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[PHA/LLA] - Game Over - The Grid is Secured.
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Exactly my point :P
It was the right thing to do as mafia and will continue to be the right thing until more people realize this is what always happens, especially in the larger mains, and compensate for it.
Most important: a Hacker becoming the embodiment of a Sentient Grid and acting as both savior & serial killer?
Excellent.
FTC: HONK.
PAX Prime 2014 Resistance Tournament Winner
I don't really know what can be done about it.
Mafia don't say anything, and villagers just dissolve into personal arguments, slaughtering one another.
Is this really the winning move? Yes. The winning move is NOT TO PLAY, i.e., to be a dumb villager up until the moment you die mafia. You watch the vote take them down and you don't flinch.
Then it comes down to specials and aim, pretty much. I don't know. I think mains are particularly bad for this, since they're too large for people to track all the silent players. Minis do better, if only by skipping to the ending days faster.
Why does this "kill anyone who talks" thing happen? Why do we do this? People blame people on bad bandwagons, so the villagers all move into group-sheep and don't get blamed for taking initiative or not taking initiative.
I think part of it is that people notice who talks, and don't notice people who don't talk. Then they vote for the most suspicious talker, who is usually not mafia. Statistics take down the village from there.
Ugh. I really don't know. My thoughts, anyway.
Possibly our biggest problem in this game, frankly, was that Dunadan didn't know how to do that.
Since I was never invited to a Proboard as a hacker, I assume they are set up by players, not the GM. How would you know who to invite to your board? Wouldn't you be taking a risk inviting anybody or do some players know who's on their side?
The Black Hole of Cygnus X-1
if a seer manages to start a village network, sometimes they make a proboard too.
Either vote him or don't vote him
Don't *almost* vote him 4 days in a row
Village couldn't make up its mind and let itself get sidetracked repeatedly
The Black Hole of Cygnus X-1
Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe ran like that. The mafia was in one spot, and the White Witch was not masoned with them.
The mafia had a kill and a limited seer. the seer was only able to see the Witch. They seered one person a night, if it was the witch, they were told, if not, they were given no info. When the Witch and the mafia got together, they kept both kills, but now they didn't have the danger of crossfire.
would have worked fine had Mr. D not done a kamikaze thing and thrown himself on the vote in order to find the Witch. lol
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
This was stated repeatedly during the game, sometimes by the mafia members who were just fed up with the whole thing as well.
A game where the mafia are not masoned would be fundamentally a different game, though SOME mechanic would need to exist to confirm them to each other or.. I don't know. Would be interesting to see some thing like this if someone has a link, sounds like a pure faction game or something.
As to the current debate of phalla meta, I find talking in the thread is a double-edged sword. Talking has to take place to share info, but share too much, and you'll clue the wrong people into what you're trying to say. PMs can't go to everyone and even then unless you implicitly trust who you're talking to, the info you exchange will be fraught with suspicion.
This presents an interesting conundrum to resolve, and one I can't truly puzzle out for now as I'm too damned tired. I'll pick this up tomorrow.
Once more, interesting game folks.
So, lets say there are 8 mafioso, and they are divided into 4 separate cells of 2. Those cells are internally masoned, but have no idea who is in the other cells. Perhaps instead of a straight up kill choice each day, the mafioso need to vote via PM on who to kill each day, and a clear majority would be needed in order to take someone down. I imagine this would have them more actively participating in the thread, as they try and determine who they are working with.
Or maybe this has been tried before? Of course, you'de also have to decide if each cell had a seering mechanic or not. Or perhaps you could have a mafia boss who knows how many mafioso there are, but not their names, and has a seer each day?
Hmmmm...
Any information shared by the villagers to all will inform both the village and the mafia. The mafia won't share information with all, because they are masoned and can share it internally. What this means is that any time a villager chooses not to share a piece of information, he is in effect helping the mafia and not helping the village.
That's why I was sharing all the information I had during the game, posting who's where, listing records I spoofed, etc. And if you read the Mafia proboards, it was the combination of Dunadan suspicion and information sharing I was conducting that caused them to vig me.
I agree to an extent that the current Mafia meta is to play as a villager (because let's face it, doing anything else announces you're Mafia), and not to draw attention to yourself (because sheep are less likely to die).
The counter to this is not to put in some artificial mechanic that forces the mafia to potentially give themselves away in order to force them to not pretend to be sheep. The counter is for the villagers to get off their lazy asses and post more. Posting is a form of information sharing, and as I have theorized previously, withholding information is generally to the detriment of the village as a whole. So not only is the village assisting the Mafia by preventing the village from making informed decisions, but it's also creating the very hiding place being used by the Mafia.
So yeah, get off your asses and participate. Don't post once or twice a day just to avoid inactivus, because that's not participating in the game, that's just coasting along until you've inevitably given the Mafia yet another win.
FTC: HONK.
PAX Prime 2014 Resistance Tournament Winner
There's a game I played in where I avoided the bandwagon like 3-4 times in a row by being verrrry convincing.
Infidel's better at it than me, though. He could argue people to vote off the confirmed seer that said he was Mafia if he put his mind to it.
3DS FCode: 1993-7512-8991
FTC: HONK.
PAX Prime 2014 Resistance Tournament Winner
That's why you role claim or suggest someone even more suspicious than you
I've seen him try (and almost succeed)!
I tend to forget that my job is to find mafia, not stay alive, so I think to myself "I shouldn't say that... if I'm wrong I'll look like I'm either stupid or a bad guy, and then I'll get killed". Which is, I know, not helpful :?.
In this respect, Mafia is a social game. It's important to keep that in mind, because it is VERY possible to defend oneself in this regard. In order to make a Mafia accusation stick, someone has to have some kind of evidence. It will be most often evidence you've provided, such as previous posting or voting history. You can defend yourself by disputing this evidence, or discrediting the source of accusation. I've seen both work.
In The Confines, a bandwagon was started on me on Day 5ish, not because I had done anything particularly wrong, but because Garick was proving to be a particularly bad network head. I was able to show through both my voting history (I had voted for Phyphor on Days 3 and 4, and the vote stuck on him as Mafia on Day 4) and the fact that people were voting not for me, but against Garick because of how bad a network head he was being, that I shouldn't be a target. I got people to vote for a Mafia member who Garick had correctly called out, despite myself being Mafia. This cleared my name, and for the rest of the Phalla, I was above suspicion because of it. Ultimately, the Mafia won because of this.
The hardest thing to derail to me are poorly evidenced bandwagons. And this is again due to the fact that many Phalla players, myself included at times, tend to be sheeplike. Acting like sheep just means you'll be eaten by the wolves. You shouldn't depend on others to perform analysis's for you, and you shouldn't sit back quietly while the world passes you by.
What you really need is accountability. Too often I see a player lynched by the masses and then the people who tied the rope and insisted they were guilty get away scot-free. And low-and-behold, time often proves that they're mafia themselves.
What Rend and El Skid got up to in my first game still strikes me as amazing. It's very rare to see a game run that close, and it was all because both sides played superbly.
I get away with it because it's expected of me at this point. Hell, not just expected, it's absolutely necessary. If I don't, I'll get killed so fucking hard for not being "Infidel." It's a lot of fucking work, you jerks. :P
People mainly need to recognize more that when someone IS posting a lot, or defending themselves, when they are actually villager. There are almost always signs. I incite people so that they give me more to work with. It works. Do it. If you start to think that someone is actually a villager, take the focus somewhere else.
See AF's Phalla Phalla where I broke up the village focusing on Dunadan and another, explaining that they were almost assuredly both villager, and that we should stop doing the usual song and dance of killing them both and getting nothing done.
Dunadan actually was shocked that I stepped in to save him and was wondering what the hell I was up to...
It's simple, it was clearly villager-Dunadan, move on to something else.
Oh Ed, the only game I got to play of yours was delicious, where I *did* successfully avoid the village wrath after having been seered and outed. I argued it until the village "head" gave up and backed down. So good.
The burden of proof would be on me to put information forth on these games and since I don't have the time or I don't know where to start, I can only show the results of the past few games you guys have run. I might debate that villagers who aren't active in the thread would rather spend their time elsewhere if not for the interface you provided, but I haven't been around in a long time so wouldn't know where to start otherwise.
I assumed the mafia had kills based upon the whole grid, yes. Why? Because with the information I had (I started with tracer and scramble which did me no good at all this game), I couldn't be bothered to figure it out one way or the other and trying to trace people to location based kills would've been, IMO, as much of a waste of time as it was to talk about dunadan all game. I'd rather we looked more to voting records to be honest, I think there's always something to get there.
However, an interesting point was made earlier in that most mafia can sit back and watch us slaughter each other? Again, I've not been around enough, but I did try to stir up conversation and get people to talk so we have something to go on. I'm not good at pegging bad guys or good specials etc, but I try so I can bring out conversation or votes from people because that helps us out. It's the one thing I know I can try to do every game.
As far as giving all my money and stuff to the neutrals, it earned me trust and information in the background. That's how I learned about jacktrace and Darian's suggested role. If not for giving that money to the neutrals, I would've never known about that at all. They also told me about The Anonymous as the remaining village vig. Information was power I did not have, but I got it from the escort faction and by putting in enough effort into the game to earn trust from immortal squish.
I'm not saying it's a bad game, nor do I think the village is made up of idiots. I just think that people tend to spend their time in the game if there's a reason for them to check it out. If people are only posting votes, it's not interesting. If people are talking or shooting the breeze, it's more interesting and attracts more time.
In the end, I'm an older player. Get off my lawn!
But thank you for running the game you all, it was an amazing interface.
I think I remember that, actually.
"I'm psi resistant? Oh, that makes me bad, does it?"
And the resultant back-and-forth went on forever.
Of course that game was a right train wreck but that was for various different reasons. Never again!
...anyway yes, this was great fun to write for and the UI was top-notch. My thanks to the hosts, the players, and Inactivus.
Use the tools you have, vote analysis, post analysis, mechanics info. Nothing is different.
That is like saying that narration fluff is hurting games. Sometimes it has extra info you can glean, having narration fluff helps the village, unless it is misleading. It adds just another source of info for the villagers, if they spend the time on it. How are game mechanics any different? Why don't we simply post deaths, and avoid any theme? It's all just distracting.
Edcrab, was looking back at that game, and was amused by this:
Here is where Houn posts that I have been seered. It was a delicious misdirection, read up if you're interested.
(I was the mafia leader, and was seered day 1, and this is day 2 weeeee. We went on to win that game, only died cause the SK turned on me. Damn that HV.)
It appears that the only significant difference between me now and me then is that I've lost all sense of guilt.
What a difference a year makes!
I respectfully disagree and posit that it was Bliss 101's response to the damage damage series of posts on this page
And Infy, don't get me started on what HeavyVillain got up to in that game.
...sorry, I'll stop hijacking the endgame segment now. Ahem. How about that PHA/LLA, huh?
I like how I am still deflecting all sorts of shit on that page. Different day same shit!
pretty sweet.
It was an enjoyable game to watch, difficult to not yell at some of you, but still enjoyable. Now, stop talking here and go play something elsewhere
afore we get into troubles
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
OK. I guess we can't blame this game.
The Black Hole of Cygnus X-1
My death will be avenged!!!
In the best way. Kay, prepare for a grudge vote.
Zithra Melitch in Star Wars: An Empire's End
Jellica in In the Shadow of Zeus
The Black Hole of Cygnus X-1