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OC Gambling Mafia - GAME OVER, Town Win
- Thread starter Blazade
- Start date
GAME OVER
You all gather around Mekkah and vote to execute him. He was:
Confident that their dead friends have been given the justice and revenge they deserve, and that the Town is at peace, AirC, bluedoom, and JALMONT exit the game triumphant, as winners
Congratulations to the Town! Thanks, everyone, for playing Gambling Mafia! I will write a postgame as soon as I can. I hope you enjoyed playing as much as I enjoyed hosting.
You all gather around Mekkah and vote to execute him. He was:
Confident that their dead friends have been given the justice and revenge they deserve, and that the Town is at peace, AirC, bluedoom, and JALMONT exit the game triumphant, as winners
Congratulations to the Town! Thanks, everyone, for playing Gambling Mafia! I will write a postgame as soon as I can. I hope you enjoyed playing as much as I enjoyed hosting.
Fun game and very dynamic - probably one of the best OC town wins in awhile given how active town was in solving it.
Thanks to Blazade for hosting! Mechanic was interesting even if I think really under-utilized, I think with some more examples about how it works and if it's ever brought back maybe it could get some more mileage. Definitely have some regrets about how I used my role once (in graveyard) I realized how powerful it could have been without screwing over town.
Thanks to Blazade for hosting! Mechanic was interesting even if I think really under-utilized, I think with some more examples about how it works and if it's ever brought back maybe it could get some more mileage. Definitely have some regrets about how I used my role once (in graveyard) I realized how powerful it could have been without screwing over town.
POSTGAME
Role PMs (Including fakes): https://docs.google.com/document/d/14yv9dLTXmqHe3hAq64MDDF5Ezk7IDaVQug6T_tU0udo/edit?usp=sharing
Sheet (messy): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W8C9H1lJ8LtDVndS1ko034oluCQHK2CcV55AyHV-ffU/edit?usp=sharing
Mafia Discord: https://discord.gg/dABydh3VkU
Design Intentions:
So my last post-revival game was Time Travel mafia, a dizzyingly complicated fully informed multifaction with roles that are Swiss army knives and an overall gimmick so large and all-encompassing that it twists the entire game into a big, knotted puzzle. This was and in my opinion still is my Magnum Opus, but it was very inaccessible even with a team of people helping new players out. With Big games being Vivas and traditional OC taking a bit of a backseat, I wanted to go back to the roots and design a relatively barebones OC which had good bones and good dynamics. Like with Time Travel, I wanted to showcase the unique qualities of Outside Communication games, how they engender an interesting form of mechsolving and how that can dovetail with the traditional dynamics of social games and NOC mafia "scumhunting". In this one, I also wanted to try a light additive mechanic that was inspired by my own mathematical study of Game Theory: how does the game, and in particular the endgame, change when players are allowed to play a "mixed strategy"? This would go on to be a very simultaneously low and high impact mechanic. From the perspective of an individual player it is very possible to ignore this mechanic some or all of the time; for some roles this may even be optimal. However, the existence of this mechanic structurally affects the way that information is gathered and distributed, and even a few people engaging with it can change the overall landscape for players trying to mechsolve an entire night's worth of actions.
For a very long time, Town vs Mafia OC has also had a bit of a "village leader" problem. It is commonly accepted that OC is, to a certain extent, about claiming to a cleared townie and following their orders. Townies have to hope that they eventually get cleared and sheeted to have any fun, Mafia have to hope that the leader fucks up to feel like they can't really do anything. I would personally argue that at many times in history this is a mindset problem, Townies who are not skeptical enough to self organize or buck the system, Mafia who are not proactive enough to try to mole or create interesting lies which mess with the leader. However, I think it is just as often a design problem. Many games over the years have explicitly punished leading with really blunt hammers like explicit mole roles or recruitment. Many more have leaned into the village leader dynamic and appointed safe leader roles but gave the town a thinner margin of error. I will not claim to have been perfect in solving this problem, but I believe that between the splitting mechanic and the design of the mafia roles I was able to try for a balance where village leading is a good idea, but requires an appropriate sacrifice or leap of faith to get going. Stepping up early and asking to get cleared or coming forward as an information role have consequences, and almost no role generates results on your target so proving anything is hard. Individual private communication and centralized village leader communication both have their advantages in a game like this, and I think I am liking the idea of lower information OC games more after seeing that this played out somewhat successfully.
This game was sized small and planned to have very easy, traditional roles (with a few exceptions to accommodate the mechanic). I think this worked out okay. We had a lot of new players this time and I really appreciated the effort they all put in! I think this game also succeeded at, in general, teaching the right lessons about what OC is about and how to play it. What are the risks you can take, what are the plays you can do? To that end, I would also say this was an overall success in demonstrating what a good simple game can look like. Hopefully in future years I can design bigger OCs and feel comfortable that players will be active and engaged, because it's interesting to think about how this might have been different as a 2v1 or bigger game.
The splitting mechanic was inspired by the fact that in many games, like Rock Paper Scissors, you are incentivized to play a "mixed strategy", to roll a dice and decide to do each action 1/3 of the time. In practice, it was a little divisive and perhaps a little more confusing to players than I was expecting. In particular, the confusion between "results giving" roles that can't realistically be split and roles that "just happen" on a partial basis was difficult to explain and internalize. This difference was made clear in the PMs, but the fact that saying that results roles are "results giving" is a bit of a causality reversal (I decide what gives results) is especially confusing. Players did pick this up in the end and I was good about answering questions, but I'm unsure how I would have improved initial communication here. Players also found the intent of this mechanic confusing. "Okay, I can split my investigation, but why would I do this?" This is a valid question! It's typically a poor idea to introduce a mechanic into the game that people aren't excited to use or don't understand the benefit of. There are a lot of niche benefits to splitting certain roles in certain situations (and we'll go over those later), and I wanted the discovery of those benefits to feel really cool, but if people don't notice it, it never happens. But really, one of the core motivations of the mechanic to me, is the idea of control. There are no passive roles in this game, every role targets. And they don't just target, they can target 3 players in whatever continuous distribution you want. I felt that would give players more ownership over their role and decisions. Even if they didn't decide to split, they might think about it. Targeting is fun! Deciding what to do with your action is fun! So I wanted to facilitate that and I felt that was successful.
As I alluded to earlier, the low info nature of the mechanic also passively creates a lot of interesting dynamics just by existing. So your action failed, but why? And by how much? Players are invited to solve the mystery because beyond the benefits of determining the source of failure, savvy players can efficiently catch up on partially failed actions if they can figure out how much they need to succeed. There were versions of this mechanic drafted where I gave players a lot more info on what happened and I now believe those would have been a mistake. For further motivation, Disruptive and Protective roles are very powerful in the short term when split: taking just a little bit of the edge off a few actions at the same time effectively stops all of them, and the affected players don't know how much and may waste effort overcompensating. But in the long term against a well coordinated team, this can fall apart very quickly if players can solve the puzzle. That's a cool dynamic! And well worth exploring in bigger, longer, meatier games now that some people are familiar with how this one played. I think as far as experimental mechanics go, this was successful in exploring a unique niche, adding a bit of spice to a game with already good bones.
Finally I'd like to talk about the role of mechsolving and tactics vs the role of social dynamics and scumhunting in a traditional OC game, becuase I think that was balanced and showcased well here. The Town in this game, demonstrably, had very poor mechanical tactics; almost no role action of consequence on the town side resolved after Evie was voted out thanks in part to excellent Mafia tactics. However, the Mafia were not able to have enough of a social presence to capitalize fully on this advantage; with lower total info the game was able to play somewhat as a NOC in the endgame. Clearing the way to making convincing lies is half the battle, the half the mafia decidedly won with nearly full info on the town side and well targeted disruption. Slotting into the towncore and making surgical lies that implicate others is the other half, and the Mafia were not very active at doing this. Their fakes and roles were meant to indicate that they'd be allowed to make more brazen lies which would be very hard to disprove in a game like this. While this game was close it demonstrated the power that combining mechsolving with traditional mafia intuition can have: the power to tell nonsensical lies from sensible ones. I do think that it would have been interesting to see a game where both Town and Mafia's holes were improved (especially if Evie wasn't randed early), because I'm not convinced this game was unbalanced in favor of Town but it sure seems like it would have taken the Mafia a lot of effort to close the gap in the face of tighter town tactics. I did intend for a Town win to involve both mechsolving and social reads, and for a Mafia win to involve tactical prowess and active social engineering, and I think that someone reviewing the history of this game would understand the role all these aspects play in an ideal game. There are limits to what I can do in such a small game, but within those constraints I felt this toed that line well enough.
Roles and Players:
Town:
AirC/Alignment Cop/Won D6
Role: Obviously strong for town if hidden and disastrous if exposed. You're probably not meant to split this one unless you can sniff out the disruption. And it isn't a proper investigate: there's no town role that can determine Mafia abilities, so you have to vote them out to discover them. This was really important, as keeping those secret deepens the mystery of how and how much actions were able to fail.
Player: AirC boldly stepped up to lead after getting a guilty result on Evie and quickly found out that that means getting put in roleblock hell from now until the end of time. From an objective perspective, AirC made a lot of mistakes as village leader, and most of them are exactly the kind of thing that's easy to learn through effort and experience. With just a little more organization and intent behind directing actions, they could have pivoted the sacrifice of losing their Cop into a stronger town position going into the endgame. But AirC's performance in this game also makes me confident that they have skills to take the lessons from this game into the next, and that they are overall a strong player with a lot of potential. Lying about your results to clear bluedoom in the face of a disgruntled town with no info is BOLD. AirC talked to players and had strong opinions and reads, and is exactly the kind of person I want to see continue to play on this site.
Surmen6781/Bodyguard/Voted D3
Role: Traditional BG. As with the other protectives, you can short term protect a lot of people at once by splitting this action, and this was a real threat to the mafia when it was backed up by ShyPebble, protecting most of the game at once and only countered by perfect tactics.
Player: Surmen idled this role and didn't seem to follow along with how this game was progressing until it was too late. That's partially on me, I did check in and see if they had questions but ultimately I was really busy and in a bad irl spot this game and couldn't make a more proactive effort in noticing a new player, counting who was in the discord, or badgering people for actions. I also did not write rules and PMs with people entirely new to mafia in mind. I promise I will do better as a host in this respect in the future, as is more typical for me. Until then, I hope you give Smogon Mafia another chance.
Former/Safeguard/Killed N3
Role: Traditional SG. This was meant to block the persuade, freeze, and info roleblock on the mafia side while being a risk to the info roles, mayor, and BG on the town side. Not exactly the least risky role, but in the hands of town they can better play around the risks as long as Former is honest about the percentages. Fun fact: you can use the partial safeguard to make shittier partial omniguards by partially blocking a BG and all other nonkilling actions. A 50% SG + 100% BG is a 50% OG.
Player: Former played a good, clean game, using logic and scumhunting to come forward with hard reads and narrow down the PoE early. He might not have been killed as early if he wasn't so proactive and correct, and might have saved Surmen or village leadership if things went slightly differently. I'm glad you were able to join us again, and I'm glad you had a good time playing and watching.
ItsScaryCary/Dampener/Voted D4
Role: I should have just called this the roleblocker but because you could partially RB someone and there was an amplifier in the game it gets to be the Dampener. Anyway, pretty straightforward stuff, very powerful against most of the mafia roles and very nasty if pointed the wrong way.
Player: ItsScaryCary also seemed new and played a bit for chaos, baffling people with their actions and their called shot on Former dying the night before they were voted. I think being independent and playing independently have their advantages in OC (we'll get to that again when talking about JALMONT), but if you're getting voted as a result there's probably something to learn about communicating better. Again, I hope to see you in future games and am curious to see how things go in them.
thechickening/Tracker/Killed N2
Role: The other big town information role. This never got even a single result, but can often be as good as the alignment cop if the Mafia are not careful: between their two actions each and the kill they could be really exposed if they split among 9 people!
Player: thechickening was caught in a bind early and never got to contribute. Unfortunate, but so it goes in TvM of any flavor. I'm always happy to see you play and I'm glad you joined.
Jalmont/Mayor/Won D6
Role: The targeting mayor was an interesting one, forcing them to play a fluid game and put split influence into people they trust in order to build up for a strong endgame. Jalmont did exactly that, but was harried by roleblocking and safeguards at every turn because he wouldn't claim early. Nevertheless, the threat of this role proved to be very important in the endgame.
Player: Jalmont kept his role from town leadership almost all game, and was harassed by disruption as a result, but he kept a cool head and was able to help sort out the mafia in the end on vibes and proper NOC scumhunting. By being independent with a role that wasn't too disruptive when kept secret he was better able to interrogate AirC when the time came after town's setbacks. Recognizing when a player is making decisions you wouldn't make, but still town, is a really difficult skill at times and was well displayed here. Thanks for playing!
Bluedoom/Observer/Won D6
Role: This game was originally going to have "Quantum" flavor, and this role name is the last vestige of this idea. The theory is that there's a multiverse of all the mafia games ever played, and the split actions are affecting that player in some superposition, creating universes where one thing happened and ones where another did. The observer in this paradigm is supposed to "resolve" the superposition and make it so that only one thing happens, just like in actual quantum mechanics. I scrapped the flavor because it would be confusing and fun for only me, haha. As for the role, this is a niche but potentially strong role in endgame if the Mafia rely on splitting actions to setup future nights (as Mekkah did) and one of the only hard provable roles among the town to try and lead with. Taking that step was always meant to be a bit of a risk, though, and I expected this role to try to lead sometimes and sit back other times without either needing to happen for a healthy game.
Player: Bluedoom was another strong player in this game. Projecting good vibes early led to a strong narrative surrounding why he was frozen and caused him to get targeted by the freeze in the first place. He was so considered confirmed town that AirC felt confident lying about it. He also contributed to a strong NOC endgame and was important in securing the in for town. Thanks for playing!
Shypebble/Backup/Killed N4
Role: Backup is the most boring role in the game because it doesn't get to do stuff right away but it's necessary vegetables to keep town from being too flimsy. Losing Tommy's Amplifier role and Surmen's BG early were both really hard, and Shypebble ended up picking up the BG at a time when it would be really disruptive for Mafia.
Player: Shypebble was new to OC, but was active and attentive, talking to players and learning a lot of info. They played very well, putting backups on the right players and coming up with a strong defense the night they died. They snagged the BG and protected themselves and two other players, only dying because they listed themselves first and were vulnerable to the redirect (which would have been very difficult to prevent without hindsight). They even spotted the hole in Mekkah's fake PM! It was written and sent to me in such a rush that I was only able to fix the most glaring errors, and close investigation revealed another word ("that") that I wouldn't have written if I was given time. Well done, and I'm excited to see you play in the future.
Tommy/Amplifier/Killed N1
Role: This was a fun take on an ensurer role, imo. Rather than guarantee an action, this role adds to it and makes it much more likely to happen. This is also a main motivator for town to split actions: a 150% action is less impactful, generally, than 3 50% actions or a 100% and 50% action. It's a shame this role didn't get much play because it would have helped a few of the issues town was experiencing.
Player: Namekilled on N1 for lack of a better option. Sucks to get into a game and leave early for that reason, but such is the burden of being a gangster. This is certainly one of the appeals of a fully informed game like a multifaction.
Mafia:
Mekkah/Info Roleblock+Limited Safeguard/Voted D6
Role: This role pulls a lot of weight in protecting the mafia from info roles and preventing the village from organizing. It also lets Mafia facilitate lies and block roles like the Mayor. If a cop claims, they can get roleblocked. If a leader wants to be cleared, they can be safeguarded. In a vacuum, Mafia members can be safeguarded to delay info roles. This role had the fakeclaim of watcher, not necessarily to claim watcher, but to let mafia know that they can generally make wild targeting claims and get away with it, using the limited SG to cover themselves. All the mafia roles were meant to feel strong but cover a specific niche, so the town feels like they make progress when they reveal and eliminate a core aspect of their gameplan. This role was instrumental in opening up any chance the mafia had of forcing misvotes from behind.
Player: Mekkah was by far the most active and influential player on the mafia. He planned and coordinated actions and had a believable story ready for the town. 50% OG is a role I would put in this game if it was bigger or made up of more weird roles generally. He almost locked in a mafia win at the very end, but didn't react to Jalmont's stealth vote. I personally hate time sensitive stuff like that and am sorry you had to deal with it in a European time zone. Mekkah put in a herculean effort from what I thought was a pretty abysmal early position for mafia and made it as close a game as it possibly could be, and as always, I appreciate your participation in my game. Thanks!
Zorbees/Adelynn/Redirector+Investigate/Voted D5
Role: This role is the main control role on the mafia side. By trying to investigate town roles, they gain the info needed to preform surgical and maximally damaging redirects. This was another very powerful role that would be devastating to lose early to a rand, but the redirect was balanced slightly by only taking the highest weighted action, unlike roleblocks which hit everything. By splitting actions, town can ensure that at least some of their stuff goes where it's supposed to. Additionally, successfully redirecting an action is a red flag for town, because they will know they got results on someone they weren't supposed to, cutting through some of the mystery and forcing them to be careful and telling them what to look for. This role was given the fakeclaim of martyr, which they can perfectly replicate but don't want to if they want to be efficient, making for interesting decisions.
Player: zorbees was very busy and didn't contribute much before subbing. Adelynn did a great job being active in mafia chat and gave good vibes to the remaining town players with her claim. If she didn't play scared and committed to a more active presence and a stronger lie, I think she never would have been voted. Why pretend to miss AirC's message about changing targets? The mafia is roleblocking them anyway, so they'll never know you didn't hit them. I know you didn't have time to play initially, so I really appreciate the effort you put in after the sub and am glad you got to play.
Evie/Persuader+Freezer/Voted D2
Role: This role is the main vote control role on the mafia side. In endgame, the persuades and freezes can force the game to end in the mafia's favor with 1-2 fewer misvotes required. As with the mayor, you're meant to seed persuades early by splitting the role to setup for big turns later. The Freeze is a controversial choice from the older era of OC but I felt it was a good inclusion here as a combination disruptive/fakeclaim. Alongside the observer it's the only other provable role, and it cuts mafia off from their private chat, so it's a believable town claim for an ambitious mafia trying to mole, the upside of which is enormous. (Again, some amount of social engineering should be necessary for a mafia win imo) Alternatively, the mafia can come up with another claim and try to play the freezer as a face up anti town role and cut the leader off. This is what they did, but due to the early rand we never got to see this play out, and mafia really felt the loss of this role in endgame.
Player: Evie was active and interested, and did a good job communicating with her team. She was put in a bad spot early by the rand and imo did a good job fighting by claiming the investigate on chickening. It's really hard to keep your cool in that situation and even harder to win that 50-50. It was unfortunate your game ended this way, but I was glad to see you play and hope to see you in future OCs.
Thank you all for playing Gambling Mafia! I hope you enjoyed, and I always appreciate having such great players test out my ideas. Until next time!
Role PMs (Including fakes): https://docs.google.com/document/d/14yv9dLTXmqHe3hAq64MDDF5Ezk7IDaVQug6T_tU0udo/edit?usp=sharing
Sheet (messy): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W8C9H1lJ8LtDVndS1ko034oluCQHK2CcV55AyHV-ffU/edit?usp=sharing
Mafia Discord: https://discord.gg/dABydh3VkU
Design Intentions:
So my last post-revival game was Time Travel mafia, a dizzyingly complicated fully informed multifaction with roles that are Swiss army knives and an overall gimmick so large and all-encompassing that it twists the entire game into a big, knotted puzzle. This was and in my opinion still is my Magnum Opus, but it was very inaccessible even with a team of people helping new players out. With Big games being Vivas and traditional OC taking a bit of a backseat, I wanted to go back to the roots and design a relatively barebones OC which had good bones and good dynamics. Like with Time Travel, I wanted to showcase the unique qualities of Outside Communication games, how they engender an interesting form of mechsolving and how that can dovetail with the traditional dynamics of social games and NOC mafia "scumhunting". In this one, I also wanted to try a light additive mechanic that was inspired by my own mathematical study of Game Theory: how does the game, and in particular the endgame, change when players are allowed to play a "mixed strategy"? This would go on to be a very simultaneously low and high impact mechanic. From the perspective of an individual player it is very possible to ignore this mechanic some or all of the time; for some roles this may even be optimal. However, the existence of this mechanic structurally affects the way that information is gathered and distributed, and even a few people engaging with it can change the overall landscape for players trying to mechsolve an entire night's worth of actions.
For a very long time, Town vs Mafia OC has also had a bit of a "village leader" problem. It is commonly accepted that OC is, to a certain extent, about claiming to a cleared townie and following their orders. Townies have to hope that they eventually get cleared and sheeted to have any fun, Mafia have to hope that the leader fucks up to feel like they can't really do anything. I would personally argue that at many times in history this is a mindset problem, Townies who are not skeptical enough to self organize or buck the system, Mafia who are not proactive enough to try to mole or create interesting lies which mess with the leader. However, I think it is just as often a design problem. Many games over the years have explicitly punished leading with really blunt hammers like explicit mole roles or recruitment. Many more have leaned into the village leader dynamic and appointed safe leader roles but gave the town a thinner margin of error. I will not claim to have been perfect in solving this problem, but I believe that between the splitting mechanic and the design of the mafia roles I was able to try for a balance where village leading is a good idea, but requires an appropriate sacrifice or leap of faith to get going. Stepping up early and asking to get cleared or coming forward as an information role have consequences, and almost no role generates results on your target so proving anything is hard. Individual private communication and centralized village leader communication both have their advantages in a game like this, and I think I am liking the idea of lower information OC games more after seeing that this played out somewhat successfully.
This game was sized small and planned to have very easy, traditional roles (with a few exceptions to accommodate the mechanic). I think this worked out okay. We had a lot of new players this time and I really appreciated the effort they all put in! I think this game also succeeded at, in general, teaching the right lessons about what OC is about and how to play it. What are the risks you can take, what are the plays you can do? To that end, I would also say this was an overall success in demonstrating what a good simple game can look like. Hopefully in future years I can design bigger OCs and feel comfortable that players will be active and engaged, because it's interesting to think about how this might have been different as a 2v1 or bigger game.
The splitting mechanic was inspired by the fact that in many games, like Rock Paper Scissors, you are incentivized to play a "mixed strategy", to roll a dice and decide to do each action 1/3 of the time. In practice, it was a little divisive and perhaps a little more confusing to players than I was expecting. In particular, the confusion between "results giving" roles that can't realistically be split and roles that "just happen" on a partial basis was difficult to explain and internalize. This difference was made clear in the PMs, but the fact that saying that results roles are "results giving" is a bit of a causality reversal (I decide what gives results) is especially confusing. Players did pick this up in the end and I was good about answering questions, but I'm unsure how I would have improved initial communication here. Players also found the intent of this mechanic confusing. "Okay, I can split my investigation, but why would I do this?" This is a valid question! It's typically a poor idea to introduce a mechanic into the game that people aren't excited to use or don't understand the benefit of. There are a lot of niche benefits to splitting certain roles in certain situations (and we'll go over those later), and I wanted the discovery of those benefits to feel really cool, but if people don't notice it, it never happens. But really, one of the core motivations of the mechanic to me, is the idea of control. There are no passive roles in this game, every role targets. And they don't just target, they can target 3 players in whatever continuous distribution you want. I felt that would give players more ownership over their role and decisions. Even if they didn't decide to split, they might think about it. Targeting is fun! Deciding what to do with your action is fun! So I wanted to facilitate that and I felt that was successful.
As I alluded to earlier, the low info nature of the mechanic also passively creates a lot of interesting dynamics just by existing. So your action failed, but why? And by how much? Players are invited to solve the mystery because beyond the benefits of determining the source of failure, savvy players can efficiently catch up on partially failed actions if they can figure out how much they need to succeed. There were versions of this mechanic drafted where I gave players a lot more info on what happened and I now believe those would have been a mistake. For further motivation, Disruptive and Protective roles are very powerful in the short term when split: taking just a little bit of the edge off a few actions at the same time effectively stops all of them, and the affected players don't know how much and may waste effort overcompensating. But in the long term against a well coordinated team, this can fall apart very quickly if players can solve the puzzle. That's a cool dynamic! And well worth exploring in bigger, longer, meatier games now that some people are familiar with how this one played. I think as far as experimental mechanics go, this was successful in exploring a unique niche, adding a bit of spice to a game with already good bones.
Finally I'd like to talk about the role of mechsolving and tactics vs the role of social dynamics and scumhunting in a traditional OC game, becuase I think that was balanced and showcased well here. The Town in this game, demonstrably, had very poor mechanical tactics; almost no role action of consequence on the town side resolved after Evie was voted out thanks in part to excellent Mafia tactics. However, the Mafia were not able to have enough of a social presence to capitalize fully on this advantage; with lower total info the game was able to play somewhat as a NOC in the endgame. Clearing the way to making convincing lies is half the battle, the half the mafia decidedly won with nearly full info on the town side and well targeted disruption. Slotting into the towncore and making surgical lies that implicate others is the other half, and the Mafia were not very active at doing this. Their fakes and roles were meant to indicate that they'd be allowed to make more brazen lies which would be very hard to disprove in a game like this. While this game was close it demonstrated the power that combining mechsolving with traditional mafia intuition can have: the power to tell nonsensical lies from sensible ones. I do think that it would have been interesting to see a game where both Town and Mafia's holes were improved (especially if Evie wasn't randed early), because I'm not convinced this game was unbalanced in favor of Town but it sure seems like it would have taken the Mafia a lot of effort to close the gap in the face of tighter town tactics. I did intend for a Town win to involve both mechsolving and social reads, and for a Mafia win to involve tactical prowess and active social engineering, and I think that someone reviewing the history of this game would understand the role all these aspects play in an ideal game. There are limits to what I can do in such a small game, but within those constraints I felt this toed that line well enough.
Roles and Players:
Town:
AirC/Alignment Cop/Won D6
Role: Obviously strong for town if hidden and disastrous if exposed. You're probably not meant to split this one unless you can sniff out the disruption. And it isn't a proper investigate: there's no town role that can determine Mafia abilities, so you have to vote them out to discover them. This was really important, as keeping those secret deepens the mystery of how and how much actions were able to fail.
Player: AirC boldly stepped up to lead after getting a guilty result on Evie and quickly found out that that means getting put in roleblock hell from now until the end of time. From an objective perspective, AirC made a lot of mistakes as village leader, and most of them are exactly the kind of thing that's easy to learn through effort and experience. With just a little more organization and intent behind directing actions, they could have pivoted the sacrifice of losing their Cop into a stronger town position going into the endgame. But AirC's performance in this game also makes me confident that they have skills to take the lessons from this game into the next, and that they are overall a strong player with a lot of potential. Lying about your results to clear bluedoom in the face of a disgruntled town with no info is BOLD. AirC talked to players and had strong opinions and reads, and is exactly the kind of person I want to see continue to play on this site.
Surmen6781/Bodyguard/Voted D3
Role: Traditional BG. As with the other protectives, you can short term protect a lot of people at once by splitting this action, and this was a real threat to the mafia when it was backed up by ShyPebble, protecting most of the game at once and only countered by perfect tactics.
Player: Surmen idled this role and didn't seem to follow along with how this game was progressing until it was too late. That's partially on me, I did check in and see if they had questions but ultimately I was really busy and in a bad irl spot this game and couldn't make a more proactive effort in noticing a new player, counting who was in the discord, or badgering people for actions. I also did not write rules and PMs with people entirely new to mafia in mind. I promise I will do better as a host in this respect in the future, as is more typical for me. Until then, I hope you give Smogon Mafia another chance.
Former/Safeguard/Killed N3
Role: Traditional SG. This was meant to block the persuade, freeze, and info roleblock on the mafia side while being a risk to the info roles, mayor, and BG on the town side. Not exactly the least risky role, but in the hands of town they can better play around the risks as long as Former is honest about the percentages. Fun fact: you can use the partial safeguard to make shittier partial omniguards by partially blocking a BG and all other nonkilling actions. A 50% SG + 100% BG is a 50% OG.
Player: Former played a good, clean game, using logic and scumhunting to come forward with hard reads and narrow down the PoE early. He might not have been killed as early if he wasn't so proactive and correct, and might have saved Surmen or village leadership if things went slightly differently. I'm glad you were able to join us again, and I'm glad you had a good time playing and watching.
ItsScaryCary/Dampener/Voted D4
Role: I should have just called this the roleblocker but because you could partially RB someone and there was an amplifier in the game it gets to be the Dampener. Anyway, pretty straightforward stuff, very powerful against most of the mafia roles and very nasty if pointed the wrong way.
Player: ItsScaryCary also seemed new and played a bit for chaos, baffling people with their actions and their called shot on Former dying the night before they were voted. I think being independent and playing independently have their advantages in OC (we'll get to that again when talking about JALMONT), but if you're getting voted as a result there's probably something to learn about communicating better. Again, I hope to see you in future games and am curious to see how things go in them.
thechickening/Tracker/Killed N2
Role: The other big town information role. This never got even a single result, but can often be as good as the alignment cop if the Mafia are not careful: between their two actions each and the kill they could be really exposed if they split among 9 people!
Player: thechickening was caught in a bind early and never got to contribute. Unfortunate, but so it goes in TvM of any flavor. I'm always happy to see you play and I'm glad you joined.
Jalmont/Mayor/Won D6
Role: The targeting mayor was an interesting one, forcing them to play a fluid game and put split influence into people they trust in order to build up for a strong endgame. Jalmont did exactly that, but was harried by roleblocking and safeguards at every turn because he wouldn't claim early. Nevertheless, the threat of this role proved to be very important in the endgame.
Player: Jalmont kept his role from town leadership almost all game, and was harassed by disruption as a result, but he kept a cool head and was able to help sort out the mafia in the end on vibes and proper NOC scumhunting. By being independent with a role that wasn't too disruptive when kept secret he was better able to interrogate AirC when the time came after town's setbacks. Recognizing when a player is making decisions you wouldn't make, but still town, is a really difficult skill at times and was well displayed here. Thanks for playing!
Bluedoom/Observer/Won D6
Role: This game was originally going to have "Quantum" flavor, and this role name is the last vestige of this idea. The theory is that there's a multiverse of all the mafia games ever played, and the split actions are affecting that player in some superposition, creating universes where one thing happened and ones where another did. The observer in this paradigm is supposed to "resolve" the superposition and make it so that only one thing happens, just like in actual quantum mechanics. I scrapped the flavor because it would be confusing and fun for only me, haha. As for the role, this is a niche but potentially strong role in endgame if the Mafia rely on splitting actions to setup future nights (as Mekkah did) and one of the only hard provable roles among the town to try and lead with. Taking that step was always meant to be a bit of a risk, though, and I expected this role to try to lead sometimes and sit back other times without either needing to happen for a healthy game.
Player: Bluedoom was another strong player in this game. Projecting good vibes early led to a strong narrative surrounding why he was frozen and caused him to get targeted by the freeze in the first place. He was so considered confirmed town that AirC felt confident lying about it. He also contributed to a strong NOC endgame and was important in securing the in for town. Thanks for playing!
Shypebble/Backup/Killed N4
Role: Backup is the most boring role in the game because it doesn't get to do stuff right away but it's necessary vegetables to keep town from being too flimsy. Losing Tommy's Amplifier role and Surmen's BG early were both really hard, and Shypebble ended up picking up the BG at a time when it would be really disruptive for Mafia.
Player: Shypebble was new to OC, but was active and attentive, talking to players and learning a lot of info. They played very well, putting backups on the right players and coming up with a strong defense the night they died. They snagged the BG and protected themselves and two other players, only dying because they listed themselves first and were vulnerable to the redirect (which would have been very difficult to prevent without hindsight). They even spotted the hole in Mekkah's fake PM! It was written and sent to me in such a rush that I was only able to fix the most glaring errors, and close investigation revealed another word ("that") that I wouldn't have written if I was given time. Well done, and I'm excited to see you play in the future.
Tommy/Amplifier/Killed N1
Role: This was a fun take on an ensurer role, imo. Rather than guarantee an action, this role adds to it and makes it much more likely to happen. This is also a main motivator for town to split actions: a 150% action is less impactful, generally, than 3 50% actions or a 100% and 50% action. It's a shame this role didn't get much play because it would have helped a few of the issues town was experiencing.
Player: Namekilled on N1 for lack of a better option. Sucks to get into a game and leave early for that reason, but such is the burden of being a gangster. This is certainly one of the appeals of a fully informed game like a multifaction.
Mafia:
Mekkah/Info Roleblock+Limited Safeguard/Voted D6
Role: This role pulls a lot of weight in protecting the mafia from info roles and preventing the village from organizing. It also lets Mafia facilitate lies and block roles like the Mayor. If a cop claims, they can get roleblocked. If a leader wants to be cleared, they can be safeguarded. In a vacuum, Mafia members can be safeguarded to delay info roles. This role had the fakeclaim of watcher, not necessarily to claim watcher, but to let mafia know that they can generally make wild targeting claims and get away with it, using the limited SG to cover themselves. All the mafia roles were meant to feel strong but cover a specific niche, so the town feels like they make progress when they reveal and eliminate a core aspect of their gameplan. This role was instrumental in opening up any chance the mafia had of forcing misvotes from behind.
Player: Mekkah was by far the most active and influential player on the mafia. He planned and coordinated actions and had a believable story ready for the town. 50% OG is a role I would put in this game if it was bigger or made up of more weird roles generally. He almost locked in a mafia win at the very end, but didn't react to Jalmont's stealth vote. I personally hate time sensitive stuff like that and am sorry you had to deal with it in a European time zone. Mekkah put in a herculean effort from what I thought was a pretty abysmal early position for mafia and made it as close a game as it possibly could be, and as always, I appreciate your participation in my game. Thanks!
Zorbees/Adelynn/Redirector+Investigate/Voted D5
Role: This role is the main control role on the mafia side. By trying to investigate town roles, they gain the info needed to preform surgical and maximally damaging redirects. This was another very powerful role that would be devastating to lose early to a rand, but the redirect was balanced slightly by only taking the highest weighted action, unlike roleblocks which hit everything. By splitting actions, town can ensure that at least some of their stuff goes where it's supposed to. Additionally, successfully redirecting an action is a red flag for town, because they will know they got results on someone they weren't supposed to, cutting through some of the mystery and forcing them to be careful and telling them what to look for. This role was given the fakeclaim of martyr, which they can perfectly replicate but don't want to if they want to be efficient, making for interesting decisions.
Player: zorbees was very busy and didn't contribute much before subbing. Adelynn did a great job being active in mafia chat and gave good vibes to the remaining town players with her claim. If she didn't play scared and committed to a more active presence and a stronger lie, I think she never would have been voted. Why pretend to miss AirC's message about changing targets? The mafia is roleblocking them anyway, so they'll never know you didn't hit them. I know you didn't have time to play initially, so I really appreciate the effort you put in after the sub and am glad you got to play.
Evie/Persuader+Freezer/Voted D2
Role: This role is the main vote control role on the mafia side. In endgame, the persuades and freezes can force the game to end in the mafia's favor with 1-2 fewer misvotes required. As with the mayor, you're meant to seed persuades early by splitting the role to setup for big turns later. The Freeze is a controversial choice from the older era of OC but I felt it was a good inclusion here as a combination disruptive/fakeclaim. Alongside the observer it's the only other provable role, and it cuts mafia off from their private chat, so it's a believable town claim for an ambitious mafia trying to mole, the upside of which is enormous. (Again, some amount of social engineering should be necessary for a mafia win imo) Alternatively, the mafia can come up with another claim and try to play the freezer as a face up anti town role and cut the leader off. This is what they did, but due to the early rand we never got to see this play out, and mafia really felt the loss of this role in endgame.
Player: Evie was active and interested, and did a good job communicating with her team. She was put in a bad spot early by the rand and imo did a good job fighting by claiming the investigate on chickening. It's really hard to keep your cool in that situation and even harder to win that 50-50. It was unfortunate your game ended this way, but I was glad to see you play and hope to see you in future OCs.
Thank you all for playing Gambling Mafia! I hope you enjoyed, and I always appreciate having such great players test out my ideas. Until next time!
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it was fun to confuse people I'll be back