-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
Mafia vs Village Companions Mafia [POSTGAME]
- Thread starter Blazade
- Start date
TWO DEATHS
The first is Strike Man
The second is Spring Man
An unexpectedly fortunate event for the village, but will the feeling last through the day's lynch?
Results going out
The first is Strike Man
This was Aura Guardian's last creation, and he is removed from the game. The Blue Team still has members left, however.
The second is Spring Man
An unexpectedly fortunate event for the village, but will the feeling last through the day's lynch?
Results going out
GAME OVER
Yamato Man was Kid Ford, an alias of Paperblade's who could ability check and control the sleeper agent. With this the Masterminds are eliminated.
Pidge would have been able to choose whether to be a Personal Trainer or a Mayor tonight, his alias would have been the Red Team's last.
tonithetourguide's alias, the last of the Blue Team, was Cloud Man, she was:
Da Letter El:
Cancerous/Stone Man:
I will post more thoughts, perhaps briefly, tomorrow. Thank you for playing, everyone!
Yamato Man was Kid Ford, an alias of Paperblade's who could ability check and control the sleeper agent. With this the Masterminds are eliminated.
Pidge would have been able to choose whether to be a Personal Trainer or a Mayor tonight, his alias would have been the Red Team's last.
tonithetourguide's alias, the last of the Blue Team, was Cloud Man, she was:
Regardless, the Conspirators hold majority over non killers, even if mayor is chosen by Pidge (no alias can vote without outing themselves and endgame scenarios involving a very heroic personal trainer are defeated by the safeguard or simply by idling after the first kill), and so they win the game! They are:
Da Letter El:
Cancerous/Stone Man:
I will post more thoughts, perhaps briefly, tomorrow. Thank you for playing, everyone!
this was the worst moling job I have ever done
I've never moled so flawlessly
I've never moled so flawlessly
gg; I'm not sure what to think because I mostly just followed ANY leadership due to lack of people trying to lead.
POSTGAME
So it's no secret that even more active players are having less and less time for big mafia games, myself included, but I had the idea to make a game like this and realized "Hey I can essentially make a semi complicated game on the scale of Paper Mario or Metroid Prime 2 with only half the playerlist!" And this, I felt would make for an interesting dynamic, a few veteran players sticking around longer, balancing the social and tactical dynamics that come with multiple roles. But I severely overestimated the potential flow of information. In short, most of the night actions were decided out of total self interest or essentially randomly, causing some frustration when luck swung too far in one direction. The lack of information sharing also caused the playerlist to be very behind on the NPC sleuthing curve, causing everything to drag on far longer than expected. (To be fair, this did have a slight rubber banding effect which gave the factions which were behind a chance) I don't think anyone can be blamed for this. Many players were busy and you can't really do anything about that, others took my advice about being careful too much to heart
Aside from the central companion mechanic, the main thing I decided to experiment with was no explicit alliance checking. And looking that the results from all of the early nights I actually think that worked out very nicely. If everyone had shared their results there would have been a compelling reason to lynch a mafia member during each of the first 4 days. This kind of dynamic, deciding lynches by inconsistent results rather than hard clearing, is something I've been missing for a while. I also took a few risks with some of the roles (Transhuman, 2 for 1 bodyguards, Robot creators, roles that were ambiguous about being the same alignment, limited "sleeper control" abilities on the mafia) with mixed success, but anyone who's played my games should know that I'm willing to make things a little swingier in the short term in exchange for more interesting interactions overall.
I figure there were a lot of tools, especially in a 4 faction game, for a faction which was initially behind to bounce back, but 2 mislynches and 2 misvigges and both the vigs dying was not something I intended people to recover from easily, which really puts a damper on overall morale. To that end, I'm sorry for not anticipating this kind of thing and employing an NPC mechanic which just make things worse on that front.
Red Team
Hitmonleet/Concrete Man: Eragon/Saphira: Vigilante/Bodyguard
This was the first bodyguard that had to protect themselves, and I thought the dynamic of choosing to risk not using the bodyguard to set up vigilante shots put a fair restriction on a vigilante that was potentially more than 1/2 nights. I think randomly firing like Hitmonleet chose to do was a bit shortsighted, especially when I put Former Hope in the game who gets double protected by one BG, but as far as I understand, essentially everyone but MoodyCloud was asked if it was ok to kill Top Man so luck wasn't on his side I guess.
Former Hope/Toad Man: Rielle "Kit" Peddler: Transhuman Relationship Checker/Alias Hooker
The relationship checker was my single favorite ability in this game, it's an ability that profits off of knowing who the mafia is without actually lynching them. You can trade one of your town aliases for a coveted mafia alias (or 3), and in the late game this information is very important especially when town is ahead. Or you can set up two mafia to find each other's alias with proper social engineering to give them reason to kill each other. The Transhuman mechanic was meant exactly for the kind of stunt Former pulled in claiming he was invincible, and I don't know what compelled tonithetourguide to take the shot because it sure seemed to be working on the mafia. It was also meant to balance the early game need for info with the late game need for npc checking and control.
Jalmont/Crash Man: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson: Detective Trimayor/Watcher
This was the role I saw leading village. It's free to go public without too much risk to the player and it may be one of the towniest roles I have ever created. Being a mayor only really matters in endgame, but boy does this thing ever turn on in endgame. I never would have dreamed Jalmont would get lynched, let alone stealth lynched, over the 2 for 1 deal lynching Haruno would have given the townies that day. Truly heartbreaking.
Pidge/Search Man/???: Duncan Idaho: Martyr/Flexible Backup
The reason this role was a martyr was because when I was running the numbers I gave Red Team much better odds when Duncan Idaho was able to pull a kill, hopefully from one of its more valuable members. Wasting a lynch to proc the death effect, in comparison, seems kind of wasteful on Pidge's part, but I think he was motivated by trying to figure out what would happen and the lack of overall leadership. The fact that Pidge was meant to be Red's ability checker opened the door for a shaky Cancerous safeclaim which created the rubber band effect I wanted.
Blue Team
tonithetourguide/Cloud Man: Slaking/Xatu: Truant Vigilante/Magic Bounce Tracker with Skill Swap
This was my favorite set of two roles in the game. To get a Skill Swap off neither Xatu nor the alias being targeted could be targeted by anything else but the benefits were so steep that it had to have been worth trying a few times. Moving the Magic Bounce to the bodyguard or information roles, or going for the dream and enabling your every night vig while crippling another mafia member to 1/2 night actions, the possibilities were there. Unfortunately after toni got the kill on Former Hope off, she terminally idled and the game had advanced to a state where I couldn't ask someone to sub in good faith. Regrettable.
MoodyCloud/Top Man: Tatara Fujita/Chinatsu Hiyama: Joint Hookers
A pretty strong role early game that I thought stood a better chance of surviving. Probably the most decent role to lead the blue team, but they were meant to have stronger roles that had a harder time stepping up and organizing safely.
zorbees/Cut Man: Saber/Kiritsugu: Bodyguard/OG Empower+Rogue
This is arguably safer than Hitmonleet's 2 in 1 BG in that the alias has to die for the team to die, but less safe in that the BG half is in the more public username half of the team. It also compactifies a little less in that the BG really just needed to stay alive with the rogue and protect other people, not take on vig work. I thought both ideas worked fairly well, but neither were well set up to survive to the late game, which maybe I could have taken more into account.
Aura Guardian/Dust Man/Strike Man/???: Victor Frankenstein/Frankenstein's Monsters: Ability Check/Every ability that was seen by Victor
So this was an obvious extension of the get shots of other abilities kind of role you see in more standard games, but AG got so fucked by the RNG here he didn't pick up any meaningful abilities. Nights 1 and 2 he targets the only players in the game with no night action (DLE and Jalmont), and I actually would have ruled that whatever DLE wrote in his fake PM would be copied as a real ability by AG, which could have caused some real shenanigans. Then he ran into safeguards or idled his ability to create life and get more votes (which was easily necessary), it was just too little, too late.
Conspirators
DLE/???/???: Master Xehanort/Ansem and Xemnas: Dickens/Bodyguard+Hooker and Safeguard+Persuader
What the conspirators were designed to do was wait and survive until the end where they might have a better chance, and this role was the can of snakes that embodied that plan perfectly. I think what was supposed to be DLE's downfall here (at least if he claimed no alias making himself resistant to the relationship check/claimed night actions) was in part a realization that I was only putting one of the fancy roles (Pidge, Former, AG) on the village, and another with a similar mechanic on the mafia, casting doubt on both DLE and cancerous as soon as Pidge died. The other big check I had against this was the companion/alias mechanic as a whole. Maybe he could survive a few lynches or even direct a few, but sooner or later when one half of a pair on the blue team died cleaning the other half it would simply be too many for him to believably survive to endgame. The sooner Ansem and Xemnas were created, the easier it would be to find and deal with them, with the other mafia being more motivated to be distracted by them.
Cancerous/Stone Man: Calvin/Hobbes: Transmogrifier/Ability Check+Secret Persuade
This was supposed to be a pretty standard support role and good for causing chaos/mislynches in the early game. Paradoxically, Cancerous's alias had a strong early game claim in Red ability check, but an indefensible claim for the username half. I think it was pretty clear Cancerous was mafia for a while but I think the biggest thing keeping him around was the Jalmont sub out. When Heal came in I couldn't exactly tell him what Jalmont might have known and idk it looked like Cancerous had just worked his way back into the fold somehow.
Masterminds
Paperblade/Ice Man/Spring Man/Yamato Man: Robert Ford/Dolores/Maeve/Kid Ford: Sleeper Agent+Ability Check/Fortune Teller/Hooker/Ford Backup
Easily the strongest role in the game, able to make 3 robots with a plethora of abilities, control a sleeper agent for mislynches (This was Top Man who died early on in the game), and provide much needed vote security in the endgame once they had wrested control over the other factions. The one issue for it is I never gave it a fighting chance, safeclaim wise. Any attempt to make robots early could be foiled by extensive night action analysis, the relationship checker, or a random vig/mafia kill. Attempts to curb the timing of these robots or clean one's self as an ability check would be met with scrutiny by the more provable roles on the read team, Cancerous moling attempts notwithstanding. It was a good dynamic, one well worth exploring, and by rights Paperblade should have been lynched just about every day if information were more free flowing. But capitalising on village mistakes and taking control is exactly what this faction was meant to do and if they went after the Conspirators in the mid game (as Paperblade had evidence to do) they might have stood a chance at winning. Of note, Paperblade could have chosen to make a "Teddy" instead of one of his other robots, which would have been a Decoy and worked nicely with Haruno.
Haruno/Aqua Man: Dr Will Castor: Transhuman Bodyguard/Safeguard / Watcher/Persuader
Since there's only one vote between them, Haruno's role was meant to balance out Paperblade's and increase the up front resilience of the faction as a whole. The fuckery that was supposed to be created by this role was supposed to be balanced by the fact that the town had a role that worked the same way in Former, and that some of Haruno's roles were obvious (like the persuade and SG), and when he wasn't using those his username would be more easy to lynch or he'd be idling. I think I saw mostly what I wanted to see in that regard, but it definitely stings to have to deal with this roadblock suboptimally when the village is already behind.
Conclusion
Thanks again for playing! I know it was a bit rocky, but I hope it was enjoyable for some all the same. I haven't given up on OC yet and I'll be back with something new in due time.
So it's no secret that even more active players are having less and less time for big mafia games, myself included, but I had the idea to make a game like this and realized "Hey I can essentially make a semi complicated game on the scale of Paper Mario or Metroid Prime 2 with only half the playerlist!" And this, I felt would make for an interesting dynamic, a few veteran players sticking around longer, balancing the social and tactical dynamics that come with multiple roles. But I severely overestimated the potential flow of information. In short, most of the night actions were decided out of total self interest or essentially randomly, causing some frustration when luck swung too far in one direction. The lack of information sharing also caused the playerlist to be very behind on the NPC sleuthing curve, causing everything to drag on far longer than expected. (To be fair, this did have a slight rubber banding effect which gave the factions which were behind a chance) I don't think anyone can be blamed for this. Many players were busy and you can't really do anything about that, others took my advice about being careful too much to heart
Aside from the central companion mechanic, the main thing I decided to experiment with was no explicit alliance checking. And looking that the results from all of the early nights I actually think that worked out very nicely. If everyone had shared their results there would have been a compelling reason to lynch a mafia member during each of the first 4 days. This kind of dynamic, deciding lynches by inconsistent results rather than hard clearing, is something I've been missing for a while. I also took a few risks with some of the roles (Transhuman, 2 for 1 bodyguards, Robot creators, roles that were ambiguous about being the same alignment, limited "sleeper control" abilities on the mafia) with mixed success, but anyone who's played my games should know that I'm willing to make things a little swingier in the short term in exchange for more interesting interactions overall.
I figure there were a lot of tools, especially in a 4 faction game, for a faction which was initially behind to bounce back, but 2 mislynches and 2 misvigges and both the vigs dying was not something I intended people to recover from easily, which really puts a damper on overall morale. To that end, I'm sorry for not anticipating this kind of thing and employing an NPC mechanic which just make things worse on that front.
Red Team
Hitmonleet/Concrete Man: Eragon/Saphira: Vigilante/Bodyguard
This was the first bodyguard that had to protect themselves, and I thought the dynamic of choosing to risk not using the bodyguard to set up vigilante shots put a fair restriction on a vigilante that was potentially more than 1/2 nights. I think randomly firing like Hitmonleet chose to do was a bit shortsighted, especially when I put Former Hope in the game who gets double protected by one BG, but as far as I understand, essentially everyone but MoodyCloud was asked if it was ok to kill Top Man so luck wasn't on his side I guess.
Former Hope/Toad Man: Rielle "Kit" Peddler: Transhuman Relationship Checker/Alias Hooker
The relationship checker was my single favorite ability in this game, it's an ability that profits off of knowing who the mafia is without actually lynching them. You can trade one of your town aliases for a coveted mafia alias (or 3), and in the late game this information is very important especially when town is ahead. Or you can set up two mafia to find each other's alias with proper social engineering to give them reason to kill each other. The Transhuman mechanic was meant exactly for the kind of stunt Former pulled in claiming he was invincible, and I don't know what compelled tonithetourguide to take the shot because it sure seemed to be working on the mafia. It was also meant to balance the early game need for info with the late game need for npc checking and control.
Jalmont/Crash Man: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson: Detective Trimayor/Watcher
This was the role I saw leading village. It's free to go public without too much risk to the player and it may be one of the towniest roles I have ever created. Being a mayor only really matters in endgame, but boy does this thing ever turn on in endgame. I never would have dreamed Jalmont would get lynched, let alone stealth lynched, over the 2 for 1 deal lynching Haruno would have given the townies that day. Truly heartbreaking.
Pidge/Search Man/???: Duncan Idaho: Martyr/Flexible Backup
The reason this role was a martyr was because when I was running the numbers I gave Red Team much better odds when Duncan Idaho was able to pull a kill, hopefully from one of its more valuable members. Wasting a lynch to proc the death effect, in comparison, seems kind of wasteful on Pidge's part, but I think he was motivated by trying to figure out what would happen and the lack of overall leadership. The fact that Pidge was meant to be Red's ability checker opened the door for a shaky Cancerous safeclaim which created the rubber band effect I wanted.
Blue Team
tonithetourguide/Cloud Man: Slaking/Xatu: Truant Vigilante/Magic Bounce Tracker with Skill Swap
This was my favorite set of two roles in the game. To get a Skill Swap off neither Xatu nor the alias being targeted could be targeted by anything else but the benefits were so steep that it had to have been worth trying a few times. Moving the Magic Bounce to the bodyguard or information roles, or going for the dream and enabling your every night vig while crippling another mafia member to 1/2 night actions, the possibilities were there. Unfortunately after toni got the kill on Former Hope off, she terminally idled and the game had advanced to a state where I couldn't ask someone to sub in good faith. Regrettable.
MoodyCloud/Top Man: Tatara Fujita/Chinatsu Hiyama: Joint Hookers
A pretty strong role early game that I thought stood a better chance of surviving. Probably the most decent role to lead the blue team, but they were meant to have stronger roles that had a harder time stepping up and organizing safely.
zorbees/Cut Man: Saber/Kiritsugu: Bodyguard/OG Empower+Rogue
This is arguably safer than Hitmonleet's 2 in 1 BG in that the alias has to die for the team to die, but less safe in that the BG half is in the more public username half of the team. It also compactifies a little less in that the BG really just needed to stay alive with the rogue and protect other people, not take on vig work. I thought both ideas worked fairly well, but neither were well set up to survive to the late game, which maybe I could have taken more into account.
Aura Guardian/Dust Man/Strike Man/???: Victor Frankenstein/Frankenstein's Monsters: Ability Check/Every ability that was seen by Victor
So this was an obvious extension of the get shots of other abilities kind of role you see in more standard games, but AG got so fucked by the RNG here he didn't pick up any meaningful abilities. Nights 1 and 2 he targets the only players in the game with no night action (DLE and Jalmont), and I actually would have ruled that whatever DLE wrote in his fake PM would be copied as a real ability by AG, which could have caused some real shenanigans. Then he ran into safeguards or idled his ability to create life and get more votes (which was easily necessary), it was just too little, too late.
Conspirators
DLE/???/???: Master Xehanort/Ansem and Xemnas: Dickens/Bodyguard+Hooker and Safeguard+Persuader
What the conspirators were designed to do was wait and survive until the end where they might have a better chance, and this role was the can of snakes that embodied that plan perfectly. I think what was supposed to be DLE's downfall here (at least if he claimed no alias making himself resistant to the relationship check/claimed night actions) was in part a realization that I was only putting one of the fancy roles (Pidge, Former, AG) on the village, and another with a similar mechanic on the mafia, casting doubt on both DLE and cancerous as soon as Pidge died. The other big check I had against this was the companion/alias mechanic as a whole. Maybe he could survive a few lynches or even direct a few, but sooner or later when one half of a pair on the blue team died cleaning the other half it would simply be too many for him to believably survive to endgame. The sooner Ansem and Xemnas were created, the easier it would be to find and deal with them, with the other mafia being more motivated to be distracted by them.
Cancerous/Stone Man: Calvin/Hobbes: Transmogrifier/Ability Check+Secret Persuade
This was supposed to be a pretty standard support role and good for causing chaos/mislynches in the early game. Paradoxically, Cancerous's alias had a strong early game claim in Red ability check, but an indefensible claim for the username half. I think it was pretty clear Cancerous was mafia for a while but I think the biggest thing keeping him around was the Jalmont sub out. When Heal came in I couldn't exactly tell him what Jalmont might have known and idk it looked like Cancerous had just worked his way back into the fold somehow.
Masterminds
Paperblade/Ice Man/Spring Man/Yamato Man: Robert Ford/Dolores/Maeve/Kid Ford: Sleeper Agent+Ability Check/Fortune Teller/Hooker/Ford Backup
Easily the strongest role in the game, able to make 3 robots with a plethora of abilities, control a sleeper agent for mislynches (This was Top Man who died early on in the game), and provide much needed vote security in the endgame once they had wrested control over the other factions. The one issue for it is I never gave it a fighting chance, safeclaim wise. Any attempt to make robots early could be foiled by extensive night action analysis, the relationship checker, or a random vig/mafia kill. Attempts to curb the timing of these robots or clean one's self as an ability check would be met with scrutiny by the more provable roles on the read team, Cancerous moling attempts notwithstanding. It was a good dynamic, one well worth exploring, and by rights Paperblade should have been lynched just about every day if information were more free flowing. But capitalising on village mistakes and taking control is exactly what this faction was meant to do and if they went after the Conspirators in the mid game (as Paperblade had evidence to do) they might have stood a chance at winning. Of note, Paperblade could have chosen to make a "Teddy" instead of one of his other robots, which would have been a Decoy and worked nicely with Haruno.
Haruno/Aqua Man: Dr Will Castor: Transhuman Bodyguard/Safeguard / Watcher/Persuader
Since there's only one vote between them, Haruno's role was meant to balance out Paperblade's and increase the up front resilience of the faction as a whole. The fuckery that was supposed to be created by this role was supposed to be balanced by the fact that the town had a role that worked the same way in Former, and that some of Haruno's roles were obvious (like the persuade and SG), and when he wasn't using those his username would be more easy to lynch or he'd be idling. I think I saw mostly what I wanted to see in that regard, but it definitely stings to have to deal with this roadblock suboptimally when the village is already behind.
Conclusion
Thanks again for playing! I know it was a bit rocky, but I hope it was enjoyable for some all the same. I haven't given up on OC yet and I'll be back with something new in due time.
Last edited:
I did sense something sketchy about cancerous insofar as when I subbed in he started acting friendly to me but none of my records showed he was particularly close to jalmont. However, what really fooled me was DLE and it seemed liked the blues REALLY trusted him, which made me think cancerous had to be red for the teams to be even. I didn't think the conspirators existed at all, really thought it was just a 3 faction game. Good job you two : )