Updates to Bastard Tags

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Post Post #50 (ISO) » Sat Mar 12, 2022 9:41 pm

Post by TemporalLich »

In post 49, Jingle wrote:I dislike this definition immensely, FWIW.

Watcher is a completely reasonable role, for example, that punishes scum for making a nk on a strong, widely townread player, which I'd assume basically everyone would agree would be considered solid play. FTC is an interaction where what is normally bad play (a cop claiming early) is instead rewarded. Neither of these are anywhere near bastard imo, or even nonnormal. Even ignoring these cases and ones like it, 'bad strategies' is such a nebulous concept that it's incredibly difficult to nail down, as you admit. Is slayer's gambit a bad strategy? Is faking a guilty a bad strategy? Is active lurking a bad strategy? Is page 1 lolhammering a bad strategy? Is hipfiring a dayvig a bad strategy? Is D1 massclaim a bad strategy? I certainly have opinions on all of these, but none of them are objectively facts.

And for what it's worth, I think most of what you're describing as strategic bastardry falls under my label of "requiring more mechanical thought than a general game". Should I as a cop have a reason to doubt that my cop result is actually an inno/guilty? Should I as a tracker assume I saw the NK? Should I as a neighbor assume that there isn't a way for someone in the thread to access the neighborhood later or that there isn't someone with access that I'm simply unaware of? These are the kinds of considerations that don't happen in every game, but definitely have their place in some games. (Hell, I prefer games where you can't rule out weird roles like PT spies or redirectors, because they make mechanical solving less reliable and unfun.)
so what you're saying is that "strategic bastardy" is so nebulous it isn't worth the effort to pin it down?

The intent is for stuff that either makes objectively terrible strategies good or good strategies objectively terrible. A setup where setup spec is required to play well.

and stuff like RNG, known holes in information that should be known, divulged non-randomness, and heavy flavor matters need to have a bastard toggle.

"requires more mechanical thought than a general game" doesn't seem like a good bastardy toggle to me - the stuff I wanted to be marked as "strategically bastard" would be stuff that you never want to see in a Normal game because it would make the game play very unlike a Normal game.
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Post Post #51 (ISO) » Sun Mar 13, 2022 6:16 am

Post by Cook »

why not just leave these sections undefined?

for instance, 3d20 is bastard because it features a cult, privately disclosed setup information which is not 100% guaranteed to be correct, random setup generation, non-random modifications to an element of RNG, and (at least when I started) very unusual interfacing of roles and modifiers.
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Post Post #52 (ISO) » Sun Mar 13, 2022 8:46 am

Post by Jingle »

I think it's more my point that what we currently define as bastard isn't inherently accurate in what we should be warning people they might encounter. I don't label any of my categories past direct moderator influence within the game as bastard for that reason. It's not about what makes a game good or bad. It's about what kind of game you're playing in the first place.

Like, I enjoy me some Mario Kart, but if I show up to a Guitar Hero party and there's 30 copies of Mario Kart 64, I'm gonna be a little pissed.
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Post Post #53 (ISO) » Sun Mar 13, 2022 8:57 am

Post by Jingle »

In post 51, Cook wrote:why not just leave these sections undefined?
Because the actual issue I'm attempting to solve is the nebulous taxonomy of bastardry?

For example, is a Janitor inherently bastard? There are conflicting views, and depending on who you talk to bastard can mean very different things. As it is, seeing something labeled as bastard could mean "There's a way for scum to send you private messages through the mod that might lie." or it could mean "Your posts will be deleted 12 hours after you make them." The whole point is to pin down a definition and then use that definition to actually give people relevant information on what they're signing up for.
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Post Post #54 (ISO) » Sun Mar 13, 2022 9:06 am

Post by Jingle »

In post 50, TemporalLich wrote:A setup where setup spec is required to play well.
I don't necessarily see a difference between this and "requires more mechanical thought than a general game". Like both encompass the concept of a moderator including roles that can actively hurt you for using them as a balancing feature or redirection roles/roles that call into question the veracity of other roles' results. If a player ever has to ask the question "Can I really trust my result to be meaningful?" then they should know that going into the game. And I'm not saying that only games that feature a ninja should have that tag, but also games where there is no ninja, but the designer wants the players to have to consider whether there could be one.
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Post Post #55 (ISO) » Mon Sep 25, 2023 3:56 am

Post by Thestatusquo »

In post 35, Something_Smart wrote: My understanding is that it doesn't really matter if or how the "bastard" tag applies to publicly known mechanics-- for instance, if a game includes a cult and this is known, you don't have to say "this is bastard", you can just say "this has a cult" and everyone will get the correct message.

I feel like it's kinda splitting hairs to ask these types of questions. If your game has one scum draft their partners pregame, then the proper answer to "is it bastard?" is not "yes" or "no", it's "one scum can draft their partners in pregame." Since it's public info anyway, people should get it up-front so they can best decide whether they want to join.

I'm not the one in charge of this, since players in my queue always know exactly what they're getting anyway, so this is just my $0.02 on the matter.
I just saw this now but I don't *want* my players to know my game has a cult. Why should I have to turn every game I run into an open game because some players don't like certain mechanics? I don't want my players to know when my game doesn't have a cult either. I am running closed setups for a reason.

I am currently forced to tell them about those possibilities and that's fine but I would give the same disclaimer for a game that was mountainous.
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Post Post #56 (ISO) » Mon Sep 25, 2023 4:27 am

Post by Cook »

In post 55, Thestatusquo wrote:
In post 35, Something_Smart wrote: My understanding is that it doesn't really matter if or how the "bastard" tag applies to publicly known mechanics-- for instance, if a game includes a cult and this is known, you don't have to say "this is bastard", you can just say "this has a cult" and everyone will get the correct message.

I feel like it's kinda splitting hairs to ask these types of questions. If your game has one scum draft their partners pregame, then the proper answer to "is it bastard?" is not "yes" or "no", it's "one scum can draft their partners in pregame." Since it's public info anyway, people should get it up-front so they can best decide whether they want to join.

I'm not the one in charge of this, since players in my queue always know exactly what they're getting anyway, so this is just my $0.02 on the matter.
I just saw this now but I don't *want* my players to know my game has a cult. Why should I have to turn every game I run into an open game because some players don't like certain mechanics? I don't want my players to know when my game doesn't have a cult either. I am running closed setups for a reason.

I am currently forced to tell them about those possibilities and that's fine but I would give the same disclaimer for a game that was mountainous.
i think that the distinction should not be bastardry in the positive sense — "this setup is definitely bastard" versus "this setup is not bastard", but instead bastardry in the negative sense — "this setup is so not bastard it's actually normal" versus "this setup is not bastard, plain and simple. i will never lie to you" versus "this setup is not not bastard. there may be bastardry. that's an unknown quantity. i am free to tell you if there certainly
is
bastardry, or if there is a certain kind of bastardry i will
never
include (such as death millers, etc.)"

it's less useful as a setup designer imo to have to disclose that. also i think that open setups with non-normal or bastard mechanics aren't really bastard — if you have a 7:2 mountainous setup where one of the first three days is guaranteed to show a red flip regardless of the eliminated player's actual alignment, but the day is not known, then that's not really the mod lying to them — the unknown quantity is guaranteed
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