yayyyy! we won :D well done everyone ^^
thank you for having me for my first game on forumssss

Game balance seems fine. The problem is when Town manages a Day 1 successful lynch. That will always unbalance a balanced game. Most of those on the wagon get presumed to be Town while previously suspect. The few people who reluctantly joined might still be suspect but that usually includes any scum sliding onto a moving train.

The mafia team always has their backs against the wall when too many Town are essentially confirmed. Now consider what happens if we had a mislynch. Town bickers among themselves and starts suspecting each other. The pool of night targets is more expansive. The entire character of the game is quite a bit different.

Exactly, last game D1 lynch was a Town PR. If same thing happened this game or vice versa they would have gone differently.

The problem with all Mafia games is the positive feedback loop. The more your side wins, the easier it is to continue winning.

Worst I've seen was when the day 1 lynch was the only person on the town side that could check alignment. The town never really recovered and lost the game.

The sample PMs in the OP are your friend when it comes to false claiming. The whole point of them is to let mafia know what town PMs look like so you can make your false claim without getting caught out by making a claim that obviously doesn't fit the pattern. In this game's case, the two sample PMs make it clear that PRs get their powers from another named character and vanillas don't. But as HSL says, claiming Boston Low wouldn't have helped since there was a real Boston Low to counterclaim you.

No matter what character you claimed, I think it was the "bomb" part that doomed you - if you were a real bomb the mafia would know not to NK you and if you are mafia then it's a convenient excuse for not being NK'd. Town pretty much has to lunch you because you're a question that otherwise won't be answered. You live and learn!

Well, now everyone should have access to the threads. Apart from Hypersomniac, whom I didn't find as user on whyquicktopicwhy

@Hyper: do you have an account there and under what name?

move the threads to the archives. there's a run down how to do it in the gogfather's area

Perhaps I shouldn't have given the powers names of characters present in the game. But I thought it would be apparent, that the names chosen pre-game CAN'T have any influence on alignment or role. And the Sample PM should have made that clear as well. Which is why I provided a Vanilla and a PR sample PM.

About balance: I think the game was mostly balanced, even if quite swingy. However, what I did underestimate is, how powerful a Redirector is in skilled hands. A Redirector is a two-edged swords. If he re-directs a Town PR, he creates confusion. But if he successfully re-directs an NK attempt, he can draw conclusions from that. And if he manages to successfully direct an NK twice ... well, then things become quite difficult for Scum.

So, congratulations to HSL for a masterful handling of a swingy but powerful role!

About the role lineup:
We had 9 Town and 3 Scum, so the classic 1/4 split.
Scum had an unlimited shots Strongman, which is quite powerful. To defuse it a bit, I had added one player who would be immune to him and also made him re-directable.
Second Scum role was the Rolestopper, who could have protected the Strongman from being redirected.
Third Scum was a Goon.

So Scum had the choice of letting the Strongman do the work, risking that he would fail due to Guybrush. Or let someone else do the killing and risk failing due to protective roles.

Town had:
Active roles: Doctor, Motion Detector, Redirector
Passive roles: limited Bulletproof, Copier.

The Doctor was turned quite ineffective by the presence of the unlimited shots Strongman. Unless scum chose to send one of the others. The Motion Detector is one of the weakest investigator there is. The passives had limited use as well. Redirector was, as I said, more powerful than expected and Copier was a quite swingy role, which turned out not to have any effect on the game.

About the Action Resolution Sequence (in cases where two powers affect the same person)

I used mostly the standard sequence of 'passives, blocks, redirect, protect, kill'

So, if the role-stopper and the re-director both target the same person, the re-director will fail, because he is stopped. And if the role-stopper targets the Copier, who is killed the same Night, the Copier will get the Role-stop power and then die.

If the powers do not affect the same target, however, I decided to make the resolution such, that everyone can use their power, if no direct conflict occurs. I.e. Rolestopper rolestops X, but Redirector redirects him to Y. Then the re-direction will work and the Rolestopper would successfully rolestop Y (without being told of the switch).

Or if anyone uses their power, but is killed the same Night, their power would still take effect.

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I moved the threads to the Archive. So everyone should now be able to see them:

https://whyquicktopicwhy.proboards.com/thread/18/mafia-observer-thread-lucas-arts?page=7&scrollTo=929

https://whyquicktopicwhy.proboards.com/thread/17/scumm-lucas-arts-mafia-thread?page=4&scrollTo=908

Can someone test if they work?

They work.

Heh, if dedporno/babark did the combo each Night, I'd have been rendered completely useless.

And no, I don't have an account there - I keep postponing it until I absolutely have to create one.


I've read through the observer and scum chats. Scum chat read like a fast track tutorial, so @babark, no more slack for you from now on. Observer thread was a fun read, so many theories. Oh, and speaking of it:

@JoeSapphire, I took the vig-shot part of your 3 names challenge as "who do you think is a deepwolf", and I think ZFR did the same. Did we misunderstand it?

i guess? Well I just wanted people to start putting out names with a bit of conviction behind them. I was kinda thinking I could try doing what gogtrial did where he got people to name top towns and top scums and then reveal that the people who didn't appear on anybody's lists are the mafia, but I don't think I asked for enough names and not everybody participated.

Also I liked the idea that scum would take the 'if you're wrong you can't win' challenge seriously and dare to tell the truth

hey, let's see how many people are actually eligable for the win.


and you just reminded me: I added the '>:]' face to my confirmation that RW saw me do nothing to make the scums nervous,
did it work scums? or was it too obvious a bluff?

Oh yeah, am I like the only townie who didn't forfeit their win?

Lol @ dedo knowingly forfeiting by vigging me.

Joe can win
1 Dedoporno
2 HypersomniacLive
3 RWarehall

Dedo can't win
1. Catte
2. HSL
3. RW

ZFR can't win
1. HSL (/RW)
2. Ambitionz
2. HSL

AZ can't win
1. Razza
2. HSL
3. ZFR

RW can't win
1 Razza
2 Babark
3 HSL

HSL can't win
1. dedoporno
2. babark
2. RWarehall

Babark can't win
1 Catte
2 HSL
3 RW

so well done Frostburn Dess Joe Catte and Razza!





but we're all winners really ;)