Micro 267 - Indie Game: The UPick - Game Over!

[Who]

Pretty sure there was no princess.

Was that a lynch or do I need to vote ETL?

[My Milked Eek]

That was a lynch.

[Cabd]

Scorp is welcome to start apologizing for confirmation bias about our commute any time now~

[My Milked Eek]

lol why? Did you honestly expect no fallout from commuting when a hider/visitor was coming?

[XScorpion]

I didn't lynch you
that's the apology you get

[Trine]

lol why? Did you honestly expect no fallout from commuting when a hider/visitor was coming?

We expected a little fallout, but not what we got. I thought that BRO would see the town-sense in our soft-claiming doc, spreading our target possibilities around, and then hightailing it.

[Alduskkel]

Vote Count 3.01 - Final

EspeciallyTheLies (3) - My Milked Eek, XScorpion, Trine

Not Voting (2) - Who, EspeciallyTheLies

5 alive, 3 to lynch.

The deadline is on January 24th, 7:00 a.m. PST.

Countdown:
(expired on 2014-01-24 07:00:00)

[Alduskkel]

Everyone quickly decides to discombobulate EspeciallyTheLies. A contract killer with no true name? Seems obvious in retrospect that she was here to kill you all... what, Slenderman's a supernatural menace you say? Nah, he's cool, what are you talking about. I hear he's great with children. Where are you going Isaac? Oh well.

EspeciallyTheLies,

Jacket from Miami Hotline, Jack-of-all-Trades

, was lynched Day 3. She was aligned with the

Mafia

.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be announcing the winners of the Annual Independent Games Festival!!

XScorpion,

Isaac, from the Binding of Isaac, a Friendly Neighbor

, won the Most Roguelike Like Award and the game!
My Milked Eek,

Slenderman from Slender: The Eight Pages, a Tracker

, won the Brown Pants Award and the game!
Trine,

Zoya, Amadeus, and Pontius from Trine, a Commuter, Roleblocker, and Doctor, respectively

, won the Puzzle Platformer Award and the game!
!emag eht dna drawA remroftalP elzzuP eht now ,

ylevitcepser ,rotcoD dna ,rekcolbeloR ,retummoC a ,enirT morf suitnoP dna ,suedamA ,ayoZ

,enirT
Err, I mean, Who,

Tim, from Braid, a Time Traveler

, won the Puzzle Platformer Award and the game! Trine won best graphics or something...

BROseidon, TierShift, and Desperado won the Posthumous Awards and the game!

Town wins!

[Alduskkel]

Mod QT (contains roles and night actions)
Mafia QT
Dead QT

[Cabd]

I'm gonna wait till ald posts the full setup before feeling good or bad about this win.

[Alduskkel]

The full setup is in the Mod QT. I'm super short on time right now so I'll post my thoughts (particularly on the roles, setup, balance, and swinginess) later. Most of what I would have wanted to say can be found in the Mod/Dead QTs, though.

Thanks to everyone for playing!

[My Milked Eek]

You are The Slender Man, from Slender: The Eight Pages, a Tracker. Somehow you're on the Town's side -- that's the RNG for you.

You are very good at stalking people without them knowing you're there. Each Night you can target a person and learn who they targeted.

Who cares if you drive them a little insane in the process?

You win when all Anti-Town players have been eliminated and at least one member of your faction is still alive.

The game thread is here. Please confirm by PM.

[My Milked Eek]

I laughed at this part in the Mod QT: "Who checks to see if BROseidon is the Princess."

[Trine]

So night 1 would have been a bloodbath if we hadn't commuted, and we would have wound up apparently confscum.

*Trine ^5's selves*

[Who]

So what were Trine's heads?

My guess would be: Bulbazak: Amadeus, Cabd: Pontius, Natirasha: Zoya.

[Cabd]

...

It's Bulba-Amedeus
Cabd-Pontius
Fferyllt-Zoya



...We claimed our heads yesterday who; did you even read the game?

[Trine]

Bulbazak: Amadeus, Cabd: Pontius, fferyllt: Zoya.

fferyllt crumbed identity in a way that we hoped BRO would recognize in this post:

Sounds good.

I shouldn't have to go over why XScorp is town because it's obvious as shit. There's some stuff I want to keep obfuscated in there because ~reasons~

TV has generally posted good content that makes sense from a town-perspective. Also, I'd have expected penguin to push me by now if she were scum; she knows she can out-argue me fairly consistently.

The way your hydra has responded to my play indicates a familiarity with my play that you didn't need to indicate, and you could have used your anonymity to fake not knowing how my playstyle works. I don't see a scum-motivation in how you've dealt with this.

Desp and Who are town by virtue of other people being scummier.

So objectively Desperado's play has the same degree of scumminess to you as before?

I'm not entirely comfortable with him, but I did like the way he went after me for finding fault with his play during the first few pages of the game. The

rift

between what I'd expect from him as town in the early game and what I see here has closed considerably.

~ Zoya

[Who]

...

It's Bulba-Amedeus
Cabd-Pontius
Fferyllt-Zoya



...We claimed our heads yesterday who; did you even read the game?

Skimmedish. Didn't see the headthing. I get

really

lazy when I'm conftown.

[TierShift]

Wow you guys pulled through, GG.

Thoughts about the setup:
Cool roles, I don't think anyone was disappointed with the role they got.
I don't know horseshit about balance, but having a tracker ánd a JOAT ánd who's role makes the game inherently townsided and even though there were strong scum roles, only in the event of mass-claim could scum effectively use their roles. But I might be wrong about that.
And I could never ever have known that scum knew I was watching , even if I knew the game :/

Thanks for modding!

[My Milked Eek]

...

It's Bulba-Amedeus
Cabd-Pontius
Fferyllt-Zoya



...We claimed our heads yesterday who; did you even read the game?

What? Where?

Anyways I got solid town reads from the amadeus head. Everytime that head posted I felt you were town.

[My Milked Eek]

The main concern I have about balance is the inclusion of Who's role together with Scorp's role.
Perhaps a change to Scorp's role could have been that the information I got wasn't mod confirmed. Of course this renders his role useless, but it creates one less confirmed townie.
Perhaps having Who die when he revives people.
Perhaps scum joat could combine two masks?

It was rather townsided because of the amount of possible mod-confirmed townies. It was possible to have 4 mod confirmed townies by D2. Which would have 7 players (or 9 with the revives) alive. This is a big issue. This game was too small to have one player have the power to confirm 3 players (33% of the playerlist).

I also think it's borderline bastard-mod to bring back players the scum explicitly wanted dead.

That's not saying you didn't do a good job, the modding was perfect. Just some notes on the setup.

[EspeciallyTheLies]

So who is the princess?

[TierShift]

Desp was (it's in mod QT)

[Alduskkel]

Desperado is the princess because the princess is a metaphor for the atomic bomb, lol. More of a mod joke than anything else.

I think, looking at the roles:
Mafia JOAT - fine
Commuter/Doctor/Roleblocker - fine on its own
Delayed Daykiller - probably OP when combined with the number of confTown, didn't come into play though
Time Traveler - wasn't OP in this game, but could have been. I would probably fix this by halving its power -- either roll back one day, or one night, not a full day/night cycle.
Friendly Neighbor - not OP on its own, but adding yet another confirmable townie was a bad idea. I struggled to come up with a role for Isaac, particularly because I already had two players who were essentially JOATs, so I couldn't have Isaac "acquire items" (abilities) like he does in the game.
Tracker - Nothing wrong with a Tracker IMO. The insanity thing was just a red herring.
Eavesdropper - Between this and the Time Traveler, this is probably one of my favorite roles in the game, possibly because they are the least standard. Its power is subtle: Scum either risk revealing something to the Eavesdropper, or hamper their own communication in an attempt to obfuscate.
Redirector - Good role. Not quite powerful enough for this game, but that's not its fault.
Hider - Should have been Weak Cop I think.

Overall, balancewise, I think this game needed to be 6-3, with the 3rd Mafia member possibly being a Traitor. Who's reversal ability seriously tampers with the balance by granting an extra lynch AND confirming a townie or two. The clear question to ask is: did the Mafia get scumhunted to death, or night actioned to death? I think it's the latter -- if this game had been pure scumhunting, I would guess that some combination of Trine, XScorpion, Who, and TierShift would have been lynched, resulting in a scum victory.

This game was also super swingy, but that's what you get with role madness when no one has something lame like 1-shot BP. I made sure everyone had at least a moderately powerful ability, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that night actions were a huge part of the game. Still, notice that Trine's decision to commute instead of virtually any other night action (roleblocking Turkish Van/EspeciallyTheLies or protecting Desperado are the only alternatives, really) was completely game changing because it meant BROseidon lived and Trine wasn't framed either. My Milked Eek also almost decided not to track anyone, which would probably have led to ETL surviving longer and maybe even MME's lynch.

So, swingy, yes. Town-sided? Mostly, though some events (e.g. Who's lynch Day 1, BRO's claim) conspired to shift balance back.

[fferyllt]

Thanks for the game, Aldus. It was a puzzle and a huge challenge despite appearances IMO.

I'm really pleased that our night 1 decision turned out to be optimal given what else was going on.

I had concerns from Who's flip onward that we were facing some sort of scum juggernaut. And, I guess I was right that the game really hinged on scum getting a mislynch on day 2.