and decent hosting record), and though every game my cohosts got worse, I guess I’d simply been around these parts for long enough I was ruled fit for the task.
Well one of us was fit for the task and the other was a
UncleSam had “why is this theme still being used” Metroid Expert also fairly ready to deploy, and he asked us if he could go first in hosting experts at a point where we were the only two really on the list, after LN’s big ended. Then he vanished for months but we waited it out, thinking he would show up with the game ready, and we didn’t want to be imposing on him if he did come on to start it! Also my classes were just very long into the afternoon so I wasn’t in a particularly receptive position to have my usual earlier deadlines.
This meant that the completed SANDSEMONIUM spreadsheet, minus Role PMs and a few details, sat for probably half a year without much work. I think the “last updated by” date was over 200 days when we finally sat to work finalizing it for deployment (a lot happened around the middle/end of August)
I admit, this was highly unfortunate. Though we both HAVE the logs of the original conversations, the effort to sort through them and see what was intended by certain roles and words was simply put, too great (Quagsires’ll put what he has at the end).
The Post Restrictors were originally Kidnappers, then Yeti looked at the sheet and said “dude kidnaps are so annoying though, everyone hated No-Contact kidnaps in RotS, delete these (they never were, but we both agreed NOC kidnaps were bad) and, since we had wanted more to be centered around the lynch, we put spaces to sit as “lynch ?” in the spread until the game was over and that didn’t look totally presentable! He kinda decided they would be post restriction roles, and I said k. Then I asked what all the weirdly-named destination roles were, because I just, couldn’t recall.
He said THEY were the RotS-style kidnaps (note that we originally had two kidnaps, one giving the possible items and the other being a kidnap, but that was deemed WAY too many).
Eventually the five team kidnaps were turned into Adventures. These silenced the player from the thread, made them unable to use their action, and unable to be lynched or killed while away. The “lynch ?” became post restricts..
I am somewhat hesitant to admit there were some roles I still had no idea what they did. Dr. Horrible originally had some ridiculous nonsense as his actions that made Quagsires have to write his PM because I had no clue what that mess was. Quag also had added some items to the shop and I just ????ed at why they were needed. I think they wound up messing with my originally-reasonable profit calculations, for how much people should be able to make and then spend. By flooding so many items in, I think it just looked overwhelming to me and defeated the purpose.
Now, let’s review the ‘unique’ and ever so useful mechanics that went into this game:
UNUNITED FOR THE SAKE OF MOLES
Yes LightWolf I can hear your complaints ~everybody does this~ and it sucks equally as hard every time. Revenge of the SANDS being copied by Walrein, albeit from him apparently working ‘forwards’ from the beginner he won in a stunningly-close endgame, MUDS, to actually go ‘backwards’ in my opinion, and my yelling at LW “HOW U APPROVE BAD GAME DESIGN, Y U DO DIS” despite him apparently having never looked at the game either actually prompted his thread.
Most people thought he was just furious he couldn’t unite an hour after he got all claims.
I think that, at the time this game was crafted, and Quagsires, the original RotS cohost, signed on to make EXPERTS (which was at THAT time called SANDS the THIRDS, only to be pushed back and lose the numerical title), ununited factions were much more of a novelty than they are now. The numerous months in between led to several games of the sort, and none have been particularly stunning. SANDS and MUDS were both united, and outside of the fact ENTIRE FACTIONS WERE IDLERS WHO DID NOTHING, were a lot more cohesive and less problematic.
Quagsires wanted to make it as hard as possible to find the moles, because “this is an expert.” lmao I am pretty sure the only person who would have bothered to work to root out trickier moles would have been LW, if he hadn’t been killed N1 before he could (moles that are actually moles, hooker/bg moles that people would blindly trust, moleception, etc.) I was also against giving post restricts to unite, and instead having nothing and no clue what they are or what to do). I wanted to give them post restrictions, because, PRs are always fun, and it would allow two forced moles into each circle (which is probably more than would’ve happened otherwise, since if people aren’t forced to mole they often don’t). This meant that it didn’t rely on people in the game making fakes and executing that, which previously was honestly not too successful - most people just wound up telling the truth on who they were with. Eight people would be designated moles with safeclaims and an in to the faction that meant their own screw ups didn’t immediately out them.
Lining up all the post restrictions was actually fairly tricky. It took me a while of charting them all to make sure each faction was linked properly, and it wasn’t 5 and 2 or something, and the moles were included properly. Some people wound up being surrounded by moles, like Flamestrike, who was known by the VOCALOID mole and knew the MUDS mole. LightWolf knew the MEDS mole into the SNOWS and was known by ginga, the SANDS mole into his team.
This also meant someone REALLY clever who managed to gain everyone’s PR circles couldn’t figure where the mole is in one circle and use that for every circle, because the moles were integrated at various intervals, and “the bodyguard knows the VOC mole” didn’t particularly apply.
I... don’t think this played out stunningly well. It, combined with the clone of the game this is the sequel to, got a thread posted raging about this mechanic.
And the PRs wound up being used so at least four people could suicide (Ditto died from not using the restriction placed on him, wick was silenced and posted, Spiffy was randkilled on his adventure). Which also ended the game.
I think I would have removed the PR requirement after a team was united, or at the least, not godkilled for forgetting it, and certainly not intentionally trying to off yourself by leaving it out. It was rather tempting to not godkill them and make the scrubs play it out, but, obviously they were Defeatisting waaaaaay earlier than need be, and ipl’s team had 0 chance of winning anyway, so meh, I let them, to laugh when the plan failed because the VOCALOIDS simply didn’t know, and couldn’t be told by a host, the faction WCs and rule 19 I believe, meant they had to be dead.
All in all, ununited didn’t add anything particularly smashing to the game, and in fact after MP2 was ALSO ununited, I think there was a huge “meh” factor at the games’ similar formats. That wasn’t really Sam’s fault, or ours, but I do wish he had TOLD US he wasn’t going to host until his winter break, so we could have gone in the interval. I feel like it just caused a massive inactivity and disinterest fest at the opening of the game, and allowed the VOCALOIDS to get ridiculously deep into every faction, beyond the MEDS.
I can’t hold that against the VOCALOIDS, they deployed themselves quickly and effectively to mole their factions and assembled their fakes suitably well. Spoon rushed to claim for the MUDS and had a ton of their info pretty quickly, which let them sort out the rest of the game pretty darn efficiently. It did annoy me GREATLY they went after LightWolf and billymills N0-N1, who were undeniably the biggest names in the game. This was an expert, so it was fairly disappointing to see such blatant name targeting, which they tried to write off as “we’re policy inspecting and killing inspectors.” This did actually work as an explanation for both, as they conveniently turned out to be their factions’ inspectors!
However, the general complacency of everyone else, and lax attitude, as the moles organized actions and ‘uniting’ efforts, led this game to be really painful for me to watch in the early stages. It was absolutely not playing out well - the VOCALOIDS had overpowered protection imo and I thought for sure they would never be found out by the time they got rid of LW.
Meh, if someone wants to make an ununited faction game, I mean, go ahead, but, I don’t recommend it. Like I said in the thread about it, just think up inventive WCs and objectives to add in some difficultly and flair to the game. Ununited is horrible when people are inactive, idle or complacent. I felt like some of the PRs were stupid as well in the end, and a lot of people didn’t commit to them. The ones where people incorporated them well were fun, but just tacked onto the end was meh. I think I’d do PRs again, but at some point make them “you cannot intentionally kill your entire team off by neglecting them” in the course of the game, and try to shape them so people can’t just tack a word on and be done with it.
PROFIT
A lot of this game was inspired by Strategic Influence threads, suggesting new methods to add fun elements to games, or tossing out concepts that needed to be tried. In fact, at the time, complaints of “village vs mafia is soooo overdone and boring” were rampant, however, by the time this game began, it was ununited multifaction whose novelty and intrigue had worn off, and the game itself was actually somewhat dated.
There was a shop in FE5, but the money system and the shop’s stock weren’t nearly so complex. I thought, why not, let’s see what money can do for a game!
Note to all people who want to do profit/shops/etc later: Please do, it’s pretty fun and a good mechanic! However, a. watch your item stock b. no cheap hookers c. don’t bother adding a ton of superfluous items.
The early-day fake ALLCAPS items were staple troll items, though, and I feel they were even more critical to have in the shop than the Day 5 real WC items. What’s the point of a goosechase for ALLCAPS if you don’t have infinite decoys available?!
However, nobody knew if Captain Planet was real or not to fork over the price, plus the final piece, which was the DEADS WC item, was missing. This item was also probably one of the few clues beyond kill flavor Amy Winehouse would have been in the game. More on her later. And Quagsires wasn’t even able to answer what the heck CP did. He didn’t think anyone would buy it anyway, so I am fairly certain he never fully thought it through, and when questioned about his statements, would later claim he “thought you meant the D7 lynch.”
Herp derp.
I personally did most of the profit mechanic charting. I figured out how much everyone would need to get per night to be able to pool and afford a good array of the items for sale, and have some fun bidding wars in the later days. I did not, however, either remember my solution for a faction whose numbers plummeted rapidly, or what would happen when factions only got 400 per day/night cycle as a team instead of 1000 like early game, or I had simply never thought up this scenario and how to fix it.
This meant the STARS were permanently crippled with regards to the shop, not helped by their team idling for a couple cycles straight as we hunted for a sub and tried to prod them to get back into the swing of things. Unfortunately, it wasn’t entirely fair to just add 300 every night or day for the dead team to the eventual bank because there were simply no PMs coming in, and if someone’s income was doubled, that was an immediate “oh welp you must not be the mole!” tell. So either way, with things ununited at the start, there was no good solution to the “the rich get richer” problem encountered by comparing the MEDS and STARS’ gains early on, and similar things.
Everyone started with 50 profit and, I thought gained 50, but that turned out looking really too low for how many stupid items Quag put in, so they gained 100 after that. The dual VOCALOID moles began with 100, 50 for each faction.
Gaining profit per action I think was ABSOLUTELY, COMPLETELY REASONABLE. The only problem was, some of the roles, namely those Quag designed/intended, actually.. had no role per cycle. Maybe we never communicated that to each other, that people would NEED something that sent a PM. LightWolf’s role was apparently just supposed to get a PM after every night, but I wrote it as he needed to send the PM. So this meant you had to send us a friendly PM on IRC saying “gimme money, if I had a role I’d use it” if you didn’t have an action stated in your PM, which I don’t think was too unreasonable or horrid either, we’re friendly people!
If you couldn’t PM and you did have an action, you’re a scrub loser and why this game wound up 10-5 when it was called. Idlers for MEDS/MUDS MVP.
I am fairly sad we never got to the later-day items. They got pricier and better, but that was overshadowed by how many dumb ones were in for cheap earlier. I really do regret soooo many early-game cheap items. 10 hooks the worst. I blame that on Quag because I don’t remember being so callous and loose with Shop stock.
In addition, the profit on a dead person went to their killer, until it went into the banks, and then it was protected. If someone was godkilled, it just went poof if they weren’t collecting interest yet (not that interest was a thing).
Speaking of, that sounds like an intriguing idea - a bank system where you can risk someone will rob it, or the economy will flop, etc etc, but you do get a nice chunk of interest for what you do put in the bank. Someone should try that. Money is definitely a fun element of mafia and can help add that special something to your multifaction, united game you think is otherwise “gdi everyone has seen this before.”
Final conclusion: more people should involve money in mafias! However, be sure you work out a way that even if factions get unequal numbers, their income doesn’t suffer nearly exponentially compared to someone at maximum steam. Also, don’t flood your buying options with trolls, underpriced items with overzealous quantities, and crap that throws off the game en masse. It’s better to have a few but very pricy game-impacting items, or several moderately-priced medium or low impacting items, than a ton of crap that looks like “just a hook” on paper but winds up with 10+ people hooked/kidnapped/etc IN ONE NIGHT.
The lynches also awarded profit. That was another way to gain it - but I’ll talk about the lynches next in their own section.
LYNCHES
A thread was made talking about lynches, and how in multifaction, they are kind of maybe useless?? True, there is no uninformed majority with slim pickings on how to kill otherwise. Also true, it is really useless earlygame because nobody wants to out their team, defend someone not on their team, and make an enemy particularly early.
Thus, the passive rewards! You don’t actually die, so you want to win the lynch!!
Only time billy would be happy to be rolled.
Most of the rewards were profit, but I heard complaints the monetary values were kind of lackluster for the effort to out ones members for the vote. I agree, I think in the end, 100 and 150 as rewards were just sort of.. “okay” and there wasn’t much spice to them. The BPV and LPV, I thought, were nice rewards. If you could fool enough people, or convince your allies, to vote you, bam, some kill protection.
These rewards were not items, but instead became a part of your role. So it was like it was built into your role PM.
I designed the Lynch sheet of the spread myself, so that was all me. The only touch of Quags was the revive that never happened. I admit that waiting until D5 for the first killing lynch made a lot of people bloodthirsty for a means to off someone during the day, and perhaps it should have been the D3 or D4 reward. But, I wasn’t really sure if people would have a definite enemy in site by that point, or if they’d want to wait until further on down the road.
Maybe giving 3 options, and having people include a vote on what they wanted the lynch reward to be the next day with their night action, would have been better? That way the majority get to decide what prize they want to shoot for, as they’re probably active enough to be voting as well.
Having seen what US did with the lynch, I think I might do it this way next time - D2 or D3, introduce a two part lynch. You vote for one person to be killed, and another like 2 or 3 in a certain order to get the positive rewards on the side. This allows factions to work together to two goals, and maybe even stab on one vote, but not the other, so you can stay safely neutral for longer. D1 and maybe D2 would still just have positive votes, as in a multifaction game, those early killing lynches are a bit tedious and nobody is particularly invested, unless they have a wolf to ring the neck of.
This did mean that General Spoon could stay alive and unhooked, if he SGed himself, until D5, as he was a perma BPV and Night Safeguard. But I think that was only fair to the VOCs they would have someone who could last a while (though it did make their two LPVs somewhat less useful) after they got ousted from their roosts because, come on, the moles weren’t going to hide forever.
D2 and D4 definitely had the best rewards. One faction was able to utilize that - the MEDS, who wound up winning both, thus giving kok an unremovable BPV and LW a LPV (somewhat superfluous, as he was being SGed holding a BPV item so they passed him the LPV item to keep it safe).
LOL’d at D1 lynch where people still failed. You wouldn’t even be outed as a member of any specific faction if you all participated, though it DID throw the SANDS off, because as a secret voter, Crux did not post, yet they still completed it. In retrospect, I think I would have done more with secret votes, etc, to throw people off on who their mole was.
Overall, I am fairly happy with the lynch system. I think it worked better than randlynching D1 and D2 in multifaction, and making enemies too fast/neutering a team pointlessly, but, of course there is room for improvement.
I WEAR MY SUNGLASSES AT NIGHT
This is about weather, not the 10 almost-free inspects milling about.
Weather, weather, weather. Many people talk about it. They speculate weather in a mafia could be interesting! But nobody particularly does anything about it. So, meh, we tossed it in.
It was really kind of a crappy half-effort, though, at the start. Quag wanted weather, so we had the weather-specific roles (hello I am a member of your faction if you read the OP >_o), and I put TMs into the shop to activate them. And, that was it. The concept stagnated because, probably like everyone else “how do you incorporate this?” was a big concern. You don’t want it overpowered, and you don’t want it favoring any one team, or pointlessly needless excess text because it does nothing, and since no mods were reviewing our spread, I didn’t want to have a ridiculous weather system that wasn’t proofed beyond “hey we thought this was cool.”
Pretty much the night before the game started I decided this was weak and we should toss more weather incentives in. This led to:
well w/e I can’t find the logs Quag changes nicks too many gd times
BUT, we decided to, beyond raised priority, which was what the role always was, toss in the slowed priority for a team with bad weather (even having a bad weather was added here), and duplicate someone’s role.
I would definitely have liked to think weather through better, and put in more stuff. Maybe even having “somewhat positive weather” and “somewhat negative weather” that had a lot more effects than what we saw, which really just let the MUDS spam 2 kidnaps and like 6 hooks with max priority. ~_~
The fallout of this? Weather was really underutilized. The SANDS I think tried to buy the remaining Defog TMs, so they couldn’t be used by the MEDS. Nobody really activated weather, except the MEDS to stop Sandstorm, though the SANDS didn’t use it that night. This let the MUDS just roll with it, saving their own TMs but they did have problems telling us who was using it... I actually had to have LightWolf ‘submit’ the MUDS’ action of not using their Rain Dance, because Agape had originally sent he was, then sent another PM with no mention of it, and the MUDS were all idle or “ask billy”ing so I assumed they would do what LW had told them to...
I would recommend more weather! But, definitely try to work it into the game. Here it was kind of just, tossed on top, like a frosting, and thus glossed over. It wasn’t particularly integrated or interesting. Maybe try smaller games with weather, to see how it impacts things? I dunno, but definitely hosts, do weather!! Start it from the beginning in your planning though, as a central shaft of game design, so it weaves in and out, and doesn’t look like a bad extra.
ADVENTURES
These are the kidnaps from RotS, only with less no contact, don’t tell anyone about it, and more places to go. Quag told me to make the “Death” results a lot less clear this time around, so people might actually pick them.
You can see all the choices and what they resulted in on the spread. A surprising amount of people picked the Continued Adventure choices, maybe assuming the last option would never be death?
LW was slightly disappointed his team of 5 safeguards could never be kidnapped to adventure themselves.
A few had results of +/- profit, which should have been in greater quantity of reward and in more results, some had “hooked” as a consequence, and most just gave items. I thought this was fair, as you had to pick right to get a good reward, and it kept you from dying through players targeting you, but meant you were no help to your team that day.
LW taking on Staraptor Call’s role meant that, despite his death, there was still The Well kidnap in the game. I’m not sure the SANDS ever connected one of them had actually been kidnapped by their own now-dead kidnapper’s role lol. In retrospect, this let the MEDS have two kidnaps as long as BT was alive and kidnappers were dead.The MUDS had two while Rain was up, because the RNG picked HD. Who only had one action to be duplicated anyway.
The Continued Adventures had 3 roads - one that led to the 50/50 death, one that just gave an item or nothing, and one that ended the adventure right there. The CA deaths were hilarious choices - “Go Up for Air” killing you, vs. “Trying on Dresses” and “Grind on a Mummy” not.
Spiffy was clever enough to realize IT’S A TRAP, and he picked the Mummy. He died, however, when askaninjask used his one-time rand to prove himself, and we randomized his action. Quag got 1, and I later ran it myself and also got 1. If I’d received 2 I’d have asked a mod to run it once to break the tie, because I didn’t want accusations we intentionally killed Spiffy, etc etc.
billymills also outsmarted it. It was like he had the spread, because he knew precisely what was going to happen next. By the time he got to the end, he was well aware that the wine was PROBABLY poisoned, and thus not a good thing to drink. So smart. The only way it could’ve been funnier is if trying on Civil War-era dresses led to you being suffocated from too tight of a corset and he died that way.
The only kidnap death was Spiffy - nobody picked one of the avenues of death, and even then, he didn’t, the randomizer did. He did later change to the pharaoh, but only because at that point we had randed him and were “rip spiffy” teasing him, so he got scared. We wouldn’t have taunted him if his fate hadn’t been sealed, though.
I like adventures. I think it’s somewhat more interesting than a regular kidnap, and if you factor in more profit-based rewards (maybe taxing or interest) to them in a game with money, they could prove to be big parts of the game! More people should include them, but, MAYBE not something that keeps you away for 4 consecutive cycles. Your team just might need your action.
PROBLEMS
I think that’s summed up all the unique or new things in the game, or at least mechanics that aren’t particularly common, so let’s review some stuff that didn’t go QUITE right:
- We hadn’t looked at this game in MONTHS, and when we did, there wasn’t exactly enough time to really give it a thorough once-over. However, we should have pushed its starting time out a week or two, to provide a cooldown period from MP2, while we fine-tuned things in this. Maybe after not seeing it for so long, fresh eyes would have corrected a lot more with the proper amount of time. Plus we had forgotten a lot of stuff. Meh, at least there weren’t 10 kidnappers lololol.
- Slowsires and my power going out. The combined factor of “Quag promised he’d have his PMs done and I wouldn’t have to write them” with the snow storm knocking my power out for the entirety of the day meant the game sort of awkwardly stumbled out of the gate. While I had my set of the PMs ready to deploy, he had like, half or less of his. This included billymills’ PM, which I was quite irate about, because come on, you don’t have one of the mods’ PMs done?? 8\ The N0 update also went with me on a dying cellphone, unable to do much of anything. Daenym tried to help Quag, however, somewhat problematically this was “my game” more than Quag’s and a LOT of it was in my head. Normally not a problem, because anyone who has played my games knows I almost always am there for the updates, if not the only host doing them. A fair few people missed the N0 deadline, but not enough to warrant extending it, really. Extensions always slowly erode activity. Quag would go on to paste the Scavenge Suction part of Paperblade’s Role PM into the MUDS’ first channel (#dogrock which Spoon had made), allowing billy to think Spoon was the scavenger and not Spoon, but still. He also never helped calculate results whenever I’d ask, as many of you can attest my yelling at him in channels “Quag plz go figure the results” to which he’d say “I thought they were right, blank space meant success” which was... so so wrong. Luckily by this point I’m pretty skilled at figuring results, etc. myself so his constant idling wasn’t a big deal! However, a lot of the PMs he did write were shoddily written - billy thought he had a twin b/c of the flavor, some were just plain incomplete when sent, and the format DID NOT MATCH THE ORIGINAL PM HE WROTE FOR ME TO COPY, so they weren’t uniform at all, which I think is a big “stop irl” in expert games to have such sloppy inconsistencies between PMs, as if someone looks closely enough, they could think someone wrote a bad fake when it was really just Quag being screwy. Not to rag on Quag TOO much, he was still a good cohost and an important part of this game design, but, he for sure dropped the ball at a few relevant points (billy’s first inspect result wasn’t on the spread for me to send, etc.) that I think he should have had covered.
- PROFIT became UNBALANCED when a faction lost too many people, and being ununited, there was no clean way to fix this up. While I encourage the use of money, maybe don’t put it in a game that is ununited multifaction, because one team who gets culled quickly will just plain never keep up. The STARS could barely afford their WC item at that point due to inactivity and the deaths.
- Weather just didn’t do much and wasn’t interwoven very well. I’m not sure this was any significant detriment to the gameplay, but for me as a host, I can see where it should have tied in better and been more of a feature than it was, so this is more like a “do better next time” message for future hosts to use weather, but start incorporating it from the ground up of your game design.
- Lynch rewards weren’t significant monetarily, and the killing lynch came too late. I can see both these problems. The lynch rewards for factions was, I think, best suited to adapting around “only 1 voter, you’ll have fewer voters by this point, etc.” as far as profit-earning methods go, but, the actual sums of money for the person with the most votes were somewhat chump change. Killing lynch should be earlier, or as I mentioned, a two-part lynch. I wouldn’t do MP2’s style personally because that means, as we did indeed try to do, and succeeded at! you can get someone in second or third for a good prize to be throttled into first. By the time people catch on, you will get a lot of “same person x3” to avoid this, and I would for sure make the killing lynch a different vote than the positive, and even some negative if we were to expand this, rewards.
- Inactivity. This was the biggest detriment early-game, imo. For me, it looked like “VOCALOIDS throttling everyone and successfully moling, LightWolf only other person putting in any effort” for the first couple days of the game. A lot of people slacked on their votes/PMs, and this game had more inactivity early on than I have seen in my games, I think. Which was shocking to me as this is an ‘expert’ but you guys apparently are too lazy to send PMs. I would not make an ununited multifaction game again looking at the current playerbase on Smogon and how much of a nusiance inactivity has been, but that is me personally.
- Defeatist Alliance/Suicide Pact. lmao lmao lmao this didn’t work in MP2 it wasn’t going to work right here either. The problem was, the VOCALOIDS thought they could make the MEDS/MUDS lose if their enemy factions died before they got the ITEMS, not realizing that the five named factions NEEDED THE VOCALOIDS/WOLF FACTION DEAD AS WELL LIKE IN EVERY OTHER GAME LOL. When the SANDS refused to accept General Spoon’s premise “we don’t have a reason why we should win really..” Spoon offered to suicide HIMSELF so nobody won. Also a stupid premise. We let it happen because the other factions were in a relatively bad position to fight back against the 10-person, top priority, hooks-galore M@DS, and this way the game ended with people who ‘deserved’ to win not getting haxed, aside from the SANDS who were making a valiant effort to not get boned but could not win alongside the MEDS, who I thought should get the win. Future hosts, put some kind of failsafe in your games against this ~_~
PLAYER COMMENTS
A certain user requested his thoughts be included in the postgame.
(12:31:50 pm) <~LightWolf> "Car crashes"
(12:32:24 pm) <~LightWolf> "SNOWS, SANDS, STARS and VOCALOIDS die"
(12:32:43 pm) <~LightWolf> "Police suspects a doctor"
I am not sure if this is supposed to be a haiku or not, maybe it is a weird communist satellite country format haiku because in my “200 words for rain” northwest dialect it doesn’t quite fit the syllables but, it is fairly true... the paranoid might of LightWolf, a BPV, and two LPVs made the VOCALOIDS give up the go and an hero, taking the STARS and SNOWS with them.
I would like to hear your thoughts on this game, what worked, and what didn’t! This will help future hosts as well take the variety of experimental concepts in this and shape them to better work in mafias. Also just to see where this went wrong, and right, and what concepts you’re all fans of. EXPERTS 2, though a very distant thought, will happen someday!!
THE ROLES & PLAYERS
Yeti-thoughts will be in this, Quag-thoughts will be in this, and explanation of the role (which are also Yeti-thoughts for the most part) will be in this.
THE MEDS
This role was the only night inspector in the game, which allowed it to conveniently evade the Dickens role. It was also the only random inspector. I think you can blame Quag for this. It also turned out that letting him take everyone else’s abilities after they died wasn’t entirely intelligent as it meant his entire team could be protected just about, between the BPV lynch and item, BT’s bg and LW absorbing a bg. This was debatably a broken role/bad idea, but because the inspect was random and fairly useless for gathering info, I think it balanced itself well. The randomizer was also kind enough to let him inspect his ally billymills N0, and then some enema SANDS. I actually deemed this the most useless role in the game, or at least the most expendable to a team. Well, that’s an arguable point... I can only imagine the sheer horror if the RNG had picked this role to be duplicated, allowing LW to inspect twice a night, and either pick up TWO dead peoples’ roles or use one’s role twice. In retrospect, giving this to LW without really looking at what this role might possibly do was NOT clever.
Lightwolf was one of the people who requested a weak role and dominated with it, even though the VOCALOIDS attempted to kill him night 1 and he survived due to the strength of billymills. He was always complained about as inactive, yet he was probably the head on the shoulders of his faction, and probably the biggest MEDS responsible for uniting and coordinating. Almost certainly the MVP of them, he was probably one of the biggest reasons they won, despite the fact that he really couldn’t do much and that the copier was clearly something that never should’ve been put into this game, though it was balanced because we expected an early death from him (and nearly got it).
It is an entirely trufax statement to say LW knew more about the game and was a superior cohost than Quagsires. I think a fair few people knew of my undying love for the only person who was actually, you know, doing anything in this game besides the VOCALOIDS at the start. LW was without a doubt his team’s most important player. I was the second one, because his team made me PM LW and tell him everything, instead of doing it themselves, like a bunch of noobs. The VOCALOIDS knew he was the only one paranoid/involved enough to not be moled, so they gave up on trying to leech anything out of the MEDS when they inspected him. He was waiting to see who his link in the chain was before coming forward and claiming if nobody else did (which Paperblade couldn’t due to moling two teams), however, kingofkongs thought he was being clever by not posting, so they were at an impasse until kok was forced to post. After that, LW got claims from his team, and through simple deduction (and tricking me into ‘confirming’ they had a bodyguard by asking if he could BG the BG with his ability herp derp u tricky snoop u!!!!) was able to get his team united before anyone else in the game, though beyond the STARS who aren’t even a factor I think they were the last to make the effort. Following the fact nobody was able to ever successfully kill this guy, though I know the VOCALOIDS tried so, so hard, before he got a BPV and TWO LPVs on himself, and gaining a very nice array of roles to absorb (herp derp this is turning problematic..), he swept.
I think he entirely deserves this win as such, since, you know, he was the only guy who didn’t get moled and spilled his team’s info. The VOCs had to inspect BT to figure out who he was with. I also had to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of his team whining he wasn’t on 24/7, and that maybe he should be subbed. The next time anyone demands someone like LW or billy get subbed I am subbing them. LW is probably the most dedicated player once he gets into a game who will work for the win regardless of his circumstances, and it showed, as while everyone else was bumming around getting bummed by the moles, the mole faction was furiously raging they couldn’t get rid of him. Compared to most everyone else in this game, LW played a lot better. First of all he wasn’t moled, second of all he didn’t kill himself or tell his team to, third he wasn’t a moron, fourth the game didn’t progress to the point where he could make a fatal error. Instead, he lucked out the combined WC power of 10 vs however many scrubs weren’t ending their misery let the game conclude. The only complaint I could really have is that he tended to not tell his team much, and while it was likely for the best he did all their actions himself and felt SO confident with his BPV and LPV and the SG on him, he wouldn’t be dying for a while, I know that when you’re a somewhat new player, or at least not a veteran of expert games, it’s nice to be included in the loop so you can see what’s going on, and LW tended to leave some of his team in the dark about what the plans were. Not that there was any spectacularly sneaky plans at this point, but still.
LW was also rather fun to talk to about not-mafia, and culturally-insensitive user katya and I enjoyed laughing at his poor European country. lol jk kinda but no really it was a pleasure. PS Wolfy take my advice it is 101% fool proof!!!!
This role moled the SNOWS, and for some reason Quagsires thought the Nexus was a cool role to have, but that meant the silence was at day, so it was an entire cycle of silencing so it, you know, was actually relevant at the next lynch. Not much to say except you probably shouldn’t let Quagsires design roles.
Yeti’ll probably be kinder than me, but all I really say him do was mole the SNOWS successfully, since every SNOWS seemed to trust the moles more than the people actually in their faction! Kingofkongs was the idiot player that was supposed to balance the MEDS’ playerbase, but instead he actually played DECENTLY and was basically accepted as a MEDS and a SNOWS. The only thing he really did badly was not send in actions and failing to silence often, though he was able to godkill wick
Not sure if kingofkongs was good mole, or team he moled was really stupid. He was trusted by LW fairly quickly because a. LW figured as he was the only mole claim FOR the MEDS, he was sure to be safe, and b. he was the PR LightWolf knew. However, before they united, this led to needyfag kingofkongs whining endlessly for me to tell LW everything. Noob. kingofkongs did manage to get numerous SNOWS role PMs after Accent wrongly thought their unite effort cleaned him and a fair bit of info on their team, which allowed the MEDS to kill the SNOWS bodyguard swiftly. While kok was not a genius in this game, he did manage to get more role PMs and info than any other named-faction mole, as well as not really blowing anything for his own team, so admirable play overall, boosted when the team was united and LW could do everything... nah jk, kok was a fairly sharp player who was never a real detriment to the team except he didn’t vote the day before when they were talking about wanting him to and he’d miss the early deadline.
This was one of the two one-time all-game roles, and definitely by far the better compared to HD’s tax. The role was based off the role name, and allowed aska to completely randomize everyone’s target, which also forced people who were idling to use the action. This resulted in Spiffy being killed on his adventure. It also led to some confusion as the flavor was deemed possible-SNOWS despite my efforts to subtly hint to LW no, it was a snowglobe for another reason. Otherwise, it was the ‘standard’ reflective safeguard for every team at night, and allowed the MEDS to get six votes with the doubler. Which combined with the MUDS having a mayor outright was MAYBE not too good? But they also had no way of negating a vote during the day, so it was a risk-taken sort of deal.
Aska there really isn’t that much to say about. He didn’t expect to be active, he wasn’t active, yet he won due to active partners. I really will just let Yeti fill in the rest.
askaninjask requested a team with some active players, maybe even LightWolf, who he wanted the chance to work with. This resulted in LW’s declaration “too many good people on this team” which while true, did not mean aska wasn’t really on it. He was a bit loose-lipped around Paperblade, as they had claimed the same night role and thus were both the subject of LW’s distrust, so as “MEDS” on the outskirts of the faction, aska tended to tell him a BIT more than he should. But it was never any particularly vital information, so that was a positive. aska was on, and did his part after being united, but like Quag said, he wasn’t particularly active.
lmao @ Grey’s Analexamination garbage show. This was a standard hooker and thief, vital for every faction, with the benefit of also boosting the team’s priority in the cloudy weather. Not much else to say about the role except it was executed fairly well.
Ace was probably the weakest link of all the MEDS, giving away too much information, being too trusting, basically some of the same mistakes he has made in the past. While he definitely wasn’t the worst player in this game, he definitely fought for that position yet used his hook efficiently throughout the game and was active enough to make sure they had enough PROFIT.
Ace was definitely not the BEST player, but he did try to be involved and active, so we can’t fault him for that. He did spill a fair few beans to Spiffy, but luckily, Spiffy could win with the MEDS anyway, so at least it wasn’t an enemy. He was put on the MEDS because, well quite plainly they had a very nice playerbase besides him, and I hoped he wouldn’t be entirely terrible. He followed orders once united, and definitely tried to be a good player. Keep working at not being quite so trusting and open, Ace.
Bodyguard, kidnap, and day safeguard - these were all ‘standard’ roles tossed onto one guy, so that though he was essentially a dead giveaway he wasn’t a mole if you thought about what was likely to be on every team, or saw numerous kidnaps, he also allowed more room for suspicion of someone else not having a vital role.
Best flavor ever.
Yet another member of the MEDS that was unable to communicate much due to timezones, he was really not doing much besides kidnapping Ginganinja throughout the entire game (which is why the kidnaps need more flavor besides the same options again and again).
I think BT helped LW with planning because their shoddy European timezones allowed them to be on together. He did his part, voting when needed, and kidnapped ginga numerous times. BT never really let anything slip or leaked anything, so while there’s not much to note, he was a capable player.
THE MUDS
Empoof was the user who last made it into the game due to the fact that he has never won anything on Smogon (though Yeti continued to insist he had only had that happen because of me winning MAGMAfia). However, since he has played competently in the past, we put him ahead instead of Chomz. I’m not really disappointed in how he played either. It took awhile for the MUDS to trust him (the SANDS were always iffy about him as well), though he did have the bright idea of claiming to be a mole of the MUDS. Eventually when the uniting system was fixed he was brought into the MUDS, and was the key to them winning everything due to the prio raising that came from the rain. I don’t think he did great at this stage, though by simply being alive he handed the MUDS and MEDS a somewhat easy win. Overall much better than some of the others, but only doing slightly less than average, with his role being overpowered due to the fact that NO ONE bought weather except for MUDS/MEDS/SANDS
I (Yeti the champ) campaigned for Empoof to be in over other newfags, simply because he had never screwed up to any great degree. I thought he would be a good asset to a team in what was likely to be a low-key role, and as a mole, I didn’t think he would look particularly suspicious because, why would this new guy be mole in an expert?? So I gave Empoof mole, and he wasn’t particularly active to make use of it. He didn’t really make himself a target, but, the SANDS definitely weren’t notably trusting of him, I think maybe because DLE hinted he was a mole knowing it from Spoon, and he just wasn’t on. As a MUDS, Empoof showed up when needed to do his work, and bossed it up, but he wasn’t the brains of the operation. Still, I’m glad we let him in the game, and once again he’s proved himself more intelligent than many a mafia player by not ruining anything.
Kidnap and a really crappy one-timer, HD didn’t have a day action either, just a second vote. His PR was also sort of weird, but thanks to Quagsires. The one-time was never used, as it just hurt the MUDS as well, and was really only useful if multiple factions united the same night, which didn’t happen beyond MUDS/SANDS. So it was honestly a terribly dumb role but I didn’t know what Quag fully had in mind for it until he’d written and sent it. Meh, sorry MUDS, but his double kidnap served you well.
HD I never really saw play a huge role in the MUDS, although with the roles he was given there really wasn’t much that he could do. While he was eventually figured out to be real, it took awhile for people to not believe Empoof and GS’ alliances due to the active role that General Spoon took in creating their channel and organizing them. He was never able to use his ability either, and his kidnaps only ended up preventing the actions of the SANDS and others.
HD did work in the team channel they didn’t invite Quags to (lmao), and was probably second in command to billy on deciding things. He was pretty active in the chan, so no huge complaints. I think he was suspected of being not-MUDS for a bit, but, eventually it was ruled he probably was. He actually kidnapped himself via a reflective SG, and earned some $ for his team designing bills.
This role got kind of messed up. It was a night BG/reflective SG and thief, so another of the power roles that takes some relevant roles. However, for some reason Quag decided to write it as a self-sg, leaving the MUDS without a night safeguard at all, which is pretty much not ok. I changed it later because he just plain made the role wrong.
Agape was one of the less original rolenames, although I do regret writing his pm incorrectly in regards to the safeguard. However, it didn’t really matter, since he was able tow in anyways and no one really targeted him for some reason. Besides that he didn’t do much, although timezones were an issue in talking to others.
Agape was never particularly active, but he didn’t screw anything up either. He just sent us PMs he changed 3 or 4 times when billy decided to dance to the beat of a different drum. Not too much to say.
This was a really freakin weird role and I don’t know what exactly it is. He put a post restriction/persuade on someone, and auto-restricted anyone who targeted him, and at day he swapped two people, so anyone targeting usera targeted userb instead. This was honestly a dead weight role and I’m not sure it did much of anything all game, lol. Also the PR paragraph is ridiculously inconsistent with the others, so thanks Quags for being constant with your own work >_o
Apologies for the confusing post restrict, but I never did find a good way to phrase that. However, although I was quite disappointed with what Walrein was doing in regards to trolling, however, Jalmont and Walrein both played competently within the MUDS, although they did not do much in order to make sure they won.
Walrein made some bizarre restrictions while he was in the game and got hit with a few himself, then due to his chronic jerking off had to sub, and jalmont came in. Walrein asked for the funniest restriction, so we figured letting him ‘troll’ would allow him to do this. Yeah posting your MAG posts wasn’t quite there. jalmont was worried he didn’t know how to troll, but holy piss, the MEDS sexy nurse PM was actually a posting restriction wickdaggler made, but oh man, jalmont posting it the instant he subbed got the MEDS so mad and flustered. aska thought jalmont was legit with them, I’m pretty sure, and his “what is a safeguard” was pretty good vs. Walrein’s material. 10/10 trole pm. jalmont was on a fair bit and did what the MUDS needed him to, but his role honestly sucked a lot.
A mighty hooker/inspector role with some really bizarre flavor - billy, and then LW, both thought this role had a twin, because of the <snip>. I personally would either have made it obvious they weren't in the game, or just not included that, because it really did look weird and out of place in the game. Another faulty PR section as well, but it's ok because he's billymills.
billymills really let GS control the first part of the game, taking more of a backseat role, but once he realized GS was not part of the MUDS, he took charge of the faction and led them pretty much to victory, trying to make sure General Spoon did not realize that he had no control over the faction while it was being run behind his back almost until the suicides during the last day.
Oh birrymirrs, even the VOCALOIDS could tell you were phoning it in at the start of this game. Perhaps you were tired of putting in so much effort last game (to come out with a narrow victory despite letting mistakes get your allies killed lololol truck the DA and their easy WC) and just decided to coast while, due to me mixing up you and Spoon’s flavor which Quag wrote incorrectly (you were the madame of the MUDS, their go-to hooker, not the wife), you let “clean MUD” Spoon lead and do everything. Then we finally got you on the right track you had some MOLE problems and you called the exterminator and took over. Since you knew LW was MEDS, or rather, he’d inspected you then stepped up to lead, you two could work together against the SANDS, and you never had any particularly strong inclination to unite with the moron SNOWS, which is probably for the best. While I’m glad you finally started doing work at the end, earlygame you were a bit of a let down.
THE SANDS
lmao this has my favorite flavor in the game. I don’t know what language dumb curries speak so I used Arabian (Sanskrit), it’s all weird script anyway. SCall was a hooker, kidnapper and thief, so another of the powerful strongman roles that was a giveaway he’s with your team, while allowing the standard roles to be on the team.
Somehow this role became Arabian instead of Indian, but I can fully blame Yeti for that. Staraptor Call was one of the SANDS that was just inactive, there really isn’t much more to say than that.
SCall requested the role: thief. lol. So he got this. I was considering giving LW or billy this role, just for the laughs of the flavor, but that meant LW got a role he didn’t want that was clearly quite vital to the team, and also shuffling LW around if we didn’t want him vs. billy. He was never notably active, and was the first SANDS killed, actually by the VOCALOIDS when they were planning on rushing the MUDS’ WC. He was around, but never a huge part of the SANDS planning when they united, so not a ton to say.
Note the wrong WC in this draft. If it wasn't missing its PR, it was telling him he's on the wrong team! This role was the only secret voter, which I would include more of in a game where factions think their lynch objectives are completed by people who post, and non-posters to vote can throw that off molishly nice. WTF @ the flavor, Quag ~_~, but he was also a Sandstorm prio raiser, so, if anyone thought about it in conjunction with the rules, he wasn't that suspicious.
Crux was more active than I thought he would be, although it doesn’t seem like his head was truly in the game. The hooking and the late pm seemed to do a number on how much he cared, and it showed in his team completely not trusting him as well. Overall this just lead him to be able to do next to nothing besides correctly choose the option on his adventure I was half sure no one would choose.
Crux was a bit miffed his ROLE PM WAS MISSING A CHUNK thanks Quagsires good freakin JOB. It didn’t have the PR fully completed when it was sent. As such, he was never super active, and his lack of public voting due to the secret vote while the SANDS completed the lynch D1 made him very excluded from the team. Then, GK realized it was probably DLE who is the mole, and Crux has a secret vote, and he sent a solo test unite effort. Crux was fairly active once they did unite and present in their channel, so while I guess he could have done more (like almost everyone else), he certainly could have done less.
Post restrictor, reflective SG, negative votemaker. This guy was a fairly effective lynch controller, because during the day he could negate someone's vote, as well as persuade the night before and protect someone on his own team from being persuaded. I would have liked to see more of this "control the X" role in the game, where he had a big part in a certain area.
I’ll just let Yeti talk here
^ Evidence my cohost is useless. GK is the one who allowed the SANDS to unite, by finally guessing the right combo of people. He tried to put some ridic PC+1 restrictions on people, but, every time he was thwarted by being hooked/kidnapped himself if his target wasn’t. Poor GK :( You had some good ones. Making NJaggles post 30 times lololol. GK was fairly active and helped send united actions, and agreed the suicide pact was stupid, so he played fairly well I think.
(2:18:44 pm) <little_gk> man i bet crux is a secret voter
(2:18:46 pm) <little_gk> and dle is the mole
(2:18:49 pm) <little_gk> i hope it
(2:18:53 pm) <little_gk> it'd make me feel smart
(2:18:54 pm) <Yeti> well ginga's on
(2:18:57 pm) <little_gk> for guessing right
(2:18:58 pm) <little_gk> i know
(2:19:00 pm) <little_gk> he's afk
(2:19:00 pm) <Yeti> lol
(2:19:01 pm) <Yeti> oof
(2:19:36 pm) <Yeti> get the log for the billy pr
(2:19:38 pm) <little_gk> [21:13] <little_gk> i'm gonna use my pr role on mr mills
(2:19:38 pm) <little_gk> [21:13] <little_gk> he must spend four posts trying to start a billy roll and aruging for its completion
(2:19:46 pm) <Yeti> lol
(2:19:46 pm) <little_gk> throughout the day etc
SANDS Junior!!!!! Bodyguard and inspector in one, he was another “probably not mole” role, especially considering the name. Fairly standard assortment of actions, though like some others (tas and SCall to note) his PR may have been a rather obvious giveaway if he mentioned SANDS castles.
While he wasn’t the most active of players, Flamestrike had the best real role for leading his faction, and it really cost his team to see him sit out on the sidelines due to wanting to win
Flame was a bit reluctant to step up for his team, because he was leading in Internet, and didn’t like taking on too much responsibility, which is a good thing to be aware of. He sometimes idled, so his activity wasn’t top notch, but he never ruined things for the team, and he was also against suiciding. I definitely think he played better last expert, but, if he was doing work in another mafia as well, I can’t hold it against him for not being super active. He was on enough once they united.
This was a “bad idea” mole role, because we didn’t realize quite how many SG-esque roles the MEDS had, then Paperblade claimed SG as well, so it was kind of obvious either the MEDS were a SG-theme team, or someone was just plain moling. ginga never really got trusted at all as such. However, I think Super Rogue was a cool concept, but sadly never executed, like most rogues in forum mafias.
One of the more resilient against the suicides.
^Freakin lazy cohost. ginga has been in numerous SANDS games, and is always kept alive as a SANDS-friendly man, until the last, when he finally gets beasted through some hax. One-kill tank, broken alliance system, everyone else suiciding leaving him as SANDS to face another 10-person alliance... Well, bad luck for ginga, but at least he’s a good sport. He managed to convince the VOCs to suicide first, and his team would follow, but he had no intention of doing so, because the SANDS fight to the bitter end, only to never win one of their namesake games. He was fairly active, but he did mess up in telling LW he got his PM late, as all the MEDS PMs were written by me, and if LW showed them to kok I think kok would have noticed that, and thus it made no sense why a PM SENT BY me as well would come late, but LW said he didn’t notice that had been said. Otherwise, he was pretty good at being thrown into a volcano again... maybe next time ginga :(
THE SNOWS
Bodyguard and inspector piled onto one role this time, it’s another fairly standard role with not much to note. His PR was closely tied to his role, but, unless you knew his role or figured Happy Feet is a SNOW and in the game, not much of a giveaway. We were careful to allow that it wouldn't be too obvious.
Probably one of the Best result flavors with the BG, although it was sadly never used, Brammi was one of the better players on the SNOWS, although considering their lack of success despite their activity that’s not saying much. In addition, he was convinced, as many of them were, that kingofkongs and DLE were real and legitimate, despite the fact that DLE had never done a role claim, a fact found out when SDS subbed in for him. He wasn’t able to do much to help his faction due to his early death, although I doubt he could’ve helped them much had he lived.
Brammi gave his role PM to kok, and was later killed because the MEDS knew their enemy’s bodyguard. He wasn’t particularly assertive in the SNOWS world, but he also wasn’t notably stupid either. I wouldn’t say he was tremendously active or a big player for the SNOWS, likely because due to his roles he was laying low, but he wasn’t much of a detriment at all.
This role... lol narwhal. He was a persuader, kidnapper and day safeguard, so a fairly strong role with a good assortment of potential! Nothing particularly outstanding about the actions, but they combined for a solid unit.
One of my favorite roles to add to this game, I kinda regretted putting him in due to him being somewhat inactive, since he was probably the most inactive SNOWS (though that isn’t saying much), although he was eventually owning the SNOWS channel and playing a major role within the SNOWS. He was also one of the few who was never agreeing to defeatist tactics, which is commendable, though he eventually suicided after everyone else already had killed his faction.
NJig had been SNOWS in the past, so he reprised his role on the team, and was unfortunately not particularly assertive or active earlygame either. Which was the main problem of the SNOWS - they all turned out to be inactive. NJaggles had a slip up, where he was talking to Spiffy and Spiffy typo’d the faction name, and “confirmed NJig was SNOWS inspector” to Spiffy. Well, SNOWS at the least was right... NJig gotta be sneakier! By the time the team united, after he wasn’t trusted particularly much, he picked up his activity. He bought himself some sunglasses and inspected DLE, which was really a very smart play, as he was suspicious of the people claiming to be on his team, and sent everyone else in the circle the Scumbuddy PM (explained under the VOCs), which actually made kingofkongs second-guess the spread LW had and think DLE was SNOWS while NJig was VOCALOID. Nah. NJig finally gave up the go after his team had 2 of 5 left, and broke his no-posting kidnap. =\
Hooker, the priority booster for the SNOWS in hail, and a thief. This was another powerful role that had numerous standard actions tossed into one, so he wasn’t taking up someone else’s suspicion. Nothing remarkable to see here about the role.
Rare was yet another person whose getting into the game was difficult and close to not happening, especially after he was subbed out last expert (though he later showed that he was going to be active later in the game, though not paying attention). However, he was able to do decently, albeit naively, and was actually doing alright until Acklow subbed in for him.
Rare was never particularly active, but I’m not singling him out on his team by any means! He sort of just did the minimum needed, and then went on vacation and requested to be subbed. This let Acklow, who had been on the fence, come on board, and he was able to FINALLY, thankfully, unite the SNOWS, who were the first team to make an effort. And then they tried again, and again, and AGAIN, and sent like 3 different PMs a day. Yeesh. I knew a fresh pair of eyes would probably let the SNOWS unite after realizing what was up. So props to Acklow for getting that straight, though he wasn’t SUPER into the planning and etc, not like LightWolf and billy did after their teams united. He was still a great asset to the SNOWS before his death, which was also due to the MEDS.
This was the SNOWS’ mole into the STARS, with a weird role that Quag made that I apparently took wrong?? I had no idea what the SG vest was supposed to be, at all, and neither did most of the people it came in contact with. lol. I think the quantity of SG items and roles in this game pissed people off more than anything else, so this role is one of the duds in my opinion.
This was a role I regret putting into the game, as it just created more unnecessary items and really was not represented on all the other factions save the MEDS with Lightwolf’s copier (although Yeti grossly misinterperted what I meant, I meant for it not to be items and only apply to him once per night, not be given out to people to be used at the next action to target them), but in the end it made no difference, as the SNOWS were too terrible apparently to live for long. Accent didn’t do that well, being one of the people the SNOWS thought of as not part of them, nor was he able to be moling STARS, but in the end they were able to fine each other.
Accent :( After your win as the main GFed contact in MP2 (LUMINOTH FOR BEST), I figured that when we shifted the SNOWS playerlist a bit to remove billy vs LW from killing each other asap, you would be their driving force and the strongman behind them. Unfortunately you never did PARTICULARLY much, and I have certainly been in your shoes where you wound up being ‘that bigname guy’ on your team only not really knowing it and thus dragging your feet a bit. You never played particularly bad, and in fact you were quite effective at moling the STARS as you got into their channel, but because the STARS all died so quickly and then went inactive, you never got the chance to make much use of that (they never trusted you anyways).
It took wickdaggler a bit to be trusted due to some mistakes that he made in claiming, such as putting the wrong pm title on his pm even after we stressed to him to make sure to change it, and once he did, there really wasn’t much he could do. Even then, the godkilling of the SNOWS was about all he did influentially.
Well wickdaggler was an accidental suicide, he forgot he had been silenced for the following night and day, and posted during both. Logs confirmed he had “accepted” the silence, thus he was godkilled, leaving the SNOWS with 2 out of 5 which is really a horrible, horrible place to be, as anyone can tell you. 3 looks a lot better than 2. wick was actually a driving force behind the united SNOWS, and though he again tried to look TOO COOL FOR MAFIA he did try to send in all their actions and make sure things were cohesive. Fairly smart planning, unfortunately, the M@DS were just too mad. Not bad play once he got united, and at least he tried.
THE STARS
A more obscure character from a David Bowie song, Ditto probably played the worst out of anyone, since all he had to do was ask in the thread for STARS to claim as his restrict, but he didn’t post and was godkilled. There really isn’t much more to say than that, since he doomed his faction in doing so.
More obscure wow look at this musically-uncultured noob. Quag sux. Ditto didn’t particularly notice his PR was “post this or die” which was Quags’ bad wording, but, considering the lynch was “everyone vote” he honestly had NO excuse to fail his faction on that front and not include the PR. Bad play Ditto, but I know you can be better.
I kinda hate how Zorbees kinda gave up on the game when he was losing, but he really did have no chance to win at that point. IPL was able to team up with tas, since we decided not to be cruel to the last two who would never find each other However, ipl was ablet to talk to the MEDS and at least temporarily work with them before he was killed off himself.
zorbees was never too into this game and it showed. He subbed once again, after his faction had lost 3 people (but I'm not sure that was the full reason, rather, he was just never giving it much of a go and his team absolutely did not need that with the state they wound up in), and was pretty much doomed, kind of like he subbed in MAG when it came down to kingmaker. Thus, ipl came in, to a bad situation. The MEDS had inspected him the night before (his Dickens was day only) and this allowed him to work with his buddy LW, but, it also meant he never gained much information at all, and pretty much just did what LW asked, something the VOCALOIDS rolled their eyes at. Thanks for subbing in to a bad spot ipl, unfortunately, with your buds the SANDS never knowing about you or reaching out, you had no good means of offing the MUDS before they, or the VOCs, came for you.
This role was a fairly good candidate to be moling the STARS if you didn’t trust the Sunny Day factor, since otherwise, its actions were quite weak. PR and day SG aren’t particularly critical, though day SG is helpful vs thieves, but it never had the chance to be executed.
He requested a Dr. Who role, so we have him that and then changed the role name. Hr really was probably the most unlucky user, since not only was he unable to unite the STARS, bu he was also unable to really do anything at all.
What the heck are you talking about Quagsires? “Doctor Who” the role, was the STARS mole, but Snype asked to not be the mole, so we had to change the Doctor Who role iirc to The Sun. This one was always Canis Majoris. Look at this buffoon cohost. Anyway, Snype realized he had some massive irl obligations and time commitments, so he subbed out before he could do anything particularly notable. He made some effort to unite the STARS, claiming first, but not all of them came forward, and he died N1 at the hands of the MUDS thanks to the VOCs’ instructions, though billy tried to counterkill Paperblade lolol, after being subbed for Nachos, who never did particularly much before the N1 kill. A shame, if Snype had stayed in or Nachos hadn’t died, perhaps the STARS could have united much faster.
This was another powerful obvious-not mole role, being a hooker, reflective SG, and inspector all in one. The flavor for this was pretty good lol.
Yeti gave him this just for the post restriction, and in the end it was all for naught, as he died before he was really able to post much (although he was able to unite with some of the members of his faction). He was the victim of something very unfortunate in the adventure, though we can say, he chose everything leading up to it.
Oh Spiffy, if only aska hadn’t randomized. You were going to live, but, the randomizer decided it was time for you to die. You didn’t do a WHOLE lot while you were alive with your own faction, but you certainly went out to find info on the others, slipping up and tricking NJig to expose his alliance (though incorrect role) and AE to admit he was MEDS. I know you said you were going to inspect PBlade once you got back, so you could start trying to unite your team, however waiting proved to remove you from doing anything productive as you died. I was honestly kind of sad you couldn’t post more with the PR, because it was pretty amusing to have a scrawny white punk like you spouting BLACK PRIDE.
This had the weird self-SG all the time that made people think he was actually a wolf. Nobody ever thought to consider that he would be a STAR based on the flavor, though, as “hide and go seek world champion” is kind of a clue he’s someone famous. While the spread says “Negative Mayor” his role PM just says “negative vote” so I think Quag wrote this wrong, again, for what it was intended? Mayor would imply he’s -2. Anyway, this role wasn’t particularly cohesive but he did have the kidnap!
Probably one of the few people who had a leginimate reason to say that they played this game fine and were crushed and destroyed after his faction lost the first three people.
tas lost interest after his team died, but he perked up a bit when we gave him ipl to work with. Sadly, he never really got into the game, but he did start sending his actions after that. His team was destroyed early on and riddled with moles in the fray, so he just didn’t have much of a chance, up until the MUDS finally ended his suffering, and the last STAR ended the team’s.
THE VOCALOIDS
The originator of the suicidal idea, that really killed any good that I thought he had done in the game, since there was still a chance for him and the others to win (as the display of force that they had seen to make them ragequit was only able to be used one time.) Otherwise, everyone trust him as a natural member of their faction except for Lightwolf, who saw through him almost immediately. (well two night SGs plus kok’s self-redirecting-SG helped with that)
Paperblade was a good VOCALOID, and a strong addition to their team, until he decided becoming an hero was the only way this game would go ‘well’ for him. Nope. He was certainly less whiny than Spoon, and generally took things with grace, though he liked to stay in the know I think. I don’t regret giving him the role, beyond his blatant name-targeting and suicide effort. He never really got to mole, because he knew LightWolf would be as impossible to penetrate as a 15th-century princess’ chastity-belt-covered vagina, and the STARS bit the dust so quickly the team fizzled and he had nobody to talk to. He was on to plan, and talk through ideas, so his activity level was great. No complaints about Paperblade’s play for the most part, he already knows what I thought was shoddy.
This role had a LPV, since kills were already so infrequent and we all know that wolves are more likely to be lynched anyway. It was the team BG, and had a tracker+watcher combo, which could give the VOCs some convenient safeclaims to make use of. The day Rev Mar was sort of useless, because the VOCs had no day SG, and the teams all had day inspects besides the MEDS, so, in retrospect this wasn’t the brightest or best day role, and it was idled most of the time.
Da Letter El was probably the VOCALOID with the worst luck, as any chances of his attempted uniting were thwarted with billymills deleting one of his posts (though to be frank, there were some issues with it that were making the page next to impossible to load.)
DLE was a solid asset to the VOCALOIDS, but decided to sub due to how busy he was irl. While SDS never made any mistakes, he wasn’t nearly as active as his predecessor, and was ousted from the SNOWS’ graces by Acklow fairly quickly. DLE still showed up to check in on things, an admirable man indeed. DLE moled the SNOWS a lot harder than the SANDS, and was able to troll billy quite effectively. gg.
Quality logs:
(6:05:38 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <billymills> if you are a med
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <billymills> tell me
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <billymills> !!!
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <daletterel> hello
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <daletterel> my name is
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <daletterel> dr greenthumb
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <daletterel> i'd like to tell you
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [19:57] <daletterel> just where i'm from
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [20:02] <daletterel> ok you are clearly not meds have a nice day
(6:05:39 pm) <daletterel> [20:02] <billymills> huh
(6:05:40 pm) <daletterel> [20:02] <billymills> nope i'm not med
(6:05:41 pm) <daletterel> [20:02] <billymills> but I want to find a med!
(6:05:42 pm) <daletterel> [20:02] <daletterel> ic
(6:05:43 pm) <daletterel> [20:02] <daletterel> what would you want to do with a med
(6:05:44 pm) <daletterel> [20:02] <billymills> depends how easy it is to find a med
(6:05:45 pm) <daletterel> [20:03] <daletterel> oic
(6:05:46 pm) <daletterel> [20:03] <billymills> and how decent a person they are
(6:05:47 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <billymills> are you claiming to be med
(6:05:48 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <billymills> o.o
(6:05:49 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> icncndt
(6:05:50 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> but
(6:05:54 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> my name is
(6:05:54 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> dr greenthumb
(6:05:54 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> i'd like to tell you
(6:05:54 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> just where i'm from
(6:05:54 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <billymills> honestly that is not helping me whatsoever
(6:05:56 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> HELLO
(6:05:57 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> MY NAME IS
(6:05:58 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <billymills> I do not know the reference in the slightest
(6:05:59 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> DR GREENTHUMB
(6:06:00 pm) <daletterel> [20:04] <daletterel> I'D LIKE TO TELL YOU
(6:06:01 pm) <daletterel> [20:05] <daletterel> JUST WHERE I'M FROM
(6:06:02 pm) <daletterel> [20:05] <billymills> oh
(6:06:03 pm) <daletterel> [20:05] <billymills> you're TREES
(6:06:04 pm) <daletterel> [20:05] <daletterel> billy is onto something
(6:06:04 pm) <daletterel> [20:05] <billymills> still lost
(6:06:06 pm) <daletterel> [20:05] <billymills> are you trying to sell me drugs
(6:06:10 pm) <daletterel> [20:05] <billymills> long distance?
(6:09:32 pm) <daletterel> [20:09] <billymills> I have no reason to believe you are meds
(6:09:32 pm) <daletterel> [20:09] <billymills> apart from some song
(6:09:33 pm) <daletterel> damn
(6:09:45 pm) <daletterel> so close
He came back for more:
(3:56:04 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> you can ask billymills for my claim spiffy
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> unless you want it
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> from me
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <Spiffy> i want it from you tbh
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> ok
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> hello
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> my name is
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> dr greenthumb
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> i'd like to tell you
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <daletterel> just where i'm from
(3:56:05 pm) <daletterel> [17:53] <Spiffy> you know what
(3:56:06 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> you can just forward it to me!
(3:56:07 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> HELLO
(3:56:08 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> MY NAME IS
(3:56:09 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> DR GREENTHUMB
(3:56:10 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> OK
(3:56:11 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> TELL ME
(3:56:12 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> I'D LIKE TO TELL YOU
(3:56:13 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> JUST WHERE I'M FROM
(3:56:14 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> IM LISTENING
(3:56:15 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> YOU MAY CONTINUE
(3:56:16 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> HELLO
(3:56:16 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> MY NAME IS
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> DR GREENTHUMB
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> STOP
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> STOP
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> STOP
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> STOP
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <Spiffy> STOP
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> I'D LIKE TO TELL YOU
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:54] <daletterel> JUST WHERE I'M FROM
(3:56:27 pm) <daletterel> [17:55] <daletterel> I am from the Bahamas.
(3:56:35 pm) <daletterel> [17:55] * Disconnected
10/10.
GS requested BPV, but in the end this was the only role that we could give him. I was a bit concerned with the possibility of him taking such an important role, but he managed almost better than his colleagues. He was trusted by everyone, although billymills eventually figured out that he was the MUDS mole due to numerous mistakes that he made in telling people what to do and them talking about it.
Spoon was quite effective and efficient as a mole, he claimed quickly and got the MUDS lined up, then managed to put off adding them to spreads and uniting for a while until we prodded some of them to take notice. He WAS aided by me mixing up his and billy’s roles, which made him think the MUDS leader’s daughter was a legitimate role as opposed to a safeclaim. However, GS tried to talk to his ally factions’ leaders, mostly to arrange things to his benefit, although LW was told the MUDS had figured out he was a mole. Spoon himself didn’t realize that for quite a while, as the MUDS let him stay in #dogrock while they planned in #dogrock2. Then he got the bright idea to rush a faction’s WC without reading Rule 19 carefully enough, and this led to him sending us numerous bad plan PMs, and also some whiny crap about wanting a good sub for DLE, or ELSE. In the end, his metagaming theorymon schemes led to him suiciding when he was being lynched, after the MEDS stole his LPV (he had no reason to pass it, his team had LPVs, he was the only one vulnerable at day), taking ipl, the SNOWS, and even his own team out with him. Oh Spoon, you overthought it.
AWARDS
Best SANDS: Kind of a tie between GoldenKnight and ginga imo (I lean towards ginga, but both did well for their situation)
Best MUDS: billymills
Best STARS: (Do we really need to give this out?)
Best VOCALOIDS: General Spoon
Best SNOWS: Acklow (if only because wick accidentally suicided and Acklow got the uniting straightened out)
Best MEDS: LightWolf
Best Luck: billymills saving himself and LW from dying N1
Worst Luck: Spiffy, who sux.
Best Play: M@DS kidnapping an entire faction and hooking the rest of the game
Worst Play: the seppuku the last day
Best Mole:
Well the best fakeclaim was Da Letter El, but you can CALL HIM DR GREENTHUMB
The most efficient and effective was General Spoon
The luckiest was kingofkongs because Accent had a derp
Worst Mole (this is a Quag award): kingofkongs. No explanation needed. Just look above.
Worst Player (this is also a Quag award): Ditto. All he had to do was post he was wanting to unite his own faction...And he didn’t. On the day when everyone needed to vote. @.@
Best Spread: The most complete/accurate the soonest is the VOCALOIDS:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhpIpUc0mrHgdFZDbjlzV3dyZ08xR25mX0w5aXhRa0E#gid=0
But it was ugly as sin, so the prettiest is the MEDS since LW is fussy and anal as heck about his spreads (like I care about prettiest, VOCALOIDS moled so well in the beginnigng that they had nearly everything by the first night) (well you like anal sex with monkeys too so whatever uglycolorsires!!!):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiIpd8Ll7g21dEc1RlBhZV9yamdZNWh4LWZ0ZWN0SWc#gid=0
Worst Spread:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aknab5xiIuLRdHZnYnZLSHIzcXhVOVZLOXRFX2kzcGc#gid=0
Best (Winning) Faction: The MEDS, since they were alive at the end, got info via their mole, weren't moled themselves, and were united first
Best Losing Faction: The SANDS, who had the balls to not suicide and try to tough it out. Sorry VOCALOIDS, you guys played well up until you decided trying to convince 4 teams to off themselves, including yourself, was a good idea
Best
MVP: Do we really need to tell you it’s LightWolf? One of the VOCs would probably be a close second had they not decided to kill themselves for being (BAN ME PLEASE)s
That wraps up SANDSEMONIUM! Thanks to everyone who played and subbed in - sorry it wasn't QUITE perfect and it ended sooner than RotS due to the same exact thing >_o
Thanks to Quagsires for cohosting even if you did get yelled at a lot by me and everyone else, this game wouldn't have been designed without you or been executed, but you gotta remember to not get lazy when hosting!!
My next project is Red Panda Mafia with Empoof, and then AQUANAfia, both standards. EXPERTS 2 is a loooooong way off, but I do have a spread if anyone wants to sign on to cohost! I'll announce the AQUA cohost soon enough. I also have a small expert NOC in the works, so if anyone wants to be involved with not-multifaction, but a very, very complex game with many twists and turns, please contact me about that, it's not a SANDS game and will be quite different in flavor from them, and will also be my next expert, but no ETA on that game.
I think Quag has a standard or two in the works.. p sure he's on expert-hosting hiatus, and hopefully he does serious work in his next standard!
Thanks everyone for playing and reading and to those who didn't godkill themselves, u da best.
lol awesome.
Give gk the best SANDS award tho he played a lot better than I did
Give gk the best SANDS award tho he played a lot better than I did
You see, GS sent a pm to a whole bunch of people (I think everyone but the M@DS) asking them to suicide claiming it was the only way. Everyone else really wanted too apparently, but i was a bit resilient, mostly because i didn't know how getting rid of everyone who was opposed to the M@DS suddenly godkilling themselves would work. Once i saw that there were like 2 SNOWS left, that's when i knew it was a lost cause.
Second luckiest has to be AE/kok/aska combined, where aska was told by me while not trusted yet to target kok the nexus, which randomly redirected him to AE, whose hook was redirected to himself, which caused the hook to bounce forever and fail, allowing him to do the kill he was voted to do.
harsh words incoming
First of all, I apologize to my team because I think the summary of my performance in the postgame is largely embellished. I utterly failed to grasp the logic behind the game (more on that later) and as I told Yeti on IRC I don't think I've ever played that badly except in my 28wl when I didn't know what smogon mafia was about. Of course inactivity (or timezone incompatibility) was also a fairly major problem for the SNOWS, but still.
Now, about the game itself- sorry Yeti, but I think this is the smogon game I've least enjoyed. From what I've seen, it seems like the design was non-existant - I don't doubt the fact that you tried to balance roles and profit etc., but I fail to see any purpose in any of the mechanics in the game, and you even say so yourself in the postgame: most things were just tossed in to see how they would work out. Now I get that it's been put aside for a long time and that communication with Quagsires wasn't "perfect", so it partially explains it, but even with those excuses I think the design was overall messy and incoherent. And the thing is, that's not all: while I do enjoy your PMs' flavour, the updates and the communication was rather annoying, because you were never neutral. By the time the SNOWS united, I was tired of playing partly because of your frequent remarks on the faction's poor performance (which doesn't excuse the performance itself of course, but I would have been more motivated had the hosts been encouraging rather than mocking). At some point you even told me that we had sent twice the same unite PM, which led to a whole lot of confusion and we checked our inboxes to find where we'd fucked up, but found nothing.
All in all, the thing I will remember from this game is that I never understood what was happening and more importantly why it was happening, what was the intent of each mechanic in the game's design, and as such I played "randomly" since I could see no hint regarding the logical course of action. Basically in MP2 I was frustrated because I had no info, but this was the intent of the faction and it worked and I respect that - but in this game I had LESS info and it wasn't even supposed to be that way, it's just how it "turned out". :(
Thanks for hosting though!
First of all, I apologize to my team because I think the summary of my performance in the postgame is largely embellished. I utterly failed to grasp the logic behind the game (more on that later) and as I told Yeti on IRC I don't think I've ever played that badly except in my 28wl when I didn't know what smogon mafia was about. Of course inactivity (or timezone incompatibility) was also a fairly major problem for the SNOWS, but still.
Now, about the game itself- sorry Yeti, but I think this is the smogon game I've least enjoyed. From what I've seen, it seems like the design was non-existant - I don't doubt the fact that you tried to balance roles and profit etc., but I fail to see any purpose in any of the mechanics in the game, and you even say so yourself in the postgame: most things were just tossed in to see how they would work out. Now I get that it's been put aside for a long time and that communication with Quagsires wasn't "perfect", so it partially explains it, but even with those excuses I think the design was overall messy and incoherent. And the thing is, that's not all: while I do enjoy your PMs' flavour, the updates and the communication was rather annoying, because you were never neutral. By the time the SNOWS united, I was tired of playing partly because of your frequent remarks on the faction's poor performance (which doesn't excuse the performance itself of course, but I would have been more motivated had the hosts been encouraging rather than mocking). At some point you even told me that we had sent twice the same unite PM, which led to a whole lot of confusion and we checked our inboxes to find where we'd fucked up, but found nothing.
All in all, the thing I will remember from this game is that I never understood what was happening and more importantly why it was happening, what was the intent of each mechanic in the game's design, and as such I played "randomly" since I could see no hint regarding the logical course of action. Basically in MP2 I was frustrated because I had no info, but this was the intent of the faction and it worked and I respect that - but in this game I had LESS info and it wasn't even supposed to be that way, it's just how it "turned out". :(
Thanks for hosting though!
Fair host comments, though that fiasco with Spiffy was weird even for me >.> I honestly can't remember what I was thinking then. I don't really have many comments on the game that weren't said in the postgame, but I'll give another hand to LightWolf for killing it itg. Overall, glad I got to play in an expert, hopefully I'll get that chance again.
Of course my team herps when I leave.
Peace.
Hello my name is Dr. Greenthumb
Peace.
Hello my name is Dr. Greenthumb
This is false. I did absolutely nothing itg. I WILL say in my defense that I TRIED asking LW to help him plan a few times and he ignored me. :(
Yeah, I just didn't have enough time to be the leader in more than one game and I had already started in Internet... I hoped that someone else would pick up the slack and thankfully GK did but I guess it was too late by then :/ Sorry to Yeti and Quagsires for not being able to give my 100% in this one, hopefully I can make up for it next time. And Quagsires, get your PMs done on time next time x_x
I blame my inactivity on lightwolf one man armying everything and not telling us jack once he knew he wasn't going to die soon. This led to me not knowing what the fuck was going on, since once the SNOWS became a non-issue, I really had no purpose to serve >_>.
Also, just because I was lucky doesn't mean i was bad quagsires. I mean, how can you say that I was a worse mole than someone who didn't end up moling(like ginga)?
Also, just because I was lucky doesn't mean i was bad quagsires. I mean, how can you say that I was a worse mole than someone who didn't end up moling(like ginga)?
I blame the general lack of communication on my highlights stopping working and me being too lazy to fix them. The only guy who bothered to try and pm me was AE, so p much he was the only one I noticed was talking to me...
Also just going inactive because someone else is making all the decisions would have meant you'd not be playing anymore if these were the old days. Work hard and pray he dies(and look at the topic containing our actions and then check out the sheet and connect the dots from there)
Also just going inactive because someone else is making all the decisions would have meant you'd not be playing anymore if these were the old days. Work hard and pray he dies(and look at the topic containing our actions and then check out the sheet and connect the dots from there)