[MAFIA WIN] Second Anniversary Fanfic Mafia - Game Thread

[Negrek]

oh my god thank you for this wild ride, i didn't play at all but i have been spectating AGGRESSIVELY

please enjoy my finest shitpost i have peaked artistically

I appreciate this priceless work of art. Thank you for sharing it! But you can't post like this and not share what your predictions were. ;)

 

[Disco]

Namco conjured up a bowl of popcorn large enough for them and watched, eagerly waiting for the two muscle-heads to beat each other up.

 

[Fusion]

"Eating? How cute of you." Alexander tilted his spear until it was aimed at Fusion. "I do something far better than consume souls. I... repurpose them." The dark end of his spear absorbed the light around it, blotting out the already dim skies. "Would you like to see?"

"...I suddenly regret every decision I've ever ma--"

And just like that, he was gone...

That poor, wretched soul...

 

[Chibi Pika]

A semi-transparent apparition of Lexx fades into view holding a beaten-up but still functional laptop. He props the laptop up on a table that materialized from the ground and pulls up a very lengthy document. A smirk crosses his face. "Yeah, yeah, I know you're all waiting to read about how I solved the game, here you go."

Spoiler: Day 2

> Inspect Alexander
> Result: Mafia

• Lol
• So even considering bus drivers, I’m fairly certain this result wasn’t messed with.
• I know Tefiren tried to rewind the sus on Alexander, but I was still sus.
• Now the question is will they notice the Clue I left.
• (The clue was Dave as Hard Town.)
• I’m notoriously terrible at reading Dragonfree, in what universe would I put her as Hard Town on day 1. C’mon.
• Anyway… TWO KILLS. Do we have a trigger-happy Vig or what? Was that how I died? (Nefari already claimed or I’d guess them.)
• I’m slooowly starting to feel more confident about Miyako and Altair, I think.
• I think people are reading too much into the death flavor. Maybe Rascal had a protective role but I doubt she was protecting me.
• ...Did anyone even read my readlist. :<
• If I really did get killed by an innocent, that’s yet another parallel with last year. 🙃
• Now people think I had Hider?? If I did have Hider, I would have hid behind one of my scumreads guys, not a soft townread. This is all a waste of time.
• Pretty sure Chappie is trustworthy--a mafia bus driver revealing themselves like this would be super easy to catch in the act of a bad swap later.
• That is to say, claiming town bus driver as scum isn’t bad, but if you get caught making too many bad swaps, people are gonna be suspicious.
• Which means Spark is probably also clear, maybe?
• I want to take this moment to say that I still think that using a swap to protect someone is a solid plan! Claiming as a bus driver is pretty dang safe, and there’s no way in heck that a roleblocker is gonna waste their block on you, and on the off-chance they do, then oh well, the doctors can still do their thing.
• The only problem is just. I keep getting swapped with the people who were targeted.
• In what universe would I have babysit rascal lmao. Do they not know what my playstyle is like? Also how does DW still not know what the TR meta is like. What even are half these suggestions.
• Mewtwo: “Lexx noted that people in his good pile could still be Mafia.” Um… nnnno I didn’t. I said that people in the sus pile weren’t necessarily sus. Very different. I expected most of the mafia to be in the null pile, with possibly 1 in the soft town pile. That’s usually how it goes.
• LMAO ARCTOZOLT IS THE BACKUP
• Very nice Kyros post. It’s not quite right, but I’m glad that someone is finally looking for my hints.
• And there we have it--nice one Tefiren, as usual! He even noticed that I put Dave as hard town! I don’t do that unless there’s a good reason.
• Genuinely a bit surprised at Mewtwo’s lapse in judgement voting for Arctozolt. Enough to wonder if I read him wrong…?
• Wait wait wait… jailer is combination roleblocker and doctor?? I thought it was roleblock/rolestop!
• Okay, in previous Negrek games it IS roleblock/rolestop. I hope Tefi will point that out?
• Heck yeah he did! :D
• Eh, I’m fairly certain Wes is innocent, but I like how Tefi is prompting him for a dialogue. Hopefully this pans out.
• Unsure how to read Alexander throwing a token vote at Lance. If Navar is scum but just too busy to do anything at all, then Alexander going for him just to let him be free of the game could make for a really nice alibi later. But I don’t know if that’s still suboptimal for scum.
• Concerned that Alexander could be able to win this since no one susses him.
• Still unsure about Miyako. Fully admit that I’m iffy here. Slight town lean. We’ll see.
• I still can’t read Lusamine aaaaaaaa
• I was SO close to inspecting Lusamine. I went with Alexander because I figured it’d be harder to make a case against him without proof.
• Anyway, other than the fact that I know Alex is scum, I thiiiink I probably would stay on the Lance train myself. I think it’ll give decent info. And I’m nowhere near confident enough to go for Miyako or Altair right now.
• lmao he was the arsonist. amazing.

Hard town:
DawningWinds (Nefari)
Dragonfree (Dave)
elyvorg (Tefiren)
Equitial (Mewtwo)
unrepentantAuthor (Jesse)
IFBench (Arctozolt)

Soft town:
Windskull (Kyros)
AbraPunk (Chappie)
HelloYellow17 (Wes)
DeliriousAbsol (Spark)
Mellow (Namco)
Seren (Miyako)

Cautious:
Fusion (Cold Fusion)
Shiny Phantump (Lusamine)
Inkedust (Altair)

Hard Scum:
Namohysip (Alexander)

End of Day notes:

• Ok, Dave and Tefi made some really nice cases against Lusamine, and she absolutely would have been my N2 inspection anyway, but this cinches it.
• Runner-up would be Altair. I keep waffling on him and I don’t like it.
• I’m still not sold on Miyako being sus.
• I’m really not sold on Wes being sus. Weird, spicy gambits to chase wildly unlikely possibilities feels like such a misguided town thing. Also, Yellow’s ONUZ gameplay when she was innocent was consistent with Wes in Mafia--she randomly threw suspicion on me (a mason) just because I didn’t have a partner mason. It shows all the signs of someone trying to find holes but not knowing how.

Spoiler: Day 3

• OKAY THREE KILLS
• Jesse noooo ;-;
• There was a vig! There had to be a vig! Was Jesse the vig? He softclaimed something with a high learning curve and a low floor…
• Oh wait. That whole Dave/roleblock situation wouldn’t make any sense, lol.
• But the double innocent kill?! When we already got Lance? Is there also a serial killer?
• I’ve been thinking about the fact that the numbers might be skewed this game. 19 players and 5 mafia would be slightly high, but with a hostile 3rd party too?
• ...oh. I gotta say. I really, really hate healer clash as a mechanic. Roleblockers and bus drivers already serve to nerf doctors, but healer clash makes them negative utility. Town has no heal power, so I’m not liking their odds at winning this one. Especially with everyone townreading Alexander.
• This is a lot to sort through. Miyako and Altair both defended themselves. I now feel slightly better about Miyako and slightly worse about Altair.
• Is Mewtwo ever going to drop the tunneling on Miyako. This is getting old.
• I think the problem here is… the mafia very frequently has used bus driving to swap between a powerplayer and an innocuous player. Even if Chappie were mafia, I really don’t buy that Spark Zoroark has to be.
• Nothing about Wes’s original accusation on Tefiren makes any sense for scum. My read on Wes gets progressively more town the longer this goes on.
• I’m gonna say it… taking player experience into account is an important part of accurately reading someone’s intent and agenda.
• I think I’m most interested to learn Kyros’s role right now. I’ve had him as soft town for a while, but I’d like to see some more evidence.
• Alexander trying to imply the arsonist might still be around to make Nefari take a useless role is pretty transparent, lol.
• If Jesse was indeed a Jack, I will laugh so hard if he inspected Dave N0 because that’s yet another failed Jack inspection.
• This entire arsonist discussion is absurd. It was so obviously a vig I am losing my mind.
• Kyros’s reads have been pretty… tame and inoffensive lately. And his recent posts are really mash potato. Mildly concerning but not enough to change my read (yet).
• Calling it right now, there was a second bus drive involved in Lexx’s death. Why is everyone acting like that’s so unlikely? It’s really not.
• Why is no one trying to strategize on how to resolve the two healer situation? Since people (incorrectly) suspect Wes, just have him announce his heal target, and have Mewtwo pick a secret target. Then tell the (unclaimed, secret) watcher to either watch Wes or Mewtwo, and make the mafia sweat trying to pick which one to kill or block because either the kill or the block or a bus drive could get observed. Try getting the tracker in on it too, to make sure they’re targeting the correct person. There’s a million ways to get info from this. You guys aren’t even trying to manipulate the mafia’s targeting. I would be clanging pots and pans together about this if I was still there. In between campaigning against Altair. But no, we’re stuck with a pointless arsonist discussion.
• Calling it now--town’s only hope is that one of the two new additions (Fuse or Espy) turns out to be an inforole and tears the game open). That or Dragonfree having a burst of inspiration.
• HELLO THIS IS THE SCUMMIEST POST I'VE SEEN IN MY LIFE
• Altair: “If Wes flips innocent that makes Mewtwo sus” exCUSE ME??? lynching BOTH DOCTORS?? And talking about it as a GIVEN????
• He straight up provides a boolean where Wes inevitably gets lynched either way, while also being too waffley to actually put Wes on the scum list in case people look at his read categories later.
• It’s so textbook. Exact same thing Persephone pulled in game 2: “When the doctor gets lynched, the watcher will look sus” UM. How about we not with the doctor lynch then!! Mysteriously this never seems to be an option. 🤔
• Basically it programs people to think they need the Wes flip for info without ever actually saying “lynch Wes.” Mafia are allergic to ever actually advocating for a mislynch. They state things as a given without ever advocating for them.
• At this point does anyone actually think Chappie is scum? Everyone’s just... going along with it.
• SPICY DAVEPOST.
• This is 10x more interesting and productive than anything else today!
• I’ve never heard of mafia doctors so that’s why they weren’t on my radar.
• I’m really liking this reasoning Dave gave. I consistently disliked Mewtwo’s posts yesterday but I didn’t follow that train of thought anywhere.
• Goddddd Dave’s theory would explain a lot. Why Mewtwo’s reads have been consistently bad. Why he spent so long tunneling on Miyako for flimsy reasons. I need to reread all his posts, don’t I.
• Mewtwo keeps pulling the “this is how things would play out if I was scum” card and there is literally no reason for town players to do that ever. Choshi did that constantly in the Fall mafia.
• If you’re town, then the version of events where you are scum is impossible. It is literally worthless to devote any thought to it.
• I’m not going to try to read Fuse. I refuse. He is staying in null.
• Look, the reason I haven’t sussed Namco as much as everyone else is because I feel like if she had scumbuddies they would’ve, like… asked her to say things?
• If Namco isn’t scum then Kyros is and I really don’t want to think about that right now. Either way, removing Alexander/Altair/Mewtwo is way more important.

Hard town:
Nefari [rolestop]
Dave [???]
Tefiren [bulletproof]
Wes [doctor]
Miyako [???]

Uncertain:
Cold Fusion [???]
Braixen [???]

Sus:
Namco [???]
Kyros [???]

Hard Scum:
Altair
Alexander
Mewtwo

End of Day notes:

• Me going back and rereading Mewtwo trying to argue my townreads could contain scum: >:[
• Me going back and rereading Mewtwo trying to argue I couldn’t have been the cop: >:[ >:[
• Me going back and rereading Mewtwo’s Day 2 posts lining up perfectly with Kyros’s in an unhelpful yet plausible way. >:[ >:[ >:[
• “I really don’t want to lynch the cop again” -> says this while starting a wagon on the cop.
• “Oh but I don’t want to do it guys. :’( I don’t have a choice. :’( This game is so confusing. :’( ”
• Pay no attention to the fact that the last time Equi was town, he was town leader. I’m sure there’s a good reason none of his posts this game have been useful at all.
• Anyway long story short, Dave is right and I was a fool. Mewtwo is 10000% scum.

Ideal Town Plan:

• Nefari must take Rolestop and use it on Dave. This is unquestionably the best action.
• If there’s a true Vig (I really hope there is? Why would the only vig be a 1-shot from a Jack?) they should shoot Mewtwo. After Dave’s case, he’s a very safe pick, and much more obviously sus than the others. Also he can’t heal himself.
• Wes, uhhh… idk who Wes should heal. Avoiding Mewtwo is hard. Nefari, possibly (I know I disagree with DW 90% of the time, but they were on-point at the end of Day 3, and Rolestop is dead useful here.)

Spoiler: Day 4

Day 4:

• LYNCH MEWTWO
• YOU HAVE TWO INNOCENT HEALERS YOU MIGHT STILL BE ABLE TO WIN IF YOU LYNCH MEWTWO
• MEWTWO IS THE MOST DANGEROUS UNIT BY FAR
• ………..
• what the actual hell there really is still an arsonist? I did NOT see that coming.
• D2 and D4 had one psychic kill each. D3 did not. Lusamine 100% had to be a vig kill. The arsonist is doing this in the least efficient way and they literally can’t kill anyone tonight. Lynch Mewtwo.
• TEFIREN PLEASE LISTEN TO DAVE T__T
• Do I need to revise my read on Altair because of Mewtwo being Mega-Ultra-Scum. I don’t waaaaaaant tooooo. Dx
• Admitting it straight-up: I don’t know how to read 3rd parties. They're not "informed" so an agenda can't leak into their posts.
• Lynch Mewtwo and Alexander first. Altair, Kyros, and Namco are all antitown, I just need to revisit their posts to figure out which one is the arsonist.
• Look I still stand by that a mafia Namco would have been made to talk more. But I don’t know how to read third parties aaaaaa
• I didn’t even think of odd-night Serial Killer. How likely even is that? I don’t know.
• HELP HOW DO I THIRD PARTY
• Okay, the fact that this 3rd party is only killing innocents tells me they’re not scumhunting. So probably not Kyros. Namco is too obvious and I’m scared. ;rowl;
• Altair is claiming Checker. :absus:
• aka, an ability that is nearly worthless unless there are multiple roleblockers. (We know there’s at least one, but.) Also the ability that Equi had in the fall mafia.
• Wes is catching on! Several good posts! I’m so proud. ;-;
• HEY SO KYROS BETTER BE FAKECLAIMING WTF
• This Checker claim keeps getting sillier by the minute. But I can't even be like "lynch Altair" because you have to LYNCH MEWTWO.
• Wow, Alexander just went and claimed his actual mafia role. Ok.
• I guess in theory a town strengthener would be neat in a roleblock madness game.
• I think I don’t know how the numbers were supposed to play out in this game. The town was supposed to make seven correct lynches to win? That or just bank on the mafia killing the 3rd parties but like. That’s unreliable. And the mafia is way better off leaving 3rd parties alone at this point because they’re getting so much help from them.
• Yes, I suppose someone could have taken the firefighter role, but the role just looks like an even harder-to-aim doctor. I genuinely don’t know how town even could have won this one, even if they’d lynched correctly. One (1) mislynch is not supposed to lose the game.
• I guess, in theory, the arsonist is supposed to like, not help the mafia win, because then they themselves lose. But nothing’s really stopping them from just doing that anyway.
• Nefari is not scum. They were really onboard with the Mewtwo lynch, and actively trying to get others on board too. I have zero suspicion.
• Every single word out of Kyros’s mouth for the past 2 days has been mash potato. I know I said it was a weak tell, but when there’s an entire heckin buffet of it, something is wrong.
• scum scum scum scum mewtwo is scum scuuuuuummmmmmmmm
• Funny how Mewtwo keeps saying how he doesn’t want to be lynched rather than that he doesn’t want to lose the game. Almost like his current position isn’t nearly as stressful as an innocent’s would be. 🤔
• Knowledge of overdosing 1000% helps town more than it helps scum lmao
• It’s like. Yes, the scumtells in Mewtwo’s posts are all small, weak, and subtle. None of them are damning at all. But there’s like, 8 of them per post. That’s a problem. Then you combine it with the fact that he’s magically not had a helpful deduction all game and it becomes a double problem.
• Mewtwo’s post immediately makes me think that Lusamine was the mafia bus driver (if there was one.)
• Oh look another situational/useless role
• I was literally the only inforole lmao
• GO WES!! DAY 4 MVP!!!
• HOLY SHIT POSSIBLE TEFIREN COMEBACK?
• PICK A PICK A PICK AAAAAAAAAA
• GO WES GO DON’T GIVE IN
• Braixen made some really nice posts!! And Wes is sticking to his guns!!
• ………...oh. :(
• In every mafia game thus far, I've seen people theorize that the mafia killed someone in order to implicate someone. That is, that the person had a false read, and the mafia killed them to get people to lynch that false read.
• It doesn't happen. The mafia doesn't do that. They kill the people who are dangerous to them. Always.
• Oh well. GG town. 😔

Town:
Nefari [Rolestop?]
Tefiren [Bulletproof]
Wes [Doctor]
Braixen [Doctor]
Cold Fusion [oops]

Antitown:
Namco [3rd Party??]
Kyros [“Vengeful”]
Altair [“““Checker”””]
Alexander [Strengthener]
Mewtwo [Doctor]

Best clown moments:

• Being constantly upset about Mewtwo's posts and yet cheerfully failing to sus him until Spicy Davepost
• Noticing tons of mash from Kyros and also cheerfully failing to sus him until Spicy Davepost (Davepost didn't mention Kyros, but Mewtwo being scum was the missing puzzle piece.)
• Being so terrified of Lusamine that I literally would have wasted an inspection on her even though she got hit by a Vig, lol.
• Being SO SURE there was no more arsonist on D3. Then being OUTRAGED at the evidence leaning toward another arsonist on D4. And then it turns out I was right to begin with?? Enjoy me freaking out about 3rd parties on D4, lol.
• From a VC with Jackie: "Six mafia is so far beyond unacceptable that I refuse to even entertain it as a possibility. " 🙃

But hey, I sussed all the antitown so I don't feel too bad. Special props to Dave because I definitely couldn't have done it without him.

 

[AbraPunk]

[[ Good game, everybody! Thanks to Negrek for hosting. And now... my notes, with a bit of extra flavor, because why not. ]]

Something popped into existence a few feet away from everyone else. A... little ball of electricity? Hmm.

It hopped around for a while, seemingly disoriented, before stopping. This place seemed vaguely familiar. Oh!

The little ball hopped its way over to Wes, before excitedly hopping in circles around him.

[[ heh. I dunno why, I just really wanted to do that. (not because of my bias towards Wes, no not at all).

Anyways, NOTES!!

Notes! ]]

 

[Inkedust]

Look at my boy Altair winning his first game of Mafia with the power of sea shanties. There are three things I want to share in this post, first are my promised game notes (link to GD because it's a beefy boi) which will be extra interesting as they were taken from a Mafia PoV, second is a meme I made while the game went on, and finally some post-game flavour for Altair. So without further ado, here they are:

Da Notes
Why not play...

Spoiler: Altair-Win Flavour

Meanwhile, Altair’s attention was drawn to the pitch sky rather than the flush of green that had raced across the ground.

“Is that it then?” he asked no one in particular. A dark smile spread across his features, the weight on his chest lifting, as he dropped the act. “Too easy,” he chuckled. “I expected the opponents this plane conjured to be smarter than that.” he looked to the illusions that had aided him, the litten, the hydreigon, Purple-tail and one hidden amongst the crowd. He hadn’t been able to discern who that one was, though he supposed that it didn’t really matter anymore.

Up towards the crow’s nest he went in jubilation. Tonight he wouldn’t sing his song to just one illusion. Tonight, he would have an audience.

***

The illusions were gone. It was just him, the ship part he’d fashioned from the plain, and the dark, empty sky. He had done exactly what Yveltal had demanded him to. He chucked. When the realm told him he’d been Mafia, he wasn’t surprised in the slightest. Of course, he’d be on the side of the killers if he were to entertain the god of death.

But what now, he wondered as he saw stars flickering in. One by one, filling in the sky as the ship beneath him gradually lost its form. First simplifying, then softening, then sinking back into the ground. Before long, it was merely a vague suggestion of a ship.

Altair now sat on what’d once been the bowsprit, the stars now covered the ground, crawling towards him, eating away at the empty plain. When they reached him, Altair shut his eyes and smiled, and when he reopened them he found himself floating in a sea of stars once more.

Good game everyone! And kudos to Chibi and Dragonfree for seeing right through me, and especially Yellow, who almost figured out the entire game on that last day. I'll be sure to bring Altair back for the next one.

 

[kintsugi]

I appreciate this priceless work of art. Thank you for sharing it! But you can't post like this and not share what your predictions were. ;)

Pen and I screamed at each other for hours in DM's until we figured it out more or less

^the genesis
shoutouts to uA for *very strongly recommending* telling me to have this ready for EOD in case there were 5-6 mafia in this setup instead of 4

and shoutouts to Inkedust! who was only on my claimlist on the grounds that a dead player was telling me that the game was ending and there was probably another mafia around, and was my guess of last resort

we sus'd equitia from the chappie knot--if mafia (successfully) roleblocked Jesse, who (mostly) claimed an inforole, why not keep blocking him? Why block Chappie at random instead of a known inforole? so then I went back to see what the fuck Chappie would've done to make them just randomly yolo noscope her, and:

kint why are you talking about mafia at 7 in the morning you aren't even playingSHHHHHHHHHHHHH

and then namo came along for the ride. Pen had the very good point that Equitial and Espy were mutually exclusive

so anyone on the Espy train was kinda sus. Elyvorg was pretty much hard cleared at this point, and also, Namo's actions were! weird!

thanks for coming to our ted talk; it's been enlightening; y'all are galaxy brained.

tldr of our brainstorm: pen says smart things while kint draws pictures and throws darts. a rainbow appears.

 

[kintsugi]

okay and to be clear we were mostly joking about Doctor!Dragonfree but wouldn't it be funny *if*

 

[Pen]

Crack theories about Dragonfree's role, part 2

 

[Negrek]

@kintsugi @Pen Thanks for sharing these! Looks like you two managed to put things together pretty well.

And congrats on being the first to uncover oops-all-doctors! (Namo was just a doctor who didn't need a second doctor around to kill people!)

 

[kintsugi]

And congrats on being the first to uncover oops-all-doctors! (Namo was just a doctor who didn't need a second doctor around to kill people!)

negrek is big brain!

Firefighter - just a doctor but only for arsonist victims
Roleblocker - jailer doctor minus the doctor part
Vigilante - two doctors in a trenchcoat; can force an overdose on their own
Swapper - okay this one is tough you got me
Bodyguard - rotcod, inverse doctor

 

[Shiny Phantump]

So, I have some feedback on this setup. A lot is critical, so I wanna start by saying that balancing Mafia is hard. Balancing these games where everyone gets a role in order to ensure we have more fun is significantly even harder than balancing normal Mafia, and I have much respect for Negrek for running them. This was a fun game despite any balance crit, and was a respectable attempt to address town skew in previous anniversary games. I think laying out my thoughts on why the game ended this way might have a chance to maybe be helpful to one of the people planning a Mafia. I hope I don't come off like I think know better or could do better with the really difficult task of setting up a role madness game, it's just easier to lay things like this out in retrospect, 'cause hindsight is super helpful.

Just relisting all the roles in a more digestible format for convenience:

Mafia Roles:
-Killer with OS-Strongman
-Doctor for Overdose abuse
-Roleblocker
-Bus Driver
-Traitor and part-time killer
-Custom: Complicated and unlikely to trigger. Explanation in the spoiler.

Town Roles:
-Cop
-Bus Driver
-Oracle
-Doctor with OD
-JOAT (Cop, Vig, Roleblocker, Doc with OD)
-Bodyguard
-OS-Bulletproof
-Universal Backup
-Activated Vig or Roleblocker (Trigger: 2 interactions)
-Activated Tracker or Weak Hider (Trigger: Chosen player's death)
-Activated Firefighter or Doctor with OD (Trigger: Day 2)
-Activated Firefighter or Rolestopper (Trigger: 4 Innocent Deaths)

And then there's an Arsonist, too.

So, the first thing that strikes me here: The town is starved for investigative roles! Seriously, if you want to verify what someone did in the night... You have what I'd guess to be a 33% chance of picking up a Tracker in the mid/late game. That's the only one.

Cop, of course, is powerful and a staple that it'd be weird not to have, and Oracle can catch Mafia in a bad lie, but neither can gather info on the night itself, so the town's ability to deduce what happened in the night... rounds down to nothing.

In a social deduction game, it's really rough to not much ability to deduce things. I'm entirely unsurprised that no Mafia were lynched, because anything but a roleclaim of a role that does not exist in the setup at all is entirely unfalsifiable! And yes, that does reflect incredibly poorly on the one scum player who managed to get herself killed somehow despite all that but shhhhhh let's not think about that part too hard.

So, in lieu of Social Deduction, we instead see the town instead play a game of Social. No claims can really be properly verified, so in place of there we end up with wild speculation, and the losers are the ones who weren't active enough to defend themselves from it. The lynch history is 3 players who didn't or weren't going to remain active. That's just a natural part of a setup where no defence can be disproven: The only successful trains happen to people who don't put as much time into defending themselves.

And then there's Overdose. Overdose is rough in that now Doctor's can't protect the people they need to protect. It's even worse when there's a scum player actively trying to cause them. Knowing they can't target the people who most need to be targeted really shoots the doctors in the foot. This game, they caused 1 death, and prevented 0. That's something serious anti-town utility for a setup with oops all doctors.

And finally... I've been hit with the urge to review all the roles one by one:

Spoiler: Literally why am I spending my time like this I barely even played

Killer with One-Shot Strongman
So, having a Mafia Killer is pretty standard. The One-Shot Strongman is really overkill when the Doctors have enough trouble trying to prevent kills. In the end it didn't do anything, but it seems overkill to me.

Windskull's Complicated Impractical Thing
So, if Wind was one of 3 Mafia players, and they didn't inherit from Namo yet, she would gain the two-shot ability to daykill someone once per day by saying "Shut up, [Name]" or "Fuck you, [Name]" in thread while Negrek is ready to respond by immediately killing them the moment the post goes up.

The cause-and-effect is super obvious and naturally presents anti-town, so using this on non-scum may as well be roleclaiming Mafia in the process. Only one shot ever activating is realistic, followed by the instant lynching of the user if the game didn't end. Really, this ends a game at 3-3 parity at best, and that's about it. It's also really unlikely that a game will hit 3-3 parity without either Wind dying, or inheriting from Namo. Negrek on discord said it being first inherit was a last-minute change that made it much, much harder to activate, so I can understand how this basically-a-Goon slipped through the cracks.

Mafia Doctor
This strikes me as the most balance-shifting role at the Mafia's disposal. Makes it even more impossible to target players in need of heals because we can just OD them in response. Combined with the fact that, if push came to solve we also had a Strongman... why even have doctors? They're not helping anyone.

Mafia Bus Driver
The greatest utility of a Mafia Bus Driver, imo, is to misdirect investigation result. Those roles... were few and far between. Without that, mostly helpful for redirecting Doctors, but again, Doctors sucked anyways.

Mafia Roleblocker
Another interference role heavily limited by having very few action-taking players to block at all. Luckily, Town Bus Driver was claimed early enough to bully, but wow, there's really not many people here to use it on. Half the town is passive by default.

Traitor with Odd-Night Killing
The Mafia already had the potential to score 2 kills in one night with OD. This raised the Mafia kills/night potential up to 3 on every second night. It just so happened to work out that the OD kill was on an even night, so nobody noticed that, but yikes that is rough on the town.

Arsonist
It's harder to measure the Arsonist's impact on the meta when the Arsonist didn't play and was killed at random early on... But the one thing I think about it is... did we really need more anti-town killing roles? There's 3 already in the Mafia. (Okay 4 counting Wind but that was never gonna happen.) Worse, because their kills are all indirect, Arsonists can be super hard to rat out when they're not, y'know, picked at random to be lynched for inactivity.

Cop
The one and only actual investigative role the town has. Standard Mafia fare, but really would've needed support to turn things around even if it weren't for dying early on, and that support did not exist.

Oracle
Oracle is a role that really gets its kicks in when the Mafia have to claim roles that aren't in the setup. Reaching that phase in the game and sustaining it long enough to get an Oracle lynch is difficult because half the roles that would help the town get there were activated... or more accurately, were not activated. This was not the inforole the town needed.

Doctor
So, huge threat to the doctor is the presence of ODs. It's impossible to communicate exactly who'll doctor which players without telling the Mafia and opening yourself up to shenanigans. Thus, protecting anyone of value comes with a significant OD risk. Not ideal.

Bus Driver
Town Bus Driver is a tricky one to play. This setup gives the Bus Driver the advantage of having almost no inforoles to accidentally misdirect, but since they don't know that, they have to play carefully. Unless you Bus Drive to a scum players you can't prevent kills so much as just change who they hit, and targeting scum misleads any inforoles who targeted them.

JOAT (Cop, Doc, Vig, Roleblocker)
A one-shot investigation power is welcome in a setup as starved of them as this, but the other three of these other roles have anti-town potential. Jackie used the Vig shot well, of course, but the roleblock ended up hitting town. Not the weakest role here, but an unfortunate hand to be dealt as a JOAT. It is the 'standard' setup for JOAT, according to the wiki, except for the fact that ODs exist, reducing the powers that are safe to use from 2/4 down to 1/4, a rough loss.

Bodyguard
Notably the one role that can protect without risking an OD. Ended up helping the town a little by saving Jesse and therefore leading to my death, but normally not a role you put in the game expecting it to lead to a Mafia death. It doesn't fill the hole left by losing major Doctor utility because it doesn't prevent a death and therefore can't slow the tempo of the Mafia's win down at all.

One-Shot Bulletproof
Very meh and standard role. In these role madness games I've always considered it biiiiit of a filler role, but honestly as far as filler roles go this isn't the worst offender here.

Activated Vig or Roleblocker (Trigger: 2 interactions)
Super hard to claim this because both the roles look a lot like anti-town utility, which Fuse fortunately realized and lied about. The real kicker for this one, though, is the activation condition. There... just aren't many nonlethal interaction roles in this game at all in the first place. You have a negligible chance of activating this naturally, and claiming it puts you in a bad place, so it unsurprisingly ended up as a Vanilla Townie to the bitter end.

Activated Tracker or Weak Hider (Trigger: Chosen player's death)
So, one of the advantages of these activated roles is supposed to be flexibility, but I see very clear right and wrong answers here. Weak Hider just can't hold up to a Tracker. It's also notable that this the Tracker option here is one of only two possible investigative roles... but the trigger really is an issue. It's chosen before D1 even happens, so the choice is basically pseudorandom. You can pick power players to up the odds, yeah, but there's no telling what alignment they'll even be, so it's quite the crapshoot. (Unless you pick Chibi in which case it 100% activates right away.) This activation condition has an issue wherein, not only does the pseudorandom player need to die, you also need to outlive them or there's no point, which is exactly the problem it faced this game. The game running long and more players dying doesn't up the odds of it activating too much because it's just as likely the owner will be the one who dies first. I'd guess it to be roughly a 33% chance of ever seeing play, way too low for a seriously short-supply role type.

Activated Firefighter or Doctor (Trigger: Day 2)
In the end, the Doctor from this role killed someone and saved no one because Doctor is not a very helpful role here. Being a Doctor in this meta is super rough. Still, probably better than Firefighter, since Firefighter comes with this extra time element where you can never tell when an Arsonist may have primed someone and so whether or not you're actually helping, or if you were too early. However, this role does have an activation condition that's sure to happen, so unlike the two above it at least activated.

Activated Firefighter or Rolestopper (Trigger: 4 Innocent Deaths)
Same feelings on Firefighter as above. This time there's an added element where, because the other option doesn't also kinda stink, you get the Tracker/Weak Hider thing where there's one option you really want to take. Too bad it never got to see much play, because Rolestopper would have been up there with Cop as one of the two really helpful roles. Unlike the Doctors, Rolestopper can protect a target without killing them. Not only that, it also prevents any accidental OD plays on popular targets. Plus, not like you're gonna block anything from the town, the only Town role that would matter on a Rolestopped target is the Cop, who shouldn't be targeting players the town has already decided to protect anyways. Plus maybe the Tracker on the off chance that activated, but the same goes for them. It's also one of the two conditions that's guaranteed to activate. This is just flat-out better than the variant of the same idea above.

Universal Backup
Though it didn't matter this time because the Cop died first, the 'Universal' here really makes it worse and not better. Significantly so. There's too many weak filler roles among the town for you to really want to unconditionally inherit the first death. This would be much better off as a Backup Cop, because that's the one role that really pulls enough weight here for the town to miss it... Well, inheriting Activated Rolestopper would be pretty alright, too, but not quite enough to be worth risking inheriting anything else here.

 

[Seren]

Alright, I have not actually gotten caught up with the thread since last night (although I spoiled myself for how it ended cause I would have lost my mind to wait all day) so I will go back and do that at some point. But first, I did have some things I wanted to address that I didn't get around to doing (y'know, dying and all...). So I'm gonna do that all first... starting here with my Tefiren replies and an RP post that I didn't get to use.

also I love Miyako being perceptive enough to realise that if she tried to make this about his feelings, he'd just insist he was fine. Very correct of her. Tefiren is always fine, obviously!

I legit do not recall if I got to reply to this or not, but it's still in my notes and either way I did want to acknowledge it anyway. My "planned" reply in my notes had been this:

Tefiren really seems to be pretty cocky and self-reliant, it makes sense that he wouldn't admit to having issues or wanting to talk about them! I'm kind of the same way in regards to the self-reliance and not acknowledging my emotions for the most part, except with the opposite of Tefiren's confidence, haha. Kind of fitting though for a Persona protag to pick the option that makes sense for the person she's interacting with at the time, though. Wonder which of Miyako's social links Tefiren would represent? Hmmm...

Next to address, is this:

Plus, she mentioned offhandedly on Day 2 that her night action that night - implying she'd used one - had had no relevance to the Lexx and Rascal's deaths, so she felt no need to bring it up. If she was a vig, that doesn't fit, because either she did nothing that night, or one of those kills was actually her (but clearly not, because no scorch mark).

Yeah, no one else that I noticed picked up on my kind-of claim there, it seemed. (I was honestly kinda hoping someone might call me out on it despite it probably being for the best that I not reveal what I had at the time, because I was desperately hoping for aid, haha. More on that later.)


And one further specific thing I have been absolutely dying to comment on since... well, dying:

"I was wrong because I didn't listen to Miya-- to the other Human, the one with the stick. She figured out that the fun Human got caught by the Arsonist, right away. But I didn't listen to her. I thought it was the Mafia who got him. I was sure it was the Mafia. Because I was sure of that, everything I said about the thunder cat being a Mafia made sense. If I'd known it was the Arsonist, I'd never have thought any of that about her, and I'd have gone after the big white bird yesterday instead, and--"

and we both wouldn't have lost someone important

As I said in the discord dead-chat, that last line kinda broke my heart a li'l bit. (And honestly is the reason I really wanted to go read Tefiren's story.)

Also, while I have this post here. I am SO SORRY I gave you that impression about the arsonist. I was deadass convinced that they still had to be around somehow at this point in the game. (Funnily enough, I tried to confirm this with my night action and failed, not just because of the death - again, more on this later.)


And now, here's the mostly-RP post I'd planned for the day after the Chappie lynching:

Spoiler: Unused RP post

They had been wrong.

Miyako had managed to convince Tefiren (with much less difficulty than she had been expecting) to come back to the group and help them see his reasoning. All because he knew he needed everyone else to vote his way to get his way. Gentle smiles and nods of encouragement were all he needed, it had seemed.

Then, suddenly, he'd stumbled. Miyako's gaze immediately shot in his direction, surprise and worry on her face. It hadn't appeared that he was attacked, though... maybe something had just startled him. Either way, his reaction had startled her, nor was it missed by the rest of the gathered. Tefiren seemed to only glance around without actually realizing that people's eyes were on him, and then he had started hissing at Mewtwo.

What was that about?

There was some more talking afterwards, not about Tefiren's and Miyako's thoughts about Chappie, but about something Mewtwo had done, and Miyako didn't miss the archopy's retreat back towards his tree, leaves drooping again. He'd gotten angry at Mewtwo over something and then - wait, hadn't Dave just accused Mewtwo of something, too?

It was hard to follow the discussion as everyone scrambled to gather their thoughts and make them known before nightfall. Though Miyako had thoughts of her own, and she wanted to go check on her archopy friend (or, what she could consider as close to a friend as this place had, Nephthys aside), night was drawing nearer even quicker. She remained quiet; she'd been nervous around Mewtwo ever since she got here, but had backed down after drawing some side-eyes from the rest of the group. She'd have to think more on what the others said about him tonight.

But first... first she needed to know the results of her vote, especially since most of the group followed suit, including Dave, the other (quite unexpectedly) person here who was confirmed to be on her side.

And they had been wrong.

Chappie had been innocent after all. She had been on their side all along, had made a mistake, and simply cracked under the pressure.

Miyako frowned, her head hung with closed eyes, and took a deep breath. She knew this was a possibility when she voted for Chappie. They all had. She had so, so very much wanted to be right - but for all her theorizing, she'd still been wrong. Even so, she didn't regret her vote. She had genuinely believed Tefiren's reasoning, had believed that Chappie might be working for the enemy. Besides, Chappie had wanted this. She was innocent and had still asked for this. On top of that, despite the accusations that had been cast at Mewtwo late in the evening, there was no time to come to a group consensus to change their target anyway, even if she had wanted to.

So Miyako reminded herself that she had made this choice out of both necessity and mercy. She wasn't sure she'd be able to keep going otherwise.

But what of her green friend?

And have a bonus death scene. I really do regret not being able to contribute this but I was (admittedly) kinda surprised that I'd been targeted at all, given my inconsistent play to that point, and kinda bummed about dying, so I just... hadn't felt up to it. But after I kinda got over it (too late), I realized I could have used it to try to give Tefiren one last little confidence booster in it without actually giving anything away, but again, was too late. Figured I'd write it up anyway, so here's how I'd have done it had I been in the state of mind at the time:

Spoiler: Miyako death scene

Miyako hadn't the chance to check on Tefiren after their failed voting as night fell and the group retreated to their respective temporary lodgings. She spared his tree a glance before returning to her own dwelling, but she couldn't make him out among the branches. He probably wanted to be alone anyway, if he were feeling as rotten as she herself was, and she suspected he did even if he refused to admit it. The way he'd lost his luster during their voting had proven that well enough. Regardless, he wasn't likely to respond to her now, and she didn't very well fancy the idea of hanging around in the dark alone, either.

Again, Nephthys remained stoic that night as Miyako lay on her blazer, though at least this time Miyako could tell she was simply trying to be respectful. They'd have to talk this over with him in the morning, figure out what this meant, and she also had to figure out how to convince the archopy that he was needed.

But then suddenly Nephthys was on alert, a sickening mix of panic and surprise churning around in Miyako's brain that drew her out of her thoughts and back to her surroundings. Just as Nephthys realized what was happening, Miyako too became aware of someone else close by. Too close.

She couldn't tell who it was, but it didn't really matter now. There was no way she'd be able to reach for her velvet key and summon Nephthys before her assailant would react, no matter how desperately the phoenix-woman was screaming in her brain to be released.

It was too late now, for both of them. Doing her best to drown out her Persona's panic and fury, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. They were both wrong about Chappie. Miyako's last thought was to hope that Tefiren wouldn't blame himself for this one, somehow, too.

Anyways, I absolutely loved the Tefiren/Miyako dynamic throughout this game, and honestly is the driving factor that kept me from just giving up despite my poor play. It was fun. I'll have to think harder about what I say before I post next game, obviously, but I'm leaning towards still giving it a shot in the future.

 

[Phoenixsong]

* If it would be in character for Kyros to say "Fuck you, [character name]!", feel free to use that as the trigger phrase instead--just make sure it's in bold font!

oh hi it me from Original Flavor TVTropes Mafia. (Except for the part where I wasn't given the option to not say the extremely-out-of-character-for-me "fuck you, ____!" >|)

This was a blast to spectate! So much wonderful RP is it bad if i want Tefiren to actually die at some point just to see him return in a subsequent game and have to reckon with the fact that he got caught, and a ton of fun theorizing going on. And that night one chaos, my god. Chef's kiss. A goddamn work of art. One of my favorite things to see in Mafia, and to compare to what the group thought happened afterward, haha.

'Fraid I don't have any interesting notes of my own, because when I'm not playing I put zero effort into actually solving and just nod along to whatever seems interesting. Even so, a little disappointed in myself for not thinking of the possibility that Namco was singleton mafia. I've been singleton myself enough times that you'd think I'd remember that's a thing that exists, lol. (Including singleton mafia who promptly got shot at by their informed teammates and somehow managed to survive, heh.)

Also, I just wanted to say: very well done to the new players especially! I know you were all nervous, but I do think each of you handled yourselves very well, especially in a chaotic, somewhat experimental setup like this. In particular, the frustration of having everyone jump down your throat when you make a mistake—a mistake that happened not because you were trying to disguise a lie, but because you literally didn't realize it was a mistake, and how could you have?—is rough as hell. And even when the other players say they understand (and they probably do! Likely from first-hand experience!), they're still often going to feel like they have a duty to keep pushing.

Unfortunately, people dissecting everything you post and trying to find ill intent where you know there is none is something you just have to get used to in this game. They can't know for sure that you're telling the truth, and the RNG isn't going to pass you up for a mafia role just because you're new, so they've got to do their due diligence. Looking for apparent inconsistencies is all that the town can really do outside of mechanical proof. It's hard, but just try to remember that it's not meant personally or as a slight on your ability to play or learn the game (and if you feel like someone's tone is making that hard to understand, don't be afraid to bring that up). And, of course, it's something that will diminish significantly over time as you gain more experience! Can't say it'll never happen—believe you me, I have seen experienced players make some colossally unfortunate screw-ups as town, miles worse than anything that happened here—but at least by then it'll hopefully be easier to take the resulting third degree in stride.

(A few brief tips/reminders, if it helps: If you are innocent, then you know you are innocent, and that is mechanical info about the gamestate that you should not be afraid to wield like a big ol' stick while solving. Never place a serious vote for yourself, because that's the one vote you know for a fact is wrong; you'll still win with your team if you die, and it's hard to feel like you're a hindrance, but the mafia wins when the town's numbers dwindle, and every voice in the game is a voice that can work toward a solution. If you're having trouble defending yourself, especially against "feelings" which aren't provable anyway, try changing tack and focusing on scumhunting, which will be seen as helpful, may produce interesting results, and leaves behind an honest set of thoughts if you are later knocked out of the game. Experienced players generally know what they're talking about, and it's worth carefully considering what they say, but your opinions also matter and if you feel strongly about them then don't be afraid to explore them, or to ask for help understanding something if you need it. Learning how to work through miscommunications and get to the core of players' opinions is an important skill in this game; but remember, so is taking care of yourself if you need a break!)

In conclusion, Mafia Is Hard, and it can be intense, and it takes getting used to. But just look at how close a lot of you were, and the information that you were able to help the town bring to light! I've been in games with new players—and not-so-new players—who have contributed substantially less. I have flailed around and contributed substantially less, even when people were somehow under the impression that I knew what I was doing. I hope you're able to take what you accomplished to heart, and I hope that you had enough fun to be willing to give the game another shot someday!

Good show, both sides, and congrats to the mafia! About time they managed to take one of these, heh.

Swapper - okay this one is tough you got me

Doctor who just foists your symptoms (you know, like bullets, bullets are a symptom) onto someone else!

 

[windskull]

Hi i do have some thoughts on the meta of this game but it's late and I'm too tired to type anything up. So instead... Lemme just share the art I made in hopes of getting to activate my role:

 

[Seren]

The others didn't even answer Tefiren; they just gave him these looks. Tefiren shrunk a little under their gazes, glancing away and wincing.

"Fine," he muttered to the ground. "Do whatever you want."

And he slunk away back to his tree, pausing only when he almost tripped over a stick on the ground along the way.

...He took the stick with him, placing it in the boughs of the tree like it was just another branch, as he hid himself up there away from everyone else.

He missed Forsira.

[[Dismissive frustration 100% in-character here; I just needed a way to get Tefiren out of the scene. I think I'm done posting for today, too.]]

Adding this to my previous Tefiren post because I didn't see it and aaaaaaaaaa <3


Anyway, here's my second post full of things to reply to:

Seren: Miyako

Ability: Summon Secrets (Oracle)

You may be trapped here, cut off from the outside world, but it seems this place has a weaker hold on Nephthys. Her understanding of the "game" is nearly as foggy as yours, but perhaps she's closer to its creators than you, because she's able to divine something of their intent from whatever realm they've banished her to. Give her a question, and she'll do her best to find the answer before daylight separates you again; perhaps if you work together, the both of you will come through this unscathed.

You are aligned with the Innocents and win when all non-Innocent players are jailed. Once per night you may ask Negrek a yes or no question about the game setup and receive an answer back at the end of the night.

These questions must relate to the initial setup of the game, when the roles included had been decided, but before they were assigned to any particular players and before alignments had been determined. Therefore, "Is Negrek a doctor?" would not be an acceptable question, as it couldn't be known prior to role assignment. On the other hand, "Is there a doctor in this game?" would be an acceptable question. Likewise, "How many Mafia-aligned players are there?" would not be acceptable because it's not a yes or no question, but "Are there three Mafia-aligned players?" would receive an answer.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!

Will you look at this? Just look at it. Look at how I played. I'll admit straight out, the irony of this role was not lost on me. I was the last person in this game we wanted to have this role. The guy who'd blundered into sussing someone for a basic opening play and not only got himself on most people's scum/null piles off the get-go, but also got Mewtwo a couple of days worth of clearance to boot.

I desperately wanted to claim at some point (and I was planning to actually RP summoning Nephthys when I did so, basically giving her the role specifically; @elyvorg this is what I meant when I said I was keeping my eyes open for an opportunity for Miyako to show off her trick to Tefiren. Shame I never found that opportunity.). I was hoping to eventually get someone to give me some ideas of what we needed to ask. But I felt like, especially after Bench died, revealing it would be suicide without a good reason (which is why I hinted I'd be willing to roleclaim if it would get some sus off of me, and then maybe I could have been actually useful).

In addition to just not wanting to die and costing town a possible helpful-in-the-future inforole (probably the right call given how few inforoles were available to town this game, apparently), I felt like revealing would have kind of forced someone to protect me given how little other info we had, and I felt like there were more important players who needed that protection than I (such as Dave). So I kept quiet and just tried to gather as much info as I could. (Turns out this was probably smart enough of me after all, given the mafia-doctor overdose thing.)

I also recognize half of my questions were one step behind everyone else, at least to the point where most got resolved the following day anyway. To sum it up so you don't have to go looking through the night logs, here's what I did and why, the only notes I bothered to keep after day 1:

-My N-0 question:
"Is there a mafia-aligned role-blocker?" (response: Yes)

Night 0, I had literally nothing to go by. Last year's game, however, seemed to have some issues with not knowing whether or not a mafia role-blocker existed. I figured that would be an easy problem to root out right away. (In hindsight, it didn't really occur to me that, in a game this large, it was sort of a given for mafia to have one, but... I've never played before so even if I realized that, I'd probably still have asked.

-N-1 question:
"Is there a third-party arsonist?" (response: No Result) - Was I blocked?

And here I figured my N-0 question had been rendered moot, because I was indeed blocked (and only Tefiren seemed to have noticed when I subtly implied that one single time that I'd tried to do something and that it had no bearing on the Rascal/Lexx death that night). Turns out it appears that Jesse blocked me, not a mafia, so... whoops. Not that it ended up mattering, but it hadn't occurred to me either that innocents could block other innocents (although... again, that is a really stupid thing to assume, given you have to target blind early game in most cases anyway).

-N-2 question:
"Is/was there a town-aligned backup?" (response: Yes)

Admittedly... I just had no idea what was going on at this point. It felt like half of us had been questioning if Arctozolt actually truly even was a backup, and I'd seemingly just gotten the idea of an arsonist to stick enough that it wasn't going away, so I didn't feel the need to re-try the blocked question. So I just... kinda shot in the dark on this one because I was running out of time to ask something.

-N-3 question:
"Is/was there multiple third-party roles?" (response: No Result) - Probably cause I died

As it turns out... I was blocked again, it was NOT because I died (I got clarification on this in dead-chat; I would have gotten an answer had I not been blocked, even though I'd died. Probably because of last year's "Dave talking to the dead" thing. Anyway, I asked this because I'd jumped on the idea that the arsonist was still around, and that Lance was some other third-party role, and that caused even more chaos. Thought I'd clean up my mess here and settle it once and for all whether or not we'd killed the arsonist. Aaaaaaand because I never got to do so, poor elyvorg was left with this thought for the rest of the game I feel so bad aaaaaaahhhhhhh

ANYWAY yeah, when I first was given the role and looked it up, I immediately knew I was going to under-utilize it, mostly for Clueless Newbie reasons. I did enjoy it, though, trying to figure out what might be potentially helpful to know. (Originally before the game I'd been just hoping to get cop so I would have it easy and just know who I can trust and that way maybe pick up some threads of their logic and expand upon them, but honestly I'm kinda glad I didn't get that, now. This was much more fun.)

Finally, I adore the flavoring on this so much. I desperately feared that someone would catch on to the fire magics that I'd mentioned in the sign-up thread (and eventually someone did, forget who... might have been Altair) and then suspect me of being the arsonist, but that never ended up going anywhere. Anyway, this is kinda why I RP'd her as just silent most of the game. She was busy in night phases trying to pull answers from the void.

Speaking of flavoring, I have to draw attention to this one:

Dragonfree: Dave

Ability: Reluctant Avenger (Custom: Tracker or Weak Hider)

Another one of these games? Lovely. Another great oppportunity to dance for some sadistic assholes' amusement. Why even bother? It's not going to change anything anyway. Whether you win or lose or even fucking "die" here, you'll probably just end up back here, ready to go through this all over again. At this point, the only winning move is not to play and give them the satisfaction of watching you enage with their stupid "game."

Of course, pointless isn't the same as not real, and some of the people who've gotten dragged into this... Goddammit. You're fucking tired of losing people. You don't know most of the ones who've been brought here, hell, you don't even like most of them, but you're tired of watching people fucking disappear. Maybe if you can do something to help stop this, you can at least spare them the

You are aligned with the Innocents and win when all non-Innocent players are jailed. At the outset of the game, you have no night action. During Night Zero, select one other player. In the first night phase after that player is eliminated, you will be prompted to choose one of the abilities below, which will serve as your power for the duration of the game. You may use it immediately and once per night thereafter.

- Odor Sleuth: What the fuck? You aren't a fucking Poochyena here. You can't "sniff out" the bad guys. Even if sometimes you feel like you get a faint sense of where people are or where they're going, it's not the same at all. One thing's for fucking sure, you aren't playing puppy for whatever twisted bastards are running this horrorshow. If you choose this ability, once per night you may choose another player to tail. If you do, at the end of the night you will be informed what player(s), if any, they targeted with an ability during the night.

- Run Away: As you seem adept at letting other people take bullets for y--wait. What the fuck? Who the fuck wrote this? Do you think this is fucking funny? You're all fucking sick. If you choose this ability, once per night you may choose another player to visit. If you do, any actions targeting you during the night will fail. However, if your target would be eliminated by a killing power during that night, you will be eliminated along with them. You should also be careful of who you choose to drop in on--no doubt the Mafia won't appreciate a visit and will make sure you know it. If the player you target with this action is aligned with the Mafia, you will be eliminated at the end of the night.

I fucking love Dave. Just gonna go ahead and say it now. When I'm done with Tefiren's story, I fully intend to go and read Dave's. (Although I have so much on my reading list right now aaahhhh). This role almost tops last year's "Some Kind of Psychic Bullshit". It's close.

But yeah, the flavoring on everyone's roles is fucking superb.

However, with more time to think about it, I believe I have a few ideas for how to fix that, including tying trigger conditions more in with RP than with game mechanics. I will probably use this concept again in future games, with some modifications.

Hi yes I know there was a discussion earlier about mafia not actually being an RP game but YES. Give me ALL of the RP-triggering abilities. That was the highlight of this game for me.

I'd also considered running a beginner-only game this year, using only more "standard" roles and only open to people with one or fewer games under their belt, but didn't think there'd be enough people--I'd want at least eight or so to have a good game. I think there may be enough demand to hold one next year, though--we'll see! I'd be happy to put one together if there was interest.

Ooooh, I've been hoping to find someone to host a beginner's game, but honestly I wasn't going to bother the busiest person on the forum for that. Hadn't gotten far enough to figure out who I would ask, but meh. Anyway I'd absolutely go for a beginner game to like, learn better. (Although we'd have to define what qualifies as a beginner somehow; I assume the newbies from this year's game would be allowed if we don't play any more games in between, but... I dunno, that's something that can be decided later.) Anyway, consider me already signed up if this ends up happening.

Kinda really want to react to Chibi's notes while I'm here because they're hilarious and accurate (also this is why you die to fast, holy hell).

I’m slooowly starting to feel more confident about Miyako and Altair, I think.

Kinda glad I got some people to sus me less the more I went on, though the fact that it was because no mafia would make my kind of blunders isn't how I'd want to go about clearing my name, lol. (At least, one person admitted to having me hard town early but kept posting me as soft town for game reasons. Won't go into detail who this is but they can reveal themselves if they want.)

• Wait wait wait… jailer is combination roleblocker and doctor?? I thought it was roleblock/rolestop!
• Okay, in previous Negrek games it IS roleblock/rolestop. I hope Tefi will point that out?
• Heck yeah he did! :D

More Tefiren being useful without an ability <3

• This is a lot to sort through. Miyako and Altair both defended themselves. I now feel slightly better about Miyako and slightly worse about Altair.
• Is Mewtwo ever going to drop the tunneling on Miyako. This is getting old.

Aww. Do feel better about this one, although I still have no idea whether you felt better because I made some sense or because I didn't. LOL

Also yeah, I was obviously kinda annoyed by the tunneling too, though I ended up feeling better about it later on. (I was totally right about Mewtwo but for the wrong reasons, aaaaaaaaa)

I’m gonna say it… taking player experience into account is an important part of accurately reading someone’s intent and agenda.

Yeah, this is why I kept regarding people as "experienced players", although I'd incorrectly identified a few since they were playing very well. (IE, Jesse and technically elyvorg I guess). People who know how other people play, as well as just how to play the game in general, are harder to read and just... make better plays. Tefiren and Dave in particular made very solid cases which is why I latched on to Tefiren from the start... that and he kinda trusted me more than anyone else, too. (Admittedly, Dave was confirmed innocent half of the game and it's much easier to follow someone's logic when you know you can trust them.)

This entire arsonist discussion is absurd. It was so obviously a vig I am losing my mind.

aaaaaa yeah I know I felt so smug when Dragonfree mentioned my original theory about it and I feel like that's partly why it never got dropped. That, and I never got to answer my N3 question.

• GO WES!! DAY 4 MVP!!!
• HOLY SHIT POSSIBLE TEFIREN COMEBACK?
• PICK A PICK A PICK AAAAAAAAAA
• GO WES GO DON’T GIVE IN

More Tefiren being Good, and BIG props to @HelloYellow17 for stepping up her game as it went further along. <3

Being SO SURE there was no more arsonist on D3. Then being OUTRAGED at the evidence leaning toward another arsonist on D4. And then it turns out I was right to begin with?? Enjoy me freaking out about 3rd parties on D4, lol.

I think it really hurt that we never actually got to see the arsonist flavoring. Most of us thought we did at various points (I suspected the twisted ground from Lexx's death, for example, as being more than just a murder... it was blue and twisted, it had to be something psychic, right? But everyone argued both that flavor didn't matter and that arsonist kills will be fire [?????] so when Lusamine lit up like a Christmas tree and left scorch marks, I assumed THAT was the arsonist fire before elyvorg pointed out that it was mechanically impossible to have been the arsonist twice in three nights. But then somehow everyone got BACK on the "oh actually maybe the flavoring DOES matter" train, and after I died Negrek told me in dead-chat that the flavoring wasn't supposed to be obvious which I'm pretty sure everyone playing assumed it was supposed to be obvious? So like, mixed messages there, but then the fact that no one actually got to see what the flavoring would have looked like for comparison just made everyone confused. I certainly didn't help this problem, and died before I could fix it.)

Oracle
Oracle is a role that really gets its kicks in when the Mafia have to claim roles that aren't in the setup. Reaching that phase in the game and sustaining it long enough to get an Oracle lynch is difficult because half the roles that would help the town get there were activated... or more accurately, were not activated. This was not the inforole the town needed.

I honestly feel like if this was in a more experienced player's hands, Town would have still been able to use it for something. Like, I don't disagree with your summary here, either, but at least someone like Dave, who we all knew was innocent and were likely to try to protect anyway, could ask things and get that info out there, whereas I... had no idea how without giving away my role or even what to ask in the first place that would be useful.

Also, I just wanted to say: very well done to the new players especially! I know you were all nervous, but I do think each of you handled yourselves very well, especially in a chaotic, somewhat experimental setup like this. In particular, the frustration of having everyone jump down your throat when you make a mistake—a mistake that happened not because you were trying to disguise a lie, but because you literally didn't realize it was a mistake, and how could you have?—is rough as hell. And even when the other players say they understand (and they probably do! Likely from first-hand experience!), they're still often going to feel like they have a duty to keep pushing.

And finally, to cap this reply-fest off, thank you! I did kinda realize this after blowing up on Equital for doing that with me, regardless of whether or not their explanation and reasoning was truthful or not. (I suspect it probably was an honest explanation, given how frustrated my posting had been at that point, but given he was mafia after all, he could have just been downplaying it to avoid giving info away in-game or something, idk.) Anyways, despite that little setback for a couple days, I really did enjoy this, and I hope I wasn't as big a nuisance to the town as I suspect some people probably feel I was.


Finally, thanks to Negrek for setting this whole thing up and dealing with my minor clarification questions throughout. And also to everyone else who played, it was a blast!

 

[AbraPunk]

YES. Give me ALL of the RP-triggering abilities. That

[[ okay yes I absolutely agree with this. RP was the best part of the game, by far. I would be incredibly down for a more RP-focused Mafia ]]

 

[HelloYellow17]

[[ okay yes I absolutely agree with this. RP was the best part of the game, by far. I would be incredibly down for a more RP-focused Mafia ]]

Seconded!!

 

[IFBench]

[[ okay yes I absolutely agree with this. RP was the best part of the game, by far. I would be incredibly down for a more RP-focused Mafia ]]

Thirded!

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Too busy to write a whole retrospective or anything, but many thanks to y'all for playing and kudos to Yellow and Inkedust for especially fantastic debut performances. Nice going!

I'm interested in playing and hosting games of Mafia in the future~ In particular, I wouldn't mind being one to host the 'Newbies Mafia'. Not for some weeks, mind. Cheers~