Monogatari Series Mafia (Game over, with monkey magic)

[Sakura Hana]

I thought a Tailor choose a target and an investigation result and that target would give that investigation result during that night.

[Kagami]

The funny thing about this discussion is that once Wisdom's role is taken out of the mix, I thought this particular game was pretty kosher regarding my usual concerns.

The only design element I found distasteful is that whether or not Town gets to negate a scum kill

and

form a 2-man masonry is entirely the result of a coin-flip.

[GuyInFreezer]

Aka swingy. Because technically scum could've gotten a double kill as well.

[GuyInFreezer]

Oh and I forgot to post this.

==Monogatari Series Mafia==

Role PM

Oshino Shinobu,

Town Vanilla

Vampire who is tied with Koyomi

Abilities

None:

You have no special abilities.

Win Condition

Eliminate all anti-town faction

---

Your role may change throughout the game.

[Kagami]

Swing is generally bad. It's just conditional imbalance.

If that condition is that players making good decisions swings things their way, then it's fine. If it's largely uncontrollable, then it's identical to the setup being imbalanced at the outset.

If I made a game wherein the setup changes on N1 to something that is either heavily townsided or heavily scumsided based off a coinflip, the players would have very good reason to be upset.

[GuyInFreezer]

I did try to take out 1SV at one time but was told that it wasn't needed.

Anyway, what I should've done was to give scum some way to protect themselves and in that respect the RB should've been a jailkeeper or a goon should've been some kind of BP.

I gave town ways to protect themselves from the swing, but I stopped with giving a minor manipulation and some investigate powers.

But I don't think it was that uncontrollable actually. active bomb is score-or-not role, and babysitter is a role that requires critical planning. Revivor was conditional, and the masons didn't know each other until Day 3. (Well technically. Anyone with the half of flavor knowledge would've found each other out immediately.)

I think my only regret is not giving scum any sort of protection against kills.

[Kagami]

I don't disagree with bomb or babysitter. Both require the players to manipulate the gamestate to bring about the desired outcome.

It's only shinobu who truly was a very powerful role centered on winning a coinflip.

[GuyInFreezer]

That conditional part was purely decided by flavor aspect.

[GuyInFreezer]

Normally I'm type of a guy who would manipulate the flavor to fit in the role I want to use to break flavor spec but this time I mixed some in because I felt like doing that too much just creates the game that uses the flavor not based on the flavor.

[Kagami]

Right, which nobody had any reasonable ability to predict. Whether or the player who gets shinobu or the player who gets koyomi dies first is almost completely random.

[Kagami]

The non-swingy correction would be the give Koyomi an equally powerful role if shinobu dies first (and to rebalance the game accordingly)

[GuyInFreezer]

But who would've guessed out of all the explanable flavor unlimited rulebook would've used as a babysitter role amirite

P-Edit: Right. But that was my decision to nerf the revivor: if you want to use this role, you have to work for it. First of all because you don't know who Koyomi is you need to survive long enough to see your role being used. Second of all, because the revivor role both neighborized and vanilized, you need to choose who to revive not based on the roles but based on the revivee's ability. So yeah, it's not completely random. Using the role requires the user to survive and surviving long enough itself is a test of skill.

[GuyInFreezer]

The non-swingy correction would be the give Koyomi an equally powerful role if shinobu dies first (and to rebalance the game accordingly)

But that's too much work though

But that goes against my idea of "strong role that you must try to earn"

[GuyInFreezer]

I mean of course I could've approached different way to express that concept but as I've said it was based on flavor.

[GuyInFreezer]

And certainly a modkill was not part of the design.

[Kagami]

I don't really see surviving as earning anything. Generally survival indicates poor play, especially when they don't have any reason to believe the role is valuable.

[Kagami]

I think the "earned role" argument would make more sense if Shinobu knew that she gained a powerful role once someone died.

[GuyInFreezer]

Not really? Whether to be nightkilled or not is mostly based on what kind of wifom scum wants to pull. Whether to be lynched or not is mostly based on how town someone looks. Poor play can be a cause for survival but survival in general is certainly not because of a poor play. You can be right, vocal, convincing, and yet still not be nightkilled to make the player cast doubt self. Also any PR is more valuable than a VT so I don't know what you're talking about there.

P-Edit: Point is in "any PR is better than VT"

[GuyInFreezer]

Like consider yourself getting a VT PM that says "your role might change." Would you expect not a PR with that role change? Would you go "meh" and not give a hoot about it? Would it not give you a curiosity and motivation to find out what that changed role would be?

If not so, then I guess all I can do is to agree to disagree bc you're clearly opposite of my thinklines.

[Kagami]

There are plenty of PRs worse than VT, and plenty more that aren't notably better than VT.

And you're nuts if you don't think scum preferentially kill players based on the quality of their play.

p-edit: Yes, I go "meh" and play as strong a town game as possible.

[GuyInFreezer]

Eh I really need a break for few days

[GuyInFreezer]

Play quality is a factor but it's often then not based on how scum want to progress in their game plan.

Anyway if I came off as rude I apologize.
I haven't been in the best of my moods recently.