Borderlands Mafia [GAME OVER]

[popsofctown]

Useless roles are not bastard, no.

A flavor gunsmith that doesn't know if he's a flavor gunsmith with an undisclosed sanity modifier on any role besides the one commonly understood to have possible unmentioned sanity modifiers (cop) is bastard. It doesn't mean the moderator is a "bastard" but it means the moderator designed a setup that's going to subvert the efforts of players and detract from a good time.

I've played several large themes and have yet to encounter a mod with the need to contradict the expectations of the players to this extent.

I'm sorry if modding a game while a player in it was unhappy was uncomfortable to you, but that ends up being part of the job when I feel obligated to fulfill my obligations to the other players in the game, but strongly suspect I'm in a game that is not being run the sort of way I want to participate in (which turned out to be the case)

[beeboy]

I just felt as though if I buddied you e\/en as scum I had a 0% chance of being lynched lol.
My plan this game was buddy anyone I could to sa\/e me from my terrible day 1.

You fought my battles. The two mafia factions could win together. So I figured, worse comes to worse, we could co-win. Your posts were falling apart towards the end, but I figured if it came down to three I could lead a lynch on you. I believe to win as mafia you need strong allies. You chose me and I benefited from the deal.

I honestly ne\/er had anything there was just always a better option that wasn't lynching me.
Although I think I learned a few things from this game.

[Varsoon]

I've played several large themes and have yet to encounter a mod with the need to contradict the expectations of the players to this extent.

I'm sorry if modding a game while a player in it was unhappy was uncomfortable to you, but that ends up being part of the job when I feel obligated to fulfill my obligations to the other players in the game, but strongly suspect I'm in a game that is not being run the sort of way I want to participate in (which turned out to be the case)

Eeeeh, you might want to avoid my upcoming Space Dandy II game. I don't think any of its roles or interactions hold a candle to the sort of things in this game, but there are some elements that, by design, are meant to deconstruct the typical site meta in many ways.

I wonder where the line is, y'know?

[pieguyn]

Would bet $100 TSO/Elyse is 2/2.

Lynch TSO first, then Elyse. Don't let yourselves get divided over this, they're both basically guaranteed scum here. Letting yourselves fight over the 2 wagons is likely how they plan on getting out of it.

And yes, I expect you all to listen to my last advice. My last advice coming from someone who has seen the trainwreck this game has devolved into, from the inside, since D2. It's the least you all can do, no?

#agony

[pieguyn]

Skull, you're either completely missing or deliberately ignoring the entire reason what you did here is bad. "False positives for investigative roles" is fine, yes. What is not fine is making a role that looks and functions exactly as a gunsmith which in reality isn't a gunsmith at all. That is where the bastardry aspect of this comes in: the role is worded literally the exact same way as a standard gunsmith, and there was no indication what it acted on was the flavor.

I asked it before, I'll ask it again. Have you ever seen a role that investigates flavor, and then is passed off as a completely vanilla gunsmith with no indication whatsoever it in actuality investigated flavor? Have you seen it in more than ~1% of games?

I would like to know where the idea that "gunsmith acts on flavor" actually came from. Honestly, you would had to have never seen a gunsmith in a theme game before to have the impression they function as they claimed you did in theme games, and I flat-out don't believe you've never seen a gunsmith in a theme game before (correct me if I'm wrong on this).

But that's not even the major problem here. The problem is your attitude. You keep taking criticism personally and shutting down because of it. If you really felt bad over this, the least you could do is ... IDK ... actually admit you were in the wrong, or apologize, instead of doing this whole "woe is me" routine. You complain people don't like your setups and the way you mod. And then, when people actually tell you what went wrong, you do this instead of ... I don't know ... maybe considering said criticisms and realizing that hey, they actually hold water, and that hey, maybe if you fixed them or took care to improve on them, people would be a lot more OK with your setups.

Like, this all happened because of a preconception you had of how gunsmith worked which was flat-out wrong, and rather than listening to people telling you why it was wrong and how you can fix it ... which is kind of the entire point of criticism, even if I was harsh in my delivery of it ... you claim people think you're a horrible human being because of it. All I'm left with in all of this is that you're so arrogant that you think that your ideas are the end-all be-all and that anyone who disagrees with you is wrong and/or an idiot, and you don't actually care about improving your setups, you just care about justifying yourself. Even in the dead PT it was you blaming US, the people playing the game, for the error, and then stating you would never use a gunsmith in a future game; which is more a statement of "my version of gunsmith caused everyone confusion despite being right so I won't use it again", not "I implemented it wrong and I'll fix it next time". Do you not realize how fucking grating shit like that is for us, the people playing the game, to have you just constantly handwave dismiss our experiences like that. Just something so basic like the mod having faith in the people playing their game to know what the hell they're talking about goes a long fucking way and causes people to have more faith in you as a mod, and be much more forgiving when you do happen to fuck up (I've committed sooo many mod errors, both direct game errors and balance errors, but I've never been severely criticized for any of them even when IMO I'd be deserving of it).

And yes, I'm justified in how seriously I'm taking this. This was a serious time commitment for me, and a bunch of other people, and it caused me at least some anxiety for what should be obvious reasons. It stops being a "game" as soon as you stray from the rules you adhered to in advertising it as non-bastard. At least know that I've tried to avoid being antagonistic with this post as much as I can and I would mean it constructively if I had any faith you'd actually give a shit about my opinion.

[pieguyn]

but yeah. GG and congrats to Elyse on winning.

[Venmar]

Does nobody else think multiball + SK + night-Jester is a bit excessive? 3 kills a night is swingy af

[pieguyn]

I don't even mean to claim the entire setup was flawed. I specifically made a point of saying the ratio was good, and I was thankful you had a good enough sense of balance to pick a more correct (probably correct, I can't judge for sure) ratio for a 3-3-1 setup instead of doing what most people would do and go with the default 21-players and adjust the team size accordingly (which almost certainly would have resulted in uneven teams and from there no good sense of balance).

It's always dumb shit like this, and then you keep refusing to acknowledge it. Like think about it from my POV for 2 seconds. If you keep refusing to acknowledge criticisms with your setup, you won't ever fix it. Do you have any idea how disappointing that is, given you modded a game before that I actually _liked_? I would much rather see more of the latter kind of game (which it'd follow your games will get better and be less likely to have issues like this happen if you'd be more open to discussion over what people tell you) than more of the former. /sigh

[pieguyn]

also seriously, sooo much agony over me being lynched.

if that didn't happen, I would have powerlynched the shit out of TSO and then Elyse and even though we probably still wouldn't have won it woulda been glorious and it would have continued Mimi's streak of awesomeness from her last game. although it's a bit difficult to say cos the situation I was in was a large part of how I formed those two reads in the first place. :<

[Maxous]

congrats Elyse, you did really well.

Dunno why the orange-team decided to fake a guilty a town on Day 5.
They could of had the game on lock-down from that point, particularly if they helped lynch Suzune.

[Varsoon]

Does nobody else think multiball + SK + night-Jester is a bit excessive? 3 kills a night is swingy af

I pretty much hate multiball entirely and still haven't really figured out a good way to make it work without it just being a swingy pile of crap.


Pieguyn, I think that you've got some valid points and I haven't followed the entirety of the discussion surrounding the gunsmith role in question, but regardless of wording, should a player ALWAYS ask the mod how their role works if there is even a 1% chance of miscommunication? I had some similar communication issues in a previous game, which led to me having to spend several paragraphs parsing out exactly how different public mechanics worked. I really think there's an issue that our shorthand lingo simply means different things to different folks, but writing out a longhand description of an ability can be confusing for a player and look overwhelming on a rolecard.

[pieguyn]

but regardless of wording, should a player ALWAYS ask the mod how their role works if there is even a 1% chance of miscommunication?

no.

that's exactly what the issue here is. there is no universe where anyone would have interpreted Rob's role as anything but a standard gunsmith. he could not possibly have been expected to consider that his role functioned on in-universe flavor despite the role PM mentioning nothing about this and being worded the exact same way as a standard gunsmith - that is why it was a bastard role

like

even thinking about it now, it is kind of unreasonable to expect Rob to have considered that this is what happened, _even after my repeated prompts for him to double check he was 100% sure he understood his role correctly_. that is why it was a bastard role. (he should still have full claimed on d3 after it became obvious he wasn't going to get jack shit with his role, but ya in hindsight i legit don't even think i can fault him for not recognizing that possibility on d2/d3)

[pieguyn]

Marcus

Gunsmith

Aligned with the Vault Hunters

[/center]

Ever the shrewd and ambitious businessman, Marcus Kincaid has been Pandora's #1 source for firearms, grenades, ammunition, and other instruments of death and destruction for many, many years. Though the quality of these guns may sometimes be more questionable than the moral compass of Marcus himself, there's no denying that his ubiquitous "Marcus Munitions" vending machines are the very definition of convenience. Whether you consider yourself to be a casual dabbler of violence or a full-blown murder aficionado, Marcus Kincaid is the only name you need to know!

Daytime Abilities:

During the day, you may vote to lynch any living player in the game.

Nighttime Abilities:

During the night phase, you may investigate any living player in the game to learn whether or not they are carrying a deadly weapon.

Passive Abilities:

None.

Win Condition:

You win when all non-Vault Hunter players have been eliminated from the game and there is at least one Vault Hunter still alive.

^this was Varsoon's role PM, irrelevant info redacted.

do you expect him to target me, get "is carrying a deadly weapon", and expect him to think of it as literally anything besides a gunsmith guilty? do you expect him to consider, "maybe Mimi is town whose character carries a weapon in-flavor?", despite the fact nowhere in here does it say the role acts in-flavor instead of on mafia roles? would you expect anyone to seriously consider it even if they spent several RL days analyzing what could have happened with their role?

that's what the issue is

and no, conciseness is not an issue, because all you have to even do is change "are carrying a deadly weapon" to "carry a deadly weapon in-flavor"

(this post is meant as an explanation. it is not meant to antagonize, i'm taking care to say this cos i can see how it would come off that way.)

[pieguyn]

oh ffs, i fucked up the tags. you get the idea

[pieguyn]

in the words of a friend who is no longer with us (rip MS), this is basically like giving someone a paranoid cop

or, in my mind, a mostly-paranoid cop without informing the user that their cop results give significantly more false positives than a standard cop would

[pieguyn]

er, *Rob's role PM.

[wgeurts]

Despite being awful I enjoyed this game

[wgeurts]

Just realised that sounded like criticism of the game, I meant despite my awful play. The setup was pretty good in my opinion.

[Rob14]

As far as balance goes, I think this setup was fine. Personally, I don't think you need A50's role when you have 3-3-1 already for scum, but it's not too bad.

Was Handsome Jack able to use his dead 1-shot ability in LyLo? If so, I would have changed that too, since in that situation, LyLo is moved up a day.

[SirCakez]

GG Elyse. That was some pretty fantastic scum play.

[SirCakez]

I'm not going to comment on the setup since that's not really my thing but I do think Skull should have been more clear in Rob's role PM that he was more a flavor cop then anything.
Other then that, I really enjoyed this game. Actually probably one of my favorite games that I've completed up to date. Thanks to Skull for modding!

[SirCakez]

I can't believe Pops was town though. Poor guy.

[SirCakez]

For those of you who hated this game for one reason or another, feel free to take this opportunity to gang up on me and crucify me for being a shitty mod and a shitty person (as if you needed an invitation to do so). It is becoming increasingly difficult to justify devoting hours and hours of my life to planning, creating, and running complicated Mafia games like this when I know that my only reward at the end of it all is a flood of complaints and criticisms. I have ideas for just three more games, and then I'm retiring for good. If you count yourself among my ever-growing list of detractors, take solace in the fact that I won't be around to pollute this pristine community with my presence for much longer. If, however, you actually managed to enjoy yourself and are decent enough to avoid participating in my lynch mob, then you have my gratitude.

Sorry you feel this way
I had a blast personally, you have my thanks for running this.

[Flubbernugget]

Skull 3 out of 21 means you still made a good game for the silent majority.

Thanks for modding

[Dwlee99]

WHY DID NO ONE LISTEN TO MY READS. D:<

I WAS PROMISED YOU WOULD