Mini Normal #1838 - Game Over

[Gamma Emerald]

First Gamma now Zoronos. Why does everyone lynchable have to be a PR? I want to scream.

Best part is SS made a similar comment: that may have been ammo you cound have used!

[Gamma Emerald]

Grendel, DF, Prism, and boring.
Not quite auto, but dangerous.

Town had 3 mislynches left, that would be auto.

I included the ascetic in the lynchpool.

[Gamma Emerald]

I might finish my long-promised ISO on Dierfire early because god knows we can't afford Zoronos giving town another clear. I can handle all of Dier/PP/Grendel but I really, really don't want to go against nn30 at any point. I've gone too far in in my townread on him.

Shadow is going to have to be one of the mislynches if you go down today.

haha get rekt scum

[Gamma Emerald]

LOL the BP gods frown upon the scum

[Gamma Emerald]

btw the misfire selfhammer was fucking priceless.

[boring]

-_- don't remind me.

[Gamma Emerald]

Done with the scum PT. It was great seeing how much you guys struggled to get a break.

[Shadow_step]

Mass claim wasn't a bad idea it just didn't get us the results we wanted.

[Lil Uzi Vert]

Prism you did all you could out there man, if it wasn't for luck we would be the ones cheering.

[nn30]

@Shadow - not sure you're going to see the dead thread again.

The reason it was so difficult to come around on your slot was precisely because of how you treated me during the game.

I can take a beating in an argument. That doesn't bother me. What bothers me is that your go to move was to verbally abuse me for not seeing things the way you see them. That's never going to be a way to persuade somebody. Your replace out was the best thing you could have done for town as it allowed level-headed discussion to occur once more.

[implosion]

gj. Not much to say that I haven't said already but i cbf to read the past x pages so if anyone said anything to me~

[Shadow_step]

Persuading people is my weakness. I can't seem to do that.
@nn how I treat you shouldn't factor into how you read me(ideally).

@Prism it shouldn't bother you how I treat other players.

[Transcend]

Holy shit.

That was an intense 3 way to watch.

Everyone gave it their absolute all. Congrats town!

[Dierfire]

Hurrah, we won! I'm fairly impressed with nn30 and BlackVoid pulling through in LYLO there. I don't know if I'm just bad at this or what, but it was far from clear to me that Prism was Mafia at the time of my death. Maybe the protracted LYLO helped, but I probably would have lost in a similar position.

@nn30 @BlackVoid
Well done, and thanks for carrying me to victory!

---

Reading through the Mafia PT, I'm also really impressed with how much thought and planning went into the Mafia team's game. From the night actions to the interactions among Mafia players by day, everything was considered in great detail.

@boring
You sounded scared of me in the Mafia PT, which is flattering but probably unwarranted! I'm usually rather easy to lynch because Town players don't like my style (I sent the Mod a note early D2 that I was expecting to be lynched D3 or D4 because even players who read me as Town aren't usually interested in working to fight my lynch).

(Also reading back my ISO before Gamma Emerald claimed is a bad experience. I was lucky this game in that my primary suspicions had roles and died by night, so my reads--bad as they were--are actually artificially better than they would have been otherwise)

@Prism
I'm sorry to hear about your difficulties. I hope that things get better for you. Whatever you think of your own play, you certainly deceived me.

---
@Mod
Thanks for running the game! I had a lot of fun.

[MariaR]

Also, to Maria and PP who were of the opinion that I should have really replaced out given my anger-it was one outburst, and I immediately calmed down 30 minutes later after I went for a walk. I was being immature and irrational, and I didn't want to let 30 minutes of my temper flaring get in the way of literally months of meticulous planning and hard work. It also, again, would have sucked for Podoboq to do a replacement for me-we got incredibly lucky that BV was in the waiting.

Yeah, I felt horrible when I got townread for it, and hinted the best I could that it was possible for me to do it as scum because of it. It's not how I would have wanted to win at all. It's important to keep in mind here that I was not the one assigning an alignment read to it or trying to milk it-there was no rule stating Prism will only try to replace out as town that I was trying to subvert. That was everyone else's speculation as to what I would and wouldn't do as scum, and guessing incorrectly. The only things I did were 1. Get mad enough to want to replace out to begin with 2. Not want to let a 20/30 minute emotional outburst ruin something I sunk months into.

P-Edit: Yep, sometimes people notice, sometimes they don't-and that's just the way it goes, I needed to find better ways to draw attention to it, and numerous other things, without saying it myself. I won't reveal all my secrets this game because they're reusable later, but that was one.

Were all human and emotions are a thing and I'm not upset with you at all about the rage I do think you were being legit but please be happy with yourself you played great ^_^

[Prism]

I'm very satisfied with my play up through the end of Day 5, I had time struggles still but I could make it work. I really put everything I had into it and am proud as fuck of it. I'm purely talking about my Day 6 when I talk about how disappointed I am-it is literally the worst I have ever played as mafia in the past 3/4 years, and it's obviously my own fault. I appreciate the attempts to console me but it's just kind of how I am-I'll be okay, this attitude is just how I choose to approach my play and improve. It was a new situation for me, hitting at the most crucial moment, and I collapsed. I've never played forum mafia, a form where you don't dedicate 100% attention through to the end, I didn't anticipate something like a worst case scenario like that interfering with so much. In the future, if I ever play again, now I know and will do better. I view it as a learning experience, and my disappointment is just a vehicle for that.

I'm really happy to see all the support for my play, even by spectators and people who weren't even on my team. It's really humbling, so thank you. I'll try to do even better next time, and play to the level that I know I can, if there is one.

Glad to hear you're not upset about the replace out issue.

[podoboq]

Alright, I've requested that the setup review thread be made public, so you can see my thought process on the setup in more detail. I'll post it here when it's made public.

I don't think my thoughts are necessarily any more valuable than the players'. In fact, I think there's a good argument that you all are more qualified to talk about the game, since you actually experienced its twists and turns organically, as they were intended to be experienced. My position is to provide the structure for the players to make the game their own, so I feel like my opinions are not all that important. That said, boring has asked, so here's some final thoughts. In hindsight, these are the things I will remember most about the game.

Spoiler: setup nonsense

The ascetics didn't quite play like I expected. I knew it was a possibility that one would claim and the other would counter, but for some reason I didn't expect it. You can obviously see how several roles in the game played off of it. Jailkeeper can't protect them, Doctor and Neapolitan get interesting failures, and in the Neapolitan's case it awkwardly gives them a false positive. These situations never happened, though, because the two claimed on Day one. I could have potentially fixed this by including a "ascetic" Mafia member, but I'd need some other stinger on their abilities in order to stop him from being a perfect Ninja. Maybe a Traitor.

One mistake on my part is that I mistook the abilities of the Jailkeeper with that of the Alien, and thought that Jailkeeper made their target untargettable by ALL actions. This would effectively stifle investigations targeting the jailed pplayer. I wrote the role card correctly, but was operating under that mistaken assumption for a while, until Zoronos claimed his abilities, and I actually PMed him about it. I ended up PMing the normal listmod about what to do also, until I realized that I was an idiot all along, and the Jailkeeper did exactly what I put in the role card, and that's what was approved in the setup review, so that's what Zoronos's abilities are.

Spoiler: play

I'm clearly coming from a special position of knowledge here, but eagerSnake was the most obvious town there could have been on day one. He claimed simple Ascetic, and Shadow counterclaimed with exactly the same, incredibly obscure role. Half of the town accurately surmised that there must be two, or ShadowStep must be pulling a really interesting gambit, but unfortunately, all three scum voted eager, and ShadowStep was far too stubborn to consider the possibility that he was wrong. He called the game bastard (which, let me finally say in thread, is an unfounded and disgusting insult from a person who clearly has no idea what that term means), and refused out of hand to accept that there exists a world where two players are Town Asectic with no other modifier or abilities. I'm sure I've said this several times by now, but Shadow, I really hope that you were humbled a bit by being so aggressively and stupidly stubborn. The mafia team used you to lynch a much more valuable player to the town, and that's entirely your fault, and nobody else's.

Moving on, lynching Dierfire was obviously wrong, since he was named as the Jailkeeper's target. It was pretty obvious that there would be no strongman, and even if there were, Strongman gets around protection, not role blocks. The only argument for Dierfire being scum was if he was a Mafia Ascetic, which I think a sane town would role out as a possibility.

The final day was incredibly disappointing to me. The lack of activity from all three players for an extended period of time was kind of demoralizing, and I almost ended up deciding to replace people. Until the last couple of days, I was hoping the scum won simply because nn30 and BlackVoid no longer deserved it. People can make the argument that Prism was inactive too, and he was, but scum have absolutely no obligation to push the game forward. In fact, I'd argue that it behooved Prism to run out the clock. Plus, he was the most active of the three during the first week+ of Day six.

While Prism may have dropped the ball a bit in the final hours, I think town clearly pulled it together and deserved it in the end. Their win is earned. Prism is still MVP.

Spoiler: other stuff

At times, this game was a blast to moderate. At times, it was very disappointing. The business between Prism and ShadowStep, and replacing, was an unnecessary fiasco, and Prism's request to replace (while understandable) was highly inappropriate. I'll point out again that if I had any suspicion that it was a gambit for towncred, rather than a legitimate outburst over dealing with a highly toxic player, I would have replaced him. Players should never use a request to replace to alter the game. You shouldn't even state a reason for your replacement in thread. Just ask to leave, and leave.

While ShadowStep never committed any real infractions that were deserving of action on my part, part of me was happy to see him out of the game, as I believe the way he treated other players was unfair and childish. A part of me thinks "The other players can just get over it," but they have no obligation to. This is a game. It can be frustrating sometimes, but it should also be fun most of the time. If there is one thing causing the game to be consistently unfun for a good number of people, maybe that source of tension needs to be addressed. Again, I hope this doesn't fall on deaf ears.

There were also too many dealios with breaking actual site rules going on. I still can't speak on most of these issues, but if you are a culprit, I hope you know who you are, and I hope you learned a lesson at some point. Now that this game is finished, and we can talk a little more openly, if anybody wants to talk to me about a specific issue, please send me a private message, and I'll do what I can. Be incredibly cautious, though, when discussing ongoing games. If you have an issue that impacts an ongoing game in any way, DO NOT discuss it here. Period.

I will likely be running another game soon. Still not entirely sure what it will be, but I have a few ideas. Probably going to queue up today. If anybody would be interested in participating in my next game, send me a PM, and I'll make sure you're pre-inned or I'll send you a message when the game enters sign-ups.

[Shadow_step]

Why was that post edited. You know which I guess.

[podoboq]

Why was that post edited. You know which I guess.

I'm pretty sure I know what you're asking about. Give me a few minutes to confirm that I can discuss it now.

[podoboq]

Updated.

This feels a little bit too easy, but I think it's just Dier here.

VOTE: dierfire

His [post]2955[/vote] doesn't make a whole lot of consistent sense. His spoiler tag, where he discusses myself and Prism, mentions a number of times that I'm unlikely to be mafia. Yet his summary has me in his 2nd most likely scum team.

I posted a case on him a while back which his response was largely 'yeah, that's a thing.'

My only trepidation here is that it just feels too easy.

BlackVoid has felt towny since subbing in. When LUV was flailing for a counter-wagon he put a vote on Shadow_Step (and also chose to scum read Shadow_Step on D1 based on my admittadly thin reasonings). These make me think BV is town now.

Implosion is conf!town. So there goes that.


Moderator note: A paragraph in this post has been redacted for breaking site rules. No further action will be taken. I cannot go into further detail at this time.


EDIT: Now that both games have completed, I can explain further. The paragraph is now at the bottom of this post. It refers to an ongoing game, one which nn30 had replaced into. Players in that game could use his post here to town read him, as only town would need to "peg scum." It's a town slip for a different game. This is why referring to ongoing games is illegal, no matter how minor you think it is.

Spoiler:

I ISO'd Prism and his first two posts of the game have LUV and Boring as high priority scum. Frankly, this was the scummiest thing about him (as it could set him up for bussing later on). That said people who sub in tend to just peg scum. Having that bird's eye view of the game makes it easier to do - I just did it in a game I subbed into (and I found instances on the wiki which point to this idea as well.)

[Shadow_step]

Re: calling the game bastard. I was honestly convinced that Eager was Mafia was was fking ascetic so he isn't bothered at night. It was because how common it has become for town to claim their negative utilities and eager thought he could get a lot of town credit early for it.

Calling the game bastard was strategic so that I could get Eager lynched. I didn't actually think the game was bastard. Two of the same roles being town is really really bad though and I didn't expect them in a mini normal. Cause they can lead to back to back mislynches.
Imagine Eager and I both making it to day 3 and neither of us had claimed ascetic. Under l-1 he claims ascetic. I CC him, he flips gown I get lynched next.

[Shadow_step]

Updated.

This feels a little bit too easy, but I think it's just Dier here.

VOTE: dierfire

His [post]2955[/vote] doesn't make a whole lot of consistent sense. His spoiler tag, where he discusses myself and Prism, mentions a number of times that I'm unlikely to be mafia. Yet his summary has me in his 2nd most likely scum team.

I posted a case on him a while back which his response was largely 'yeah, that's a thing.'

My only trepidation here is that it just feels too easy.

BlackVoid has felt towny since subbing in. When LUV was flailing for a counter-wagon he put a vote on Shadow_Step (and also chose to scum read Shadow_Step on D1 based on my admittadly thin reasonings). These make me think BV is town now.

Implosion is conf!town. So there goes that.


Moderator note: A paragraph in this post has been redacted for breaking site rules. No further action will be taken. I cannot go into further detail at this time.


EDIT: Now that both games have completed, I can explain further. The paragraph is now at the bottom of this post. It refers to an ongoing game, one which nn30 had replaced into. Players in that game could use his post here to town read him, as only town would need to "peg scum." It's a town slip for a different game. This is why referring to ongoing games is illegal, no matter how minor you think it is.

Spoiler:

I ISO'd Prism and his first two posts of the game have LUV and Boring as high priority scum. Frankly, this was the scummiest thing about him (as it could set him up for bussing later on). That said people who sub in tend to just peg scum. Having that bird's eye view of the game makes it easier to do - I just did it in a game I subbed into (and I found instances on the wiki which point to this idea as well.)

Nice spot. I'd have never seen this as a mod.

[podoboq]

Two of the same roles being town is really really bad though and I didn't expect them in a mini normal. Cause they can lead to back to back mislynches.
Imagine Eager and I both making it to day 3 and neither of us had claimed ascetic. Under l-1 he claims ascetic. I CC him, he flips gown I get lynched next.

Stay tuned for the setup review, where people much more experienced than either of us have this conversation and come to a very different conclusion.

[Shadow_step]

Yep, would like to read it.

In other news my mini normal will soon be in the sign up phase. Get hyped.

[Grendel]

I'm a little sad I wasn't mentioned more in the scum pt.

I guess I was never a real threat to scum this game. The only scum I had for sure was LUV, and it was the one scum read I never really pushed!

I did suspect Prism of being a dirty scum busser throughout much of D3, but I never really got around to elaborating on that thought. Outside of that I thought that Prism used lots of slimy rhetoric that... bothered me, but I didn't know weather I wanted to call him scum for it, or if I was just annoyed by that play style.

I had a few suspensions of boring, but I always dismissed them as they came.