Seventh Anniversary Mafia

[Chibi Pika]

"Spectrier," he called, enunciating the name carefully, "Are you well? You look perturbed."

Spectrier rolled over toward the dragon. "I don't like dungeons. And, ohh.... this one already gives me a bad feeling, ohh..."

But, there was a voice in his head telling him he needed to be useful. The more conversations happened, the easier it would be to find the evil-people. And so he said good-bye to the floor and stood up, taking his place at once of the clock platforms.

Dave waved a paw. "So, have any others of the rest of you played this thing before?"

Spectrier shook his head gloomily. "I haven't."

So who's the Virgin around here? Trying to make more conversation here...

Spectrier pawed at the ground with a hoof. "I was thinking... if the 'virgin' didn't say anything, we could see who is or isn't afraid to vote first. That could tell us who is good or evil. But... the evil people could just pretend to be afraid of dying, instead of... not-dying. Maybe, if we find someone who seems suspicious, we could just have them vote for the virgin, and if they die, then we know both of them are good, for real. Only... that would be bad if they had a night power, ohh...."

I actually feel like lynching feels... less useful here than mafia no? (though I notoriously despise day 1 lynches lol). I mean we don't even get any info because their role isn't revealed when they die, so it seems like we should try to be way more careful, right? If we lose one of our good powers than we're really in a jam, and we can't even confirm info.

"There's some powers here that don't do things at night. And if they die, there's a chance we could learn what their power was for real, and then we'd know they're a friend. It's mostly the ones that do things at night that we don't want to die. Or get revealed, because then they could get poisoned, ohh..."

Getting poisoned sounded even worse than dying, to him. He had asked the Zoroark how it worked when he first read about it, and she had said that anyone with an 'info-role' would be given lies. And that was terrible.

"If everyone who started out knowing things all said those things right away, that might not be good, because it would tell the evil-people who not to kill or poison. They would know that there was no point to target the people who started out knowing things, because they don't get to do anything at night. So, they could just target anyone else instead..."

But out of all of them, 'Better Odds' would be the most useful right away. The others could wait and corroborate someone else's claim once the time came.

 

[Sinderella]

What the fuck was with these multiverse games changing her body? She knew she was short, maybe a degree unattractive to the asshole who kept pulling her into these things--something, something, beauty is in the eye of the beholder or whatever--but still. It got old after a while.

Odette supposed there were worse things to be than a lopunny. She was still bipedal, still had opposable thumbs, still had her curves (thank fucking gods...strangely enough). But. Again. Still.

Hey, Odette! ...I guess that's what your name is... What do you do around here?

She opened her mouth to run through the "normal" Hi-Hello's when a squirtle called to her by name. Couldn't have been somebody she knew. So how the fuck?

She raised a hand. Or...paw? Ugh. "Hold on. Let's back that up a moment." A pause. Then she nodded. "Okay. Hello," she greeted with an exaggerated wave. "I'm Odette. It's a pleasure. For now, at least."

Now that she had time to think about it, something about this greatly amused her. In past games she played, they were usually hunting zoroark. Or just straight up scum. But this game called for demon hunting. How ironic.

"Well, considering I essentially hunt demonic 'mon for a living, this should be nothing."

There was an air of uncertainty in the declaration. Her confidence in her deduction skills aside, not a godsdamned thing ever went according to plan in these fucking games. She needed to stay sharp, especially now. Even though, according to their very bizarre host, death was a good thing here...yeah, she couldn't buy that yet. Sounded too good to be true.

She turned back to the squirtle. "We talk, that's what we do. That's the extent of my knowledge. This is a new format for me." She pawed her cheek. Furry. Ugh.

"I always waffle between going for elimination on the first day in other games like this, but considering death allegedly doesn't promptly remove somebody from the game, I'm a little more open to it...however, also considering the eliminated lose their powers, and there's a chance of eliminating a power that is waaaaay more useful to us alive than dead, I become hesitant again."

 

[Chibi Pika]

[[For what it's worth, I asked Inke about how the roles actually in play were picked, and she indicated they were picked by random draw, though with a fixed number of Townsfolk/Outsiders/Minions and always a Demon. That said, once the setup was randomized one might expect the descriptions would be updated if it turned out some sort of tweak or elaboration had been necessary, so your setup thoughts still seem valid.]]

Spectrier hadn't heard the name 'Inke' before, but he assumed it was the dungeon-spirit that had trapped them here.

"Ohh... if it's random, then... she would have to have planned for what if the 'baron' got picked, right? If there were already three or four 'outsiders' in the plan, what would the baron do, then? So, there were probably two in the plan, unless the baron added two more. Two or four." Starting with only one seemed unlikely, because it would be pure chance if it would get bumped up to three or not. But one seemed like too few, probably.

He realized too late that he had simply assumed that there would be no duplicates. But, technically he didn't know this for real. He hoped it wouldn't look foolish...

 

[Shiny Phantump]

I actually feel like lynching feels... less useful here than mafia no? (though I notoriously despise day 1 lynches lol). I mean we don't even get any info because their role isn't revealed when they die, so it seems like we should try to be way more careful, right? If we lose one of our good powers than we're really in a jam, and we can't even confirm info.

"I mean, one of the emeras here will, if someone got it, will be shown the role of the player we take out at night, while info on the ones killed at night is lost forever. But even if that's not the case, losing someone isn't so bad here. Can't make an omelette without cracking a few eggs~"

She performed the act of giggling at her own 'joke' in hopes of getting under the scaredy-rat's skin.

"If it's that bad, they say something about their emera to get out of the bind. Who cares? You seem to expect that anyone who claims will be left dead where they stand for it, and that the fact we don't get to see who people are when they die makes it bad to execute them. But consider this: What if people didn't get killed for claiming~ That would be cool, wouldn't it?"

She had a weird hunch, partially based on the weird whisper accompanying her as a "guardian", that some people were familiar with a very different style of game.

"Think of it this way: People we kill don't flip. People that the Awakened fucker [demon/imp] kills, may as well be flipping for most functional intents and purposes. Sure, they could kill one of their own, or even themself, to throw us off, but... uhh, not usually a great idea for obvious reasons. Taking a player under heavy heat with a powerful emera and showing that evil wants them offed is often the best gift you can give 'em! Suuuuure, they wake up a bit deader than usual, but that's never killed anyone~ They'll just claim, share all their info, and become a trusted ally for the rest of the game! If a player with a power role is catching flak, all the incentives tell them to do the opposite: Make sure they get executed in the day while avoiding confirming them and let them be suspicious forever!" [Although we should be able to target the dead with powers like inforoles here if it comes to that, it's just usually a waste] "Combined with Ally Reviver [monk/doctor], the possibility of someone wanting to avoid day targeting because they've got Toughness [soldier/bulletproof], fear of activating Payback [ravenkeeper/death-activated rolecop], there are a lot of reasons why targeting some kind of active-power softclaim is often a bad idea. It's not a universal law that claimed players don't get killed, they do, but shaking one softclaim out of someone is fine. They're more likely to get Poisoned, but that's usually possible to play around."

[[Maybe I shouldn't be giving a 'how 2 scumteam' tutorial but I think it's important for town to really think about what the evil player's incentives are bc we've got plenty of clever people in this game, I think the evil team will put their heads together and feel out what they should do intuitively over time one way or another. Meanwhile, if we all try to play Mafia, then we probably just lose. One or two Townfolk claims on day 1 in BotC is healthy and 0 would be hurting our ability to gamesolve more than the evils' ability to kill us. If we (hypothetically speaking, since I will not let this happen) tried to go full Mafia cold war and have no claims D2 either and being stuck until D3 then we'd almost certainly have thrown the game. Outlander claims to get an idea of how many are accounted for can often also be wise, especially because claiming Dizzying Payback/Saint after you're ahead in the vote, or Intimidator/Recluse after someone pings you as evil are ultra-sus as last-second claims! If you have one of these two roles please consider the awful optics of being forced to claim them last-second.

In conclusion: Claims are more powerful and dying less scary here. This is the counterbalance that allows thing like Poisoner or Spy which would be weapons grade fuckshit in Mafia to be standard vanilla fare. If we don't press that advantage at all we will probably just get fuckshitted to death.

oh also if the roles are truly random then there's a 50/50 chance that one of the two minions is a spy! (And we do almost certainly have exactly two, three all but guarantees Additional Action/Baron and therefore smth like 7 antitown powers which would be insane, but a single minion is too few.) If there's a spy then they already know EVERY ROLE ASSIGNMENT as we speak and will promptly communicate that to the entire scumteam the second nighttalk reopens. yaaaaaay :) ]]

He realized too late that he had simply assumed that there would be no duplicates. But, technically he didn't know this for real. He hoped it wouldn't look foolish...

[[There should only be one of each. In the physical game, even the Drunk's fake role assignment has to be unique since there's only one of each role token in the box and you have to give the Drunk the token of the role that they think they are.]]

 

[Panoramic_Vacuum]

[[Alright, wrapping my head around this, as I've never played BotC before. Trying to map the roles to Mafia as I'm familiar with it:

- Townsfolk is pretty self explanatory.
- Outsiders feel like TPs, but I'm not sure their powers constitute any sort of additional wincon that we sometimes see in TPs? As in, there isn't an additional anti-town faction. Could be mistaken, but Outsiders seem to exist just to confuse the issue/obfuscate information gathering and add extra, less-critical targets for the Demon to potentially hit.
- Minions seem like they're mafia goons with powers that aren't killing
- and the Imp/Demon is the main bad guy with the killing powers.

At least that's how I see it?

The interesting thing is I think I actually disagree that voting people out *doesn't* net us information. There's a good number of roles that benefit from having dead players. The trick is to try to have those dead players not have roles that only benefit from being left alive... That, and there are roles that don't care if they're alive or dead. I dunno, it feels a little more YOLO than regular Mafia? Like, oops you died but then that unlocks information for three other people sort of thing, plus anything you learned you can still share since dead players aren't removed from the game.

It's late, I'll RP more tomorrow. Also god help us if I had typed all this up in Rocky speak LOL]]

 

[aer]

Huh... seems like a lot going on here. All these clocktowers and roles and setup and flipping and claims. Maybe she should read the rolebook, it's all kind of hard for her to parse.
[[OOC: Sleepy tonight... Putting in my second post now so I don't miss the d1 deadline in case i forget to reply tomorrow]]

 

[HelloYellow17]

At first, Rui had thought it was just another dream. One where she got to be a Pokémon, even!

Everything felt so real, so vivid. Getting used to four legs and a tail should have come with some kind of learning curve, but instead her body adapted as if she’d always been in this form. Heh. That was dream logic for you. She’d frolicked in the grass, chirping and trilling, before a voice caught her attention and pulled her to a clearing full of other Pokémon. And then her brief moment of fun evaporated.

This was another one of those dreams.

Except she still couldn’t be sure the first time had been a dream, and it terrified her. But the second time hadn’t been so bad, right? So…maybe it was okay. Maybe. She took a deep breath and tried to make herself look brave.

And that night, she received a message.

She took her seat and fidgeted nervously as the others began greeting one another and speculating. Well…she didn’t like being the one to start the avalanche, but she couldn’t keep this information to herself.

“Um,” she said, raising her voice. “I have something to say!”

[[Just getting a little intro RP out of the way. I’m splitting my post because Rui has a claim and I don’t want it to get buried in a long post!

Also: I have played BoTC in person a few times, but not enough to be deeply familiar with every role. I’ll probably be consulting the wiki a lot, haha.]]

 

[HelloYellow17]

All eyes turned to her. She fidgeted with the grass with a paw.

“S-so, last night, I got some information. Because of my role.” She raised her head and forced more confidence into her tone. “I’m an Investigator. And I was told that one of two people here has the Prolong Emera.”

Oh, gods, she remembered the names, but not even which species. She didn’t know yet whose gaze to avoid, so she stared at a tree across the clearing instead. “I learned that either Hareta or Watt has it.”

She sat back. “That’s all my role does, I think. I won’t learn anything else for the rest of the…of this.” Felt weird calling it a game when Zevya had been hurt. Then she gave a small start. “Oh! But, um, there’s always the possibility I could be Drunk or Poisoned, right? I think I heard something about that. So…there’s always the possibility chance my information isn’t accurate. But it was too important to keep to myself.”

[[Role claiming Investigator. I was told either @windskull or @Zdrmonster is the Scarlet Woman, who is a Demon. But Drunk/Poisoned is in play so my info might not be accurate.]]

 

[Flyg0n]

Drake sniffed around, discreetly trying to figure out who had valuables on them. Unfortunately it was rapidly looking like nobody had come here with much. Fine. Escape was the next priority for now, which meant playing along with this game. He could do that. Just had to keep it together and figure out who was out to get them.

"I don't know about this mafia business but it sounds like dying there gave concrete information. But dying here only gives possiblr information." He sniffed. "If they're not some drunk." That was how this worked, right? If someone was drunk then they wouldn't know they had useless information.

"We probably don't want the virgin saying anything yet right? Maybe we can use that later to help eliminate scum." Drake clicked his teeth together and then folded his arms. This game was hard. "Hey you, Squirtle. How come you asked the virgin to speak up, what was your idea there?"

[[I guess my fear here is not that it's useless to Lynch someone just that we don't get the same kind of concrete Intel we would from mafia with role flips. We do get something in theory but we also risk losing an important power. I guess... Role reveals for some people are less risky than mafia though, right? Hhhh maybe I gotta reread the wiki.

But I am kinda wondering why you thought the virgin speaking up early is good? maybe


-^ (I started typing all this before yellow posted, oh my goodness this is great

oOOO!! Okay okay this is good, this gives us something real to work from. hhhh if only we could have known sooner, but no biggie. Uh... we can't use a vote and flip to confirm the info but surely we can untangle something from this? I have half an idea cooking but I have to get back to work.

If the scum does have poison it feels low odds they'd have hit our investigator. Uhmm... Hm Idk even know if Poison can be active night 0? so maybe we don't even have to worry until night 1? Unless this is a fakeclaim but that feels like an insane gambit and idont think so. Okay okay let me try and get back to this on lunch break]]

 

[aer]

Oh, gods, she remembered the names, but not even which species. She didn’t know yet whose gaze to avoid, so she stared at a tree across the clearing instead. “I learned that either Hareta or Watt has it.”

Oh that is very very interesting. I'm inclined to believe Rui, but... just to be certain, there could be something complicated going on here.

Hareta and

Watt, would either of you like to roleclaim, if either of you aren't the Scarlet Woman Demon?

[[OOC: Had a whole long RP post in the works before Hello claimed but this is more important.]]

@Inkedust If there was a Spy, would they have received the information about all the town's roles last night? Or would they not have it yet?

 

[Shiny Phantump]

Huh... seems like a lot going on here. All these clocktowers and roles and setup and flipping and claims. Maybe she should read the rolebook, it's all kind of hard for her to parse.

[[Honestly if you don't understand all the strategy talk coming out of my mouth, that's fine. My target audience for most of that is veteran mafiaheads who I need to talk out of playing the Traditional Mafia Metagame, which is why it's a bit technical. Just do your best and your teammates will help you along the way!]]

“S-so, last night, I got some information. Because of my role.” She raised her head and forced more confidence into her tone. “I’m an Investigator. And I was told that one of two people here has the Prolong Emera.”

Oh, gods, she remembered the names, but not even which species. She didn’t know yet whose gaze to avoid, so she stared at a tree across the clearing instead. “I learned that either Hareta or Watt has it.”

She sat back. “That’s all my role does, I think. I won’t learn anything else for the rest of the…of this.” Felt weird calling it a game when Zevya had been hurt. Then she gave a small start. “Oh! But, um, there’s always the possibility I could be Drunk or Poisoned, right? I think I heard something about that. So…there’s always the possibility chance my information isn’t accurate. But it was too important to keep to myself.”

Morgan's eyes lit up and grin crossed her face, taking on the demeanour of a shark that'd just had a taste of blood. She started cackling like a witch for a moment before curbing it to speak.

"Beautiful! That's exactly the kind of thing we need to hear! And you know what? I think that's good info. I think we should all believe you! Yeah, you could be wrong, but it's improbably and even if you were we'd recover."

[[Seriously, if your info is lies it could indicate that scum didn't roll a Scarlet Woman at all. (It's legal for the Storyteller to tell you two good players are a Minion that is in the game, too. Storytellers can tell Drunk/Poisoned players anything, even 100% true info if they want.) If this happened, I'm so sorry to the evils because in a game of this size with no SW we could just kill people at random and expect to probably win. It isn't "scary" like Spy or Poisoner but is instead a load bearing pillar of large game balance. BotC Storytellers usually do not totally randomize roles and SW is one of the reasons why.]]

"This is also a great time to put our pal with Prolong under high heat. Whoever got Awakened and maybe All-Knowing gets info on what's safe to claim. This is the one night where those two have their result but couldn't have shared it with the Prolong player yet." [[Unless the Imp got their three safe claims in their role DM, but traditionally they wake up in the night to learn this like an inforole. I'll DM Inke to request clarification once she wakes.]] "At this point, if one of them has Prolong they won't be happy to have a claim forced out them tonight. We should not give them the privilage of claiming tomorrow once they know what's safe. I want to know their exact roles. The whole 'the Awakened won't kill our allies if we fear they might be one of their power roles and deconfirm it even if it's was a good night role' principle applies in full force here."

She looked at the rodent next to her like she was planning to devour him whole. Which, given she planned to make his final moments with an emera as miserable as possible, wouldn't be an inaccurate assessment. She literally fed on fear and anxiety.

"I'd love to start with Nine-Volts over here. As it happens, I don't like them much anyway~"

@Inkedust VOTE: WATT / WINDSKULL

 

[Panoramic_Vacuum]

"Hmm, Rocky not sure Investigator can be Poisoned. It say Investigator learn information on very first night, right at start of game!" He boldly proclaimed, shoving his carapace forward, bumping into his neighbor Dave in the process. "Apology, apology. Rocky new to body."

"Other player may know better than Rocky, though. This my first game of this kind."

Shuffling in place and grunting to himself, Rocky spoke up again, more confident again. "But Investigator can be Drunk! Drunk. No understand word. All Rocky know is that Rocky cannot be Drunk!"

He finished proudly with a tap of a leg.

 

[Panoramic_Vacuum]

Rocky grunted and shuffled in place, listening to Morgan's excited chatter.

"Confusing. Too many names. Rocky need role flashcards."

 

[Shiny Phantump]

"Confusing. Too many names. Rocky need role flashcards."

[[Ah shit I'm supposed to be annotating all my role mentions with both names and ideally a Mafia equivilent if there is one but I have Forgotten To Do This Big Time. My apologies. Prolong is Scarlet Woman is the backup Demon. (Since killing the Demon otherwise ends the game that's hugely important) Awakening is Imp is the only Demon role in this game so those are gonna get used interchangeably.

Honestly though going through the role list and having them on hand is a good idea. Gonna be important in an open setup. I have a second tab that stays on Inke's role/intro post, myself.]]

"Hmm, Rocky not sure Investigator can be Poisoned. It say Investigator learn information on very first night, right at start of game!" He boldly proclaimed, shoving his carapace forward, bumping into his neighbor Dave in the process. "Apology, apology. Rocky new to body."

"Other player may know better than Rocky, though. This my first game of this kind."

Shuffling in place and grunting to himself, Rocky spoke up again, more confident again. "But Investigator can be Drunk! Drunk. No understand word. All Rocky know is that Rocky cannot be Drunk!"

"It's fine, don't worry. I don't see why Better Odds [Investigator] couldn't be hit with Dizzying Stare [Poisoner] but it'd be a random blind shot. [This is true. Both powers activate on N0, and Poisoner moves first.] They can also be Drunk." Technically that one was called Lucky Charm but since that felt like a misnomer, Morgan decided to call that one the same thing everyone else was. Seemed like every social deduction game in every universe felt like that role should be called the Drunk. "In fact, since we haven't had a single Outcast claim yet, we probably do have a Drunk."

Morgan shrugged.

"I don't really care, though. If we get too wigged out about mistrusting every piece of info because some percentage might be bad, we'll be doing more damage than if we acted on misinfo once or twice. Especially right now, when we have such a splendid opportunity~"

 

[Panoramic_Vacuum]

"Rocky on phone at work. Only one screen. Too tiny. Morgan should build model instead. Yes, need model for plan."

 

[Panoramic_Vacuum]

"In fact, since we haven't had a single Outcast claim yet, we probably do have a Drunk."

"Rocky no have flashcards yet." Two stomps "What is Outcast, question?"

 

[Shiny Phantump]

"Rocky no have flashcards yet." Two stomps "What is Outcast, question?"

"They're on our team, but they have shit powers that are bad for us like appearing evil to our information powers or making us instantly lose if we execute them. Which is why they should claim them quickly before we get caught off-guard~ But the Drunk doesn't know they're an outcast, [[they get a false role dm and their power doesn't work.]] so if we can't find our outcast then it becomes the most plausible explanation!"

 

[Panoramic_Vacuum]

[[sorry for any confusion, I'll try to be a bit clearer than Rockyposting on this one: I don't see the term "Outcast" used anywhere in the game information. Is that the same as "Outsider"? (which is used in the role information and wiki page.) Or another thing entirely?]]

 

[Panoramic_Vacuum]

[[With so many new terms flying around, I'm trying to be very specific here, so apologies if these are interchangeable terms.]]

 

[Shiny Phantump]

[[sorry for any confusion, I'll try to be a bit clearer than Rockyposting on this one: I don't see the term "Outcast" used anywhere in the game information. Is that the same as "Outsider"? (which is used in the role information and wiki page.) Or another thing entirely?]]

[[shit. that's terminology from a BotC-inspired game bleeding into my vocab bc they're phonetically similar and mean the same thing. I will stop doing this.]]