Mini 149: Open Role Mafia - Game Over

[HairyMezican]

Let's assume I am scum.

How would I have been able to get away with claiming that you were scum 2 days ago? I would have had to have known that I would find the SK in my investigation the next night, or else an innocent would have been lynched, and I would be next.

I also would have had to have known that Meme was going to be Mod-Killed before I said that, because she would in all likely hood have some sort of doctor/angel protection, and be unkillable at night, and would have easily foiled my "plans."

I also would have had to risk the SK killing off Laz and revealing me to be a fraud.

It would have been a very bad idea for me to have outed Laz 2 days ago if I were really mafia.

The more likely explanation is that I am actually a normal cop, and I got an actual investigation result that let me know that Laz was scum.

Hopefully you will come to the right decision, and vote for Laz.

[Jaguar]

Sorry guys, today just flew by. HM is putting up the better arguments so far though. All Laz can say is I'm not scum, he is.

HM has a few things going for him that Laz doesn't. He got two scum with investigations. Nights 2 and 3. On night two he investigated Laz and night 3 Cubs. Why would he take the chance and give us two scummy results? That only works against him with one SK and one mafia remaining.

HM being alive is a clever ploy indeed, regardless of which one of you is scum. If Laz is scum, he had no choice and if HM is scum, well, you can't really kill yourself now, can you.

I'll let this stew a bit more and hope to have a vote in the next day or two.

[SpeedyKQ]

I'll be away until Monday evening. Sorry if this happens to result in a long twilight.

[lazarusmoth]

I'm going to be re-reading the thread and trying to gather enough clues to incriminate HM. I know it doesn't look good for me and I praise HM for building a solid defense. But all I know is he's the remaining scum who's somehow escaped everyone's suspicions.

I wouldn't fault you for the lynch vote, jag. If I was in your position I'd do the same. But please reconsider and vote HM. He's so close to a winning this game in the name of scum.

[Jaguar]

I am leaning towards one person at the moment.

HM: voted for LM on day 1 and I can see why he would have investigated LM night 2, with all the conversations going on. He had an innocent investigation and in discussion it should be noted that Cubsfan, Stewie and LM were all against reveal (including MeMe and myself). Mole never voiced an opinion. HM didn't talk much day 2 and it could indeed have been a smart gamble to finger LM after the wagon and case against Stewie had already been made. Of course, having investigated MeMe night 1 is indeed convenient, but not something that I would doubt. I know how devious she is when she is scum and if I were a cop I'd likely have picked her as my night 1 investigation as well.

Also interesting to note is that Stewie, LM and mole mever voted for the same person at once. The moment Stewie unvoted (I believe Matchcam), LM voted Mathcam. Interesting behaviour to say the least.

LM: Came out with his "press conference", saying he wasn't going to be using his powers, and true to his word, he hasn't. Of course, there wasn't much reason to use it. If he had used it to prevent a lynch on Stewie, that would have triggered some interesting discussion and likely would have seen him lynched instead on day 2... It obviously was not in his best interest doubly so because HM had fingered him as scum.

Day 3: HM has a second guilty result, on Cubsfan this time. Why finger a second person if he was scum? We could easily have lynched Laz instead of Cubs, but didn't. HM did start the voting with one on Cubs and we did follow, but he could not have known that we would have followed his second result instead of his first. And he never once faltered in saying who was scum and even he didn't care if it was Laz or Cubs who would get the axe.

Lazarus Moth, as you can see, I am very tempted to vote for you at this time. If HM is indeed the scum, he has played brilliantly.

Right now I only have a few points against him and they are minor, one of which is that we appear to have two sane cops, but this may have been put in as a safety feature by the mod because of the open roles.

LM has been acting a bit strange and worse, HM, a confirmed sane cop, who fingered at least one person correctly, has pointed the finger at LM on day 2. Why finger an innocent when you don't know if you are going to get a guilty result the next night to prevent the lynch of that innocent to make your story more believable.

Since we'll have to wait until Monday for the final scene anyways, I'm going to post this without my vote, but rest assured that unless something drastically changes my mind, I will put my vote on Lazarus Moth.

[SpeedyKQ]

I'm back. Not much posting lately- I may impose a deadline soon.

[Jaguar]

I was hoping to get both remaining players to respond to my post. If I don't hear from them, I'll vote by Wednesday sometime.

[lazarusmoth]

*sigh*

HM has been very lucky that his risk to claim me as scum in Day 2 paid off. I don't know how else to put it. I figure he made a mistake by doing that but circumstances were on his side and the risk paid well. He found the SK which established his credibility.

I've been looking at the thread and I can see that it doesn't look good for me - evidence-wise. I'm just urging Jag to take his own risk and vote for HM...believe me it's a risk that will also pay off bigtime.

[HairyMezican]

Sorry, I've been out since Monday night. I suffered a separation in my costochondral junction of one of my ribs, and I've had more important things to do than Mafia.

Back to the game...

I've already laid most of my arguments on the table, and the right choice seems pretty obvious if you look through the thread, well to me at least. I hope you make the right decision Jag.

[Jaguar]

Well, Here goes...

vote: Lazarusmoth

.

Let's hope I am right.

[SpeedyKQ]

lazarusmoth is strung up. A search through his personal effects reveals paperwork showing how he used mob influence to rig the mayoral election. He also has the all-telling Ricciardi signet ring.

lazarusmoth the mayor, mafia scum, is hanged.

And so dawns a new day of tranquility in Humbleton, for, well, the only two people left. You know, you both might want to just board up the whole place and move on somewhere else, where there are, like, other people. Unless you two really like each other. Not my business, actually. Anyways, bust out the champagne becuase:

Town Wins!

[MeMe]

Yay! Way to go, town!

[SpeedyKQ]

Jaguar was just a townie and HM had no hidden role.

I hope people didn't mind the unusual format of this game. I wasn't sure if it should be a theme park game or a regular mini, but I figured better to ask forgiveness than permission.

If you were wondering, the open-role / hidden-role pairings were not random. I chose pairings that I thought would make the game interesting, then I assigned the pairings randomly to players. I'd like to try this again some time, and I think next time I will do the pairings randomly.

All of the hidden roles were pretty standard. The guardian angel was a doctor who could not protect herself or be protected by anybody else. I think the setup was just a little too pro-town. If I had it to do again I'd remove either the guardian angel or the undercover cop role.

Hope you all enjoyed it. Feedback is welcome.

[vikingfan]

I was shocked Jaguar took so long to lynch. To me, it was clear as could be that Laz was scum, especially considering that HM had already nailed two scum. I would have voted Laz right off the bat.

It was a good thing though that I sacrificed myself to protect HM. At that point in time, I was seriously considering protecting myself(I could do that) since I wasn't sure whether HM, at that point in time, was a real or scum cop.

I think the game was balanced OK, but when you have two sane cops, it gets a little difficult for the scum, especially since I could protect myself, though not on consecutive nights. Next time, kick out the actress/cop, and I think we'll be just fine as far as balance goes-though MeMe was modkilled, which normally doesn't happen. If that hadn't happened, it would've been an easy win for town in all likelihood.

[MeMe]

I thought it was one of the more interesting games I've played, though I was genuinely surprised at the modkill (I do, however, understand Speedy's reasoning and support his right to lay down his own rules -- but I still believe strongly that twilight talk is always a

good

thing).

In my opinion, the balance could be potentially horrid if it's done the double-random way (my thinking on this subject can be found on my side of the twilight discussion Stewie and I were having). If you're sold on trying it that way, I think you'd need to have at least one or two roles that are NOT randomly assembled...just to be sure that the town has at least one or two power roles.

And laz! My interpretation of your opening post was spot-on! Sometimes I'm kinda proud of myself...

And here’s a PM I sent to Stewie after we were both dead:

Dangit!

And here's the entertaining reason that I investigated you last night...since you didn't "buy it."

Night 1 I checked Dourgrim and found out he was innocent. Somewhere along the way during day 1 I forgot that vikingfan was Dour's replacement and started thinking he was a really good lynch possibility. When I realized what I'd been doing, I got panicky and knew that whenever I claimed my "undercover cop" role, my day one actions (calling vikingfan a reasonable lynch candidate) would seem not to jive with the fact that I'd investigated & found him innocent night 1. So....

I decided that I'd investigate someone I'd never accused on day 1...someone I was pretty sure was innocent...and then claim to have investigated THAT person Night 1 and vikingfan Night 2 (white lie to protect myself). Well, dangitall, the one player other than viking & myself who I thought was town -- YOU -- turned out to be evil.

Well-played, Stewie. I really had no reason to investigate you except for my own play error during Day 1.

Sometimes I’m a dummy – but this time it worked out alright.

[Jaguar]

Yes, it was pretty clear, but I did want to give Laz a chance to respond to my allegations. And I've been so busy the last week, that time just kinda slipped by

[HairyMezican]

Yay!! I was a little worried there in the middle, but, yeah, I think the balance favored the town a little.

[Stewie]

The game favoured the town a lot, in my opinion. You guys had 2 sane cops that knew they were sane -- so no room for us to say they were insane or paranoid, and a good reason why cops should never know their sanity. There were also two doctors, one of which could protect himself, which makes it pretty hard to kill it. mole, laz and myself saw this as a posiblity, so we didn't kill the doctor. But we also saw the posibility that the doctor couldn't protect himself, in which case we couldn't kill the cop. So we were pretty much scared to do what we had to do: kill the cop and the doc. If you are going to state the sanity of the cop, I think it's only fair that you state any special conditions of the doctor, too. Then there's the fact that there were two killing groups, which often helps the town.

Scum didn't have much help either. We had a player that could pardon someone -- ability that if ever used would certainly get him lynched, and a backup cop that can't go into power because both scum groups were too paranoid to actually attack the actual doctor. Plus, from the point of view of the serial killer, it's much more convinient to kill the backups, which is exactly what happened.

I also have something against the way you chose the roles. Non-random leads to metagaming, which is what happened, to some extent. I'd suggest you not only chose they randomly, but explicity say so in your openning post.

To end the bad part of the criticism, I didn't like the twilight rule. First of all, it's impractical. What if we counted the votes wrong, and the day actually ended but we keep talking? What if we think we lynched someone but we didn't, and we don't talk for three days eventhough it's still day. It's also an unnecessary rule. If there was a good reason to have it there, I'd like to know, because I can't see any good reason other than for the sake of having rules. Further, if you are going to put a rule that is contrary to the usual rules for whatever reason, you should state it in the PM. I certainly don't read the rules anymore, because they are pretty much the same for every game, and I feel it's a waste of time. I'm probably not the only one that does this, so unless you want accidental modkills, you should include all extra rules in the role PM. And related to rules, there was no reason to warm meme because she "voted." The role is used in such a way in which if she votes while forgetting her restriction, the vote is ignored. There was no reason to threaten with a modkill.

[/rant]

The game idea was good, you just need to balance, and not make rules for the sake of doing so.

[lazarusmoth]

Good game, jag and HM and everyone. I really hate sane cops. :p

Spot-on charge, MeMe. You are scum's worst nightmare sometimes.

[SpeedyKQ]

Stewie, I agree with most of your points regarding balance. Two sane cops was too much. And yes, eliminating the metagaming is the main reason I want to do random assignments next time. I have already devised the setup: 12 open town roles with three scum randomly assigned among them, and no hidden pro-town roles - a completely open setup.

I have the no-twilight rule for two reasons - first, I don't like it when people can get an advantage depending on the time of day when they can post. Since the thread freezes at whatever time of day the moderator logs on and checks it, those who happen to be able to post during the window have their say while others can't. The other reason is that I don't want dead players talking, and a player with enough votes for lynch is as-good-as-dead.

I think I did well by bolding those parts of my rules that were different from some other moderators, but putting such in the role PM's isn't a bad idea either.

[MeMe]

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