Acklow
I am always tired. Don't bother me.
Cops & Robbers Mafia Postgame
So this should’ve been up awhile ago and I apologize for the delay...
History
Originally Cops & Robbers was going to be hosted after I had finished FFIII Mafia. It was sort of a filler project of mine that I had going on since I had a lot of creative ideas at the time (I still do, and I still plan on hosting Turnabout Engine, but it’s been ages since I touched it and I really need something big to motivate me). Cops & Robbers was intended to be a bigger game. I had planned for around 24 or so players at the time. I dropped the project as soon as ideas for FFV, Underground, and Persona Mafia all came about. However, I soon had that mafia itch at the end of 2012, and I felt like I needed to finish what I had started two years earlier. I cut the amount of players required for C&R by around 6 slots, which made it easier to find a suitable number of participants. The reasoning for this is because smaller games have become much more favorable and it meant that more people could remain active unlike in larger games where people joined just for filler. The original structure was something like: 4 cops, 2 teams of 4 mafia, and 12 or so villagers. This meant that the new structure had to be 2v3v3v8 in order to keep the numbers fairly balanced. Roles were redone and the cops were nerfed heavily in order to make the cop team balanced in comparison with the other teams (originally the cops were united and had a full inspection available to them). After submitting the final structure to billymills, the game was ready to be hosted. Walrein was kind enough to join in on the escapade as my copilot and we took off.
Concept
Based on the original children’s game, robbers have nothing they can do except run away from cops. This would not translate well into a mafia game, and as such the idea for the robbers to steal items as a win condition became a staple in the game. Unfortunately this would require having a third party, ideally a majority, to steal these items from. Thus the village was introduced. The village thrived on large quantities of items and a few power roles with the remainder of the villagers using their items as roles while remaining intrinsically vanilla (ala Underground Mafia). Another factor I wanted to include in the game was having a giant nerf to information roles. Information roles have always been a staple in Mafia games online. However, they became so overpowered to the point that people took them for granted, especially in Smogon games. Thus I decided to use “appearances” of the robbers as a means of gathering very broad and generic information. By limiting info roles to appearances, it meant that people could only do so much when tracking information and would also have to rely on how they communicated with others ingame. Kills and arrests were able to fit in thanks to this method of information distribution. Originally I had intended to have arrests only in the game, but having the cops and village able to team up easily meant that the cops had an easy time fulfilling their win condition and the village in turn became jailbait. I didn’t like how this was set up and so I decided to implement kills as well. By making slight differences between the village and cop win conditions, it created a much more balanced game as the cops required to make a big early game presence (which was easy since they were the cops). Likewise, the village would have that lategame that always made the village a strength to be reckoned with once they got together. Finally the two mafia teams did not have conflicting win conditions, however since two existed people would assume that the mafia were opposed to each other which was perfectly fine with me.
Master Spreadsheet
Roles Document
Players
EUROPEAN POLICE
Aura Guardian and Steven Snype/Ditto
So I put those two together because I Aura Guardian wanted a significant role and I said I’d consider it. I put Steven Snype in as his partner because I knew many a time when I was absolutely demolished by the might of Andrew’s wit and power whenever he was mafia. I made arrangements for the two to work together. Apparently I was not thorough enough in telling them that the Cops were a minority faction and were not a majority. They blame me for this, I say bitch please. My reasoning is this: I gave them as players all the tools for them to be successful. Assuming, that’s right ASSUMING, that you are the majority is not the fault of the host in my mind. That’s just you making the mistake of making an assumption. Because they assumed they were minority, they primed themselves for a loss unfortunately... :(
Steven Snype did do a fine job staying under the bleachers though.
BAND OF THIEVES
Jalmont/zorbees, YAYtears, and General Spoon
Band of Thieves was balanced out with 5 items to steal, in contrast to the League of Extraordinary Criminal Minds, due to the fact that Sly Cooper had an item that could steal other items (the irony). The structure of the team was focused more towards the endgame with a persuader role and a silence in order to control the vote if enough villagers were arrested.
Five letters for this team: L-U-C-K-Y. The fact that Jalmont and zorbees were able to stay under the radar after being subbed in and out like Ricky Rubio on crutches is very impressive. General Spoon thought for some reason that Aura Guardian knew that he was Band of Thieves. Aura Guardian didn’t. It was that simple. But hey, people do overreact and even though in the end the BoT pulled through, General Spoon outing himself early on when he didn’t need to jeopardized their operation. I put General Spoon on this team because I knew he would take charge, but when that happened it kinda messed the whole idea up. Thankfully his teammates were able to pull through. YAYtears did a fine job dealing with the constant subbing of his comrade even though he got arrested.
LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY CRIMINAL MINDS
theangryscientist/Empoof, Agape, and Spiffy
To be honest, I don’t even remember any of what they did because I had listened to them early on and then ceased to exist due to my being afk from Smogon for a lot of the time (I had transition stuff going on between League of Legends, 2 jobs and life and stuff yeah...oh and did I mention League? Anyways, this mafia faction had only 4 items to steal unlike the Band of Thieves. This meant that they had to have a stronger earlygame as evidenced by their hook and kidnap role. They could stall out the first few turns with their power roles in order to steal what they needed. WALREIN FILL IN THE BLANKS HERE I DONT KNOW WHAT WENT WRONG ON THEIR END FOR THEM TO LOSE...
RICH AND FAMOUS
RaRe555, Quagsires, Hydrattler, Lady Salamence, idiotfrommars, penguin344, CabooseFTW, Blackhawk11
The Rich and Famous were the village in this game. The primary purpose of the Rich and Famous was to create a larger quantity of targets for both Robber teams to deal with. The larger the number, the better. I had to cut down the number of players in this game since it seems like everyone on Smogon who played Mafia or was named Acklow has ADD and lose interest very quickly if the game is going too slow or they find themselves distracted with life (not to mention the notorious number of subs that usually occur during these games). However, there were enough villagers to make the game interesting. Half of the villagers were made vanilla and the other half had power roles. The point of this was the vanillagers would have items in their possession that would have powers attached to them. What was the most interesting aspect of the Rich and Famous was the fact that they had their own thief role. It was meant to be sort of like the vigilante role in that the thief could steal items (a “kill” if I may make that allegory). However, since I wasn’t too serious about the structure of the role pms of players, this actually proved kind of a bad thing. Lady Salamence was arrested quickly because her role pm stood out among the rest since it wasn’t 100% structured in the same verbiage as the other pms within the village. OTHERWISE WALREIN PLEASE FILL IN THE BLANKS HERE TOO...
Things that could be changed
Personally I think that the game was very balanced. One of the few things I could have done to make the game better would be to make it a little more clear that the Cops were the only two Cops in the game (and maybe give them one more option for handling day votes). Another thing would be to make all role pms identical in structure. Otherwise yeah. Maybe be more interested in hosting/make more time for it? That was something I couldn’t really control at the time. A big thanks to Walrein for handling much of the gameplay.
Awards
Best Cop Player: You both were good. I cannnot complain at all. Maybe I’d put Steven Snype over AG in this case because AG massclaimed...
Best Band of Thieves Player: I hate to admit it but Jalmont/zorbees made for a mad combo.
Best League of Extraordinary Criminal Minds Player: Agape. He did an awesome job convincing everyone including me that he was Rich and Famous. Sadly the Cops decided to hit him with their Arrest/Kill so that they could put him away (they thought he was R&F).
Best Rich and Famous Player: This I’m unsure of. Walrein will have to add his input on this one.
Best Co-Host: Walrein. Thanks for dealing with me and the game for me bud. I really do appreciate it.
Best Post: lol
Cutest User: Ditto /me huggles
MVP: Walrein. Yeah I know he wasn’t a player but goodness you saved this game in the end.
Oh and one last thing: in Underground mafia I said if I ever did another item mafia game, I would not include thief items...LOL
