As for future editions of this theme, I think it's definitely workable. What most hurt it was too much host confirmation on the mechanics (this game is the kind where you should build more paranoia in the rules) and better running-of-the-numbers.
If I'm helping you script something for when your next game comes up (sometime 2010 at the earliest? lol) then I can give a lookover of all the mechanics too if you like.
I love a good challenge. I knew it was going to be hard to win. I played really dirty. I lied to everyone I could. I lied to rend, to my roommates, to my friends. Sorry to everyone, but I knew the odds against us. So glad that everything worked out for us in the end.
Don't grudge me too hard. :P
You played a good game from the sounds of it, nothing to grudge here. 8-):whistle:
So if Orange Soda is a mafia, then why don't we vote him out using the Alternate Day 2 vote? Yes, we don't have enough votes to do that today, but we will surely be able to do it tomorrow. And we certainly have the time to do so. That way, we can use the Day 7 vote more flexibly by spreading out the votes among multiple targets, since Day 2 is so constrained in terms of changing vote leaders.
So let's !vote for Delmain and two or three other targets in the Current Day vote while all the Day 2 people begin voting for Orange Soda? Then tomorrow, we can vote Orange Soda out by switching him with dunedainjedi with the Day 2 vote and maintain vote flexibility with the Day 7 vote for the alternate timeline players.
This post was the village's last chance to claim the game. If you had gone with MrB's idea here and made it work, you'd have been able to seer multiple unknowns/potential thralls. Instead, you kept going with the earlier plan (bury the mafia so deep they cannot dig themselves back out) while we kept going with our plan of voting up the highest totaled known TR on each day (and we continually cycled our people through the days that mattered most, 2-4). My goal and job was to keep you from being able to seer Delmain, to make it seem like we were doing all we could to protect him and force you to use your vote to clear him instead. (Though in the end I think he ended up getting bus drivered.)
I'm sorry if you feel that way on my first point. It was never my intention to lead people astray with titles. In my defense, you knew Darian was a mafia thrall and it was impossible for you to be sure that others like him did not exist, so I think the claim of entirely ruling out the possibility of thralls after his death is a bit suspect, especially since you didn't invited seered Tabula Rasa players to the proboard, as Rend and EB have mentioned. Most likely sure, but it was not unimaginable.
Regardless, if you feel cheated over the mechanic I apologize for that. It was not intended to make the game impossible to win on your side.
Edit 2: Thanks for your offer of help for when I eventually get back to the top of the list. If I run this again I will be doing it with a co-host.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
edited June 2009
The main thing about the Thralls (myself and Trust) was that we were chosen thinking that Rend would have picked us to seer fairly early in the game.
Also, we happened to be, for whatever reason, the two Greeds that y'all didn't vote out of the Current Day. Had either of us fallen to the vote, we would have shown up as Greed.
We spent the most of the first few days trying to find the guards, when we did, it became a bit easier.
kay was a pain in the rear. We kept trying to hit her, but she kept redirecting it to others. That was frustrating. But then we gave up on that plan and just figured we'd leave her be.
I'm sorry if you feel that way on my first point. It was never my intention to lead people astray with titles. In my defense, you knew Darian was a mafia thrall and it was impossible for you to be sure that others like him did not exist, so I think the claim of entirely ruling out the possibility of thralls after his death is a bit suspect, especially since you didn't invited seered Tabula Rasa players to the proboard, as Rend and EB have mentioned.
Regardless, if you feel cheated over the mechanic I apologize for that. It was not intended to make the game impossible to win on your side.
I don't feel cheated, I'm just saying that it's not "confirmed that there are thralls" because the assumption that he was a special role and unique was not only a logical assumption but the correct one.
The random "vanilla mafia" becoming thralls was unexpected and a gotcha. I'm not complaining about a gotcha, I'm just saying you're not considering it as such and that's incorrect. 8-)
Not inviting vanillas the the network boards "just in case" is just that, a pretty standard course of action.
So if Orange Soda is a mafia, then why don't we vote him out using the Alternate Day 2 vote? Yes, we don't have enough votes to do that today, but we will surely be able to do it tomorrow. And we certainly have the time to do so. That way, we can use the Day 7 vote more flexibly by spreading out the votes among multiple targets, since Day 2 is so constrained in terms of changing vote leaders.
So let's !vote for Delmain and two or three other targets in the Current Day vote while all the Day 2 people begin voting for Orange Soda? Then tomorrow, we can vote Orange Soda out by switching him with dunedainjedi with the Day 2 vote and maintain vote flexibility with the Day 7 vote for the alternate timeline players.
This post was the village's last chance to claim the game. If you had gone with MrB's idea here and made it work, you'd have been able to seer multiple unknowns/potential thralls. Instead, you kept going with the earlier plan (bury the mafia so deep they cannot dig themselves back out) while we kept going with our plan of voting up the highest totaled known TR on each day (and we continually cycled our people through the days that mattered most, 2-4). My goal and job was to keep you from being able to seer Delmain, to make it seem like we were doing all we could to protect him and force you to use your vote to clear him instead. (Though in the end I think he ended up getting bus drivered.)
Yes I forgot to comment on this.
This was an obvious blunder by the village. MrB had the optimal village voting strategy down cold from his first post, much to his credit.
I'm sorry if you feel that way on my first point. It was never my intention to lead people astray with titles. In my defense, you knew Darian was a mafia thrall and it was impossible for you to be sure that others like him did not exist, so I think the claim of entirely ruling out the possibility of thralls after his death is a bit suspect, especially since you didn't invited seered Tabula Rasa players to the proboard, as Rend and EB have mentioned.
Regardless, if you feel cheated over the mechanic I apologize for that. It was not intended to make the game impossible to win on your side.
I don't feel cheated, I'm just saying that it's not "confirmed that there are thralls" because the assumption that he was a special role and unique was not only a logical assumption but the correct one.
The random "vanilla mafia" becoming thralls was unexpected and a gotcha. I'm not complaining about a gotcha, I'm just saying you're not considering it as such and that's incorrect. 8-)
Not inviting vanillas the the network boards "just in case" is just that, a pretty standard course of action.
A valid point.
I think your suggestion of obscuring the mechanics more if I run this again is also a valid one, which may alleviate this issue. Thanks.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
edited June 2009
I had an absolute blast, Varcayn. I'm glad that I decided to bite the bullet and go with it. I thought the game was going to break my head, and it did at first.
But once I got the hang of it (about 2 days ago), it was tonna fun.
hahaha, ahava seemed to want me dead, I'm honoured to have made the day title upon my death! :P
I too am amazed that I lived as long as I did, mafia. You correctly assumed that I would be in the network by midgame at the latest, since you knew I wasn't mafia and by that time I would either be (a) seered or (b) vigged.
I'm sure I would have been seered day 1 or 2 if not for having revealed to Rend the seer at the start of day 1. :^: I was guarding specials the entire game except for the day Rend died, where I didn't make it back before day close from work.
6pm is a little rough for me haha.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
edited June 2009
Yeah. I was spending about that time wracking my brains for who Rend would have seered/talked to on Day 1 in order to find a guard that fast.
I just didn't think on that early enough in the game to rid us of your presence fast enough, Infy!!!
Heh, ironically the vote close time sucked for me too.
I live on the West Coast but I had to move out East for the summer, and coupled with my schedule that led to an unfortunately early vote close. That said I wasn't about to postpone this for three more months over a vote close time.
I actually liked the early close for once since it gave me a lot of time to brainstorm after vote close. Normally I would have had to stay up until like 4 am doing that.
We lost?! And doubly annoying, we seered everyone who was Greed-aligned! RAGE.
Bah, we really should have been using vote switches a bit more earlier on to 'seer' more people, using the 'risky' plan Orange Soda (a Greed!) put forth. Still, if we had done that... would we have won? I don't think it's a certain thing. With the vigilantes dying early, our ability to deal direct damage was greatly decreased - and noting the number of players alive at the end, and the number of mafia players, we would have required a perfect vote run and I don't think we would have had enough time to realize the nature of the thralls in the game to do that even with a better voting strategy.
*sigh* Oh well, what is done is done. It was a bit rough around the edges, but it was an interesting idea for a game. Good work.
btw Varcayn, the execution was well done, you made no mistakes and kept your mouth shut where appropriate, good job as a host!
Thanks, that's greatly appreciated.
It was tough not to say anything around day 6/7 when everyone saw an inevitable village victory and there were several comments on the mafia proboard about the game being impossible to win. :P
Bah, we really should have been using vote switches a bit more earlier on to 'seer' more people, using the 'risky' plan Orange Soda (a Greed!) put forth. Still, if we had done that... would we have won?
As you say, it wasn't a sure thing, but it would have made things significantly more likely in my opinion. Consider that you could've used the Day 1 or 2 vote to cycle through several candidates over the course of the game.
I was hoping the village would use it as a mechanic.
But yeah, when the village lost both Vigs (both due to mistakes, especially Zellpher) so early the game balance shifted significantly.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Bah, we really should have been using vote switches a bit more earlier on to 'seer' more people, using the 'risky' plan Orange Soda (a Greed!) put forth. Still, if we had done that... would we have won?
As you say, it wasn't a sure thing, but it would have made things significantly more likely in my opinion. Consider that you could've used the Day 1 or 2 vote to cycle through several candidates over the course of the game.
I was hoping the village would use it as a mechanic.
But yeah, when the village lost both Vigs (both due to mistakes, especially Zellpher) so early the game balance shifted significantly.
Nothing you can do about that as a host. I say good show all 'round.
The public admittance of loss in the dead thread the last few days was equal parts obfuscation and boredom on my part. I did whine about mechanics on the mafia board the first few days, but when the village didn't shift votes around for their 100% guaranteed no death-miller seers after hitting a mafia, well, things started looking up real quick. I was so down on the miller ability at first, as I could not see how they'd trust seers just as much as death reveals, especially with the clarifications the host had gone out with, but they did, and that, combined with the loss of kills from both vigs revealing really screwed the village over.
Bah, we really should have been using vote switches a bit more earlier on to 'seer' more people, using the 'risky' plan Orange Soda (a Greed!) put forth. Still, if we had done that... would we have won?
As you say, it wasn't a sure thing, but it would have made things significantly more likely in my opinion. Consider that you could've used the Day 1 or 2 vote to cycle through several candidates over the course of the game.
I was hoping the village would use it as a mechanic.
But yeah, when the village lost both Vigs (both due to mistakes, especially Zellpher) so early the game balance shifted significantly.
Yes, we would have been more likely to win, but what's the marginal percentage? How many targets could we have cycled through? How quickly could we have picked up on the existence of thralls? Would we have time to react? With so many factors in play, it's hard to tell. I still think the win chances would be slim, especially with the loss of vigilantes early.
Seems like there was also a fine-line balance in mafia power: as powerful as they were (and 3-4 kills is incredible), any less strength and the village might have had enough time to figure things out. If lonelyahava and Trust were not thralls, then the village would have won.
*sigh* I don't know why it bothers so much that we didn't use the vote to its fullest power, but it does. I got kind of blinded somewhere and didn't consider the full range of possibilities.
The reason I'd call the thralls a "gotcha" is actually because we did know there were thralls, and knew we had eliminated them. It never occurred to me that there would be two types of thralls, whereas if wisdom hadn't had the thrall ability I would have been wary.
Using the votes as a seer became much less useful when we'd lost both vigs, as our only kill was the vote anyways.
I really liked the mechanics, and the game, but I urge you not to be so quick to use nebulous rules next time. I'm not a regular Phalla player, but I find unknown rules coming back to bite you extremely annoying; Mafia (the base game, not Phalla) is at its heart a game of math and logic, and I prefer it that way, which is why I took to the timeline system like an eight year old to a gallon of ice cream. Adding in too many nebulous rules is also very frustrating for the villagers, I think, since they never know anything and get stuck watching the results.
Bah, we really should have been using vote switches a bit more earlier on to 'seer' more people, using the 'risky' plan Orange Soda (a Greed!) put forth. Still, if we had done that... would we have won?
As you say, it wasn't a sure thing, but it would have made things significantly more likely in my opinion. Consider that you could've used the Day 1 or 2 vote to cycle through several candidates over the course of the game.
I was hoping the village would use it as a mechanic.
But yeah, when the village lost both Vigs (both due to mistakes, especially Zellpher) so early the game balance shifted significantly.
We had our kill order in on Zellphor before he revealed IIRC. I think it was more like.... lol why wasn't he in the network? Oh well he'll be stone dead in a moment. Unless my memory is bad.
The reason I'd call the thralls a "gotcha" is actually because we did know there were thralls, and knew we had eliminated them. It never occurred to me that there would be two types of thralls, whereas if wisdom hadn't had the thrall ability I would have been wary.
Using the votes as a seer became much less useful when we'd lost both vigs, as our only kill was the vote anyways.
I really liked the mechanics, and the game, but I urge you not to be so quick to use nebulous rules next time. I'm not a regular Phalla player, but I find unknown rules coming back to bite you extremely annoying; Mafia (the base game, not Phalla) is at its heart a game of math and logic, and I prefer it that way, which is why I took to the timeline system like an eight year old to a gallon of ice cream. Adding in too many nebulous rules is also very frustrating for the villagers, I think, since they never know anything and get stuck watching the results.
I'm sorry to disapoint you but this was arguably the least nebulous main game that has been played in some time. If anything I made it too transparent and people got bored.
The reason I'd call the thralls a "gotcha" is actually because we did know there were thralls, and knew we had eliminated them. It never occurred to me that there would be two types of thralls, whereas if wisdom hadn't had the thrall ability I would have been wary.
Using the votes as a seer became much less useful when we'd lost both vigs, as our only kill was the vote anyways.
I really liked the mechanics, and the game, but I urge you not to be so quick to use nebulous rules next time. I'm not a regular Phalla player, but I find unknown rules coming back to bite you extremely annoying; Mafia (the base game, not Phalla) is at its heart a game of math and logic, and I prefer it that way, which is why I took to the timeline system like an eight year old to a gallon of ice cream. Adding in too many nebulous rules is also very frustrating for the villagers, I think, since they never know anything and get stuck watching the results.
I'm sorry to disapoint you but this was arguably the least nebulous main game that has been played in some time. If anything I made it too transparent and people got bored.
No, I was saying I liked it because it was transparent, I was just arguing against making it nebulous in the future.
I don't know if or why other people got bored, but I was F5'ing the thread like crazy precisely because it was transparent and I could set my mind to work figuring things out.
I thought the rules were fairly clear and clean too. The mafia thralls were probably the only thing that was left in the shadows beyond the abilities and win conditions of the uncommon-special roles. Of course, that did have a huge impact on the game's outcome. No thralls means a village victory. Knowing about the mafia thralls? Probably a mafia win, but it has a rippling effect on everything...
If you had used the Day 2 vote on OS as you suggested, and then switched 5 more votes over the course of the game you could've death seered everyone who made it to Day 9. As such I view the marginal utility of vote switching very very high.
We had our kill order in on Zellphor before he revealed IIRC. I think it was more like.... lol why wasn't he in the network? Oh well he'll be stone dead in a moment. Unless my memory is bad.
This is how we got Zell:
K good news we got 3 good pseudo-inactives.
CrownAxe
jdarksun
Zellpher
.................
The 3 at the top are the lowest posts counts, without inactivity warning, who arn't us. I figure we may be able to catch a special hiding there. What do you think?
If you had used the Day 2 vote on OS as you suggested, and then switched 5 more votes over the course of the game you could've death seered everyone who made it to Day 9. As such I view the marginal utility of vote switching very very high.
Well, the way that the specials were shifting people around in the past, we would not have been able to exchange Orange Soda and dunedainjedi on the Day 2 vote. I don't know if we would have had the time to look at the targets we needed to either, especially since the village was under the impression that there were no mafia thralls.
If you had used the Day 2 vote on OS as you suggested, and then switched 5 more votes over the course of the game you could've death seered everyone who made it to Day 9. As such I view the marginal utility of vote switching very very high.
Well, the way that the specials were shifting people around in the past, we would not have been able to exchange Orange Soda and dunedainjedi on the Day 2 vote. I don't know if we would have had the time to look at the targets we needed to either, especially since the village was under the impression that there were no mafia thralls.
What we should have done was not listen to Rend and death seer OS day three.
And that opinion has nothing to do with me being alive as a result. :winky:
If you had used the Day 2 vote on OS as you suggested, and then switched 5 more votes over the course of the game you could've death seered everyone who made it to Day 9. As such I view the marginal utility of vote switching very very high.
Well, the way that the specials were shifting people around in the past, we would not have been able to exchange Orange Soda and dunedainjedi on the Day 2 vote. I don't know if we would have had the time to look at the targets we needed to either, especially since the village was under the impression that there were no mafia thralls.
You wouldn't necessarily have needed to hit Trust and lonelyahava.
If you hit Tabula Rasa players and confirmed them the only other possibility would have been false seer results on the others and you would've had it.
Been reading this, and I just have to say: Rend, learn to keep your mouth shut :P
Also, I asked Enlightenedbum to suggest me for the vote. I'd formed a smaller network with some of the villagers I'd brought back and I was confident we could manipulate the vote to keep me out for a few days. Dammit Bum! :P
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Yes, we would have been more likely to win, but what's the marginal percentage? How many targets could we have cycled through? How quickly could we have picked up on the existence of thralls? Would we have time to react? With so many factors in play, it's hard to tell. I still think the win chances would be slim, especially with the loss of vigilantes early.
Seems like there was also a fine-line balance in mafia power: as powerful as they were (and 3-4 kills is incredible), any less strength and the village might have had enough time to figure things out. If lonelyahava and Trust were not thralls, then the village would have won.
*sigh* I don't know why it bothers so much that we didn't use the vote to its fullest power, but it does. I got kind of blinded somewhere and didn't consider the full range of possibilities.
I think losing both vigs so long before we lost the guard had more to do with the loss than anything else. If one of them lived until the night after the guard died I don't see how we could have lost.
I wanna note this publically since Rend may or may not hate me for life now:
I was very torn about whether or not to reveal that the seer revealed to me.
I would have most likely used this to pick good targets still, but not as much talking it out with the thread. I wasn't sure how far I should draw the line of betrayal.
Lucky for me that decision was soon taken from me when lonelyahava admitted to having the seer reveal to her.
This was my response
Haha you already found the seer?
You know if you do this he will never trust you again.
At this point I was still undecided on how to resolve the situation. Once the cat was out of the bag via lonelyahava, I exploited it to our full advantage for the purpose of picking targets.
Again dude, I am sorry for the terrible betrayal... but lonelyahava was technically the one to betray you.... :P
While I expect many of you to be upset at losing to such a mechanic keep in mind the following:
1. The network knew about Thralls via Bremen / Darian;
2. If the village had kept a vig alive even in to the mid game you almost certainly would have won;
3. The voting mechanics (which the village unquestionably controlled) allowed you to seer anyone you wanted and bring them back afterwards if they weren't evil. In your haste to get rid of Greed players you never even considered your most powerful ability, which was designed as a perfect counter to the mafia's thralls.
The first one is a valid point, but I don't think it's really too important.
However, the second two were really what killed us... Sorry for not guarding you ebum . I was just following instructions!
And we really were foolish for not exploiting the voting more. Bleh.
Really though, I liked the game a lot Varcayn! I always follow Phallas after my death, so I particularly enjoyed being able to talk after I died, and still make a difference and such. That was a definite perk. Looking forward to Timeline 2.0!
I know I'm still pretty new to Phalla, but I'd like to make a comment. In this game, I felt that playing as a Villager was boring and pointless. All that was required of me was to log on once a day, see who the network determined should die, then vote that name. One post a day, determined by others. I could have, in theory, wrote a script to grab EBum's last post and vote the given name, and never touched the thread myself.
I think it was the lack of death; there was no reason to protect yourself as a villager, and thus no vested interest. I knew from the moment that I started that there was no reason to protect myself; I voted myself to the top precisely to prove that I was TR, and keep moving players through the "death seer" grind.
This was a game between the mafia and the specials; everyone else was just here for the ride. At least, that's how I saw it. (And keep in mind, the last few days I've been seeing it through the wonderfully hazy curtain of painkillers )
I know I'm still pretty new to Phalla, but I'd like to make a comment. In this game, I felt that playing as a Villager was boring and pointless. All that was required of me was to log on once a day, see who the network determined should die, then vote that name. One post a day, determined by others. I could have, in theory, wrote a script to grab EBum's last post and vote the given name, and never touched the thread myself.
I think it was the lack of death; there was no reason to protect yourself as a villager, and thus no vested interest. I knew from the moment that I started that there was no reason to protect myself; I voted myself to the top precisely to prove that I was TR, and keep moving players through the "death seer" grind.
This was a game between the mafia and the specials; everyone else was just here for the ride. At least, that's how I saw it. (And keep in mind, the last few days I've been seeing it through the wonderfully hazy curtain of painkillers )
Well, to be fair, you could have speculated too! All information was public on the proboards, so you had just as much power as ebum. You were just as confirmed good, so could've called kills just as much as him.
I mean, as soon as I died I was basically a vanillager too (I haven't even been sending in orders for days now, because it was pointless). And although I didn't really do much speculating either (I was busy and having fun anyways :P), we were really in the same boat.
I know I'm still pretty new to Phalla, but I'd like to make a comment. In this game, I felt that playing as a Villager was boring and pointless. All that was required of me was to log on once a day, see who the network determined should die, then vote that name. One post a day, determined by others. I could have, in theory, wrote a script to grab EBum's last post and vote the given name, and never touched the thread myself.
I think it was the lack of death; there was no reason to protect yourself as a villager, and thus no vested interest. I knew from the moment that I started that there was no reason to protect myself; I voted myself to the top precisely to prove that I was TR, and keep moving players through the "death seer" grind.
This was a game between the mafia and the specials; everyone else was just here for the ride. At least, that's how I saw it. (And keep in mind, the last few days I've been seeing it through the wonderfully hazy curtain of painkillers )
I think more experienced players than I would say that the main 'play' of a phalla is examining the data you have at your disposal, sifting through it to determine who you think is mafia. As a dead player with access to the network proboards, you had access to all the network's data, and could suggest targets for the next day's vote. That's all the specials could do anyway.
yeah that is what I assumed was happening. The reason I thought your network was so powerful was that I figured that you guys had everyone who had died in the game brainstorming against us.
In normal phallas, once people die they can't help the network talk through ideas. In this I felt like the network would be gaining an exponential amount of activity and speculation to bring us down.
That was why I was so mad at inactives. You had so much information at your disposal, were confirmed good in a way that the mafia couldn't touch and all you had to do was brainstorm for the last mafia. You could say anything in the thread with no repercussions from the mafia. Misdirection, confirmations, threats, etc. I really felt like some of the TRs didn't take full advantage of the awesomeness this phalla could have been for them.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
edited June 2009
So.. yeah.. I betrayed Rend..
And my heart broke every second of it!
You took advantage of my betrayal though, Sunkist!
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If I'm helping you script something for when your next game comes up (sometime 2010 at the earliest? lol) then I can give a lookover of all the mechanics too if you like.
You played a good game from the sounds of it, nothing to grudge here. 8-):whistle:
This post was the village's last chance to claim the game. If you had gone with MrB's idea here and made it work, you'd have been able to seer multiple unknowns/potential thralls. Instead, you kept going with the earlier plan (bury the mafia so deep they cannot dig themselves back out) while we kept going with our plan of voting up the highest totaled known TR on each day (and we continually cycled our people through the days that mattered most, 2-4). My goal and job was to keep you from being able to seer Delmain, to make it seem like we were doing all we could to protect him and force you to use your vote to clear him instead. (Though in the end I think he ended up getting bus drivered.)
I'm sorry if you feel that way on my first point. It was never my intention to lead people astray with titles. In my defense, you knew Darian was a mafia thrall and it was impossible for you to be sure that others like him did not exist, so I think the claim of entirely ruling out the possibility of thralls after his death is a bit suspect, especially since you didn't invited seered Tabula Rasa players to the proboard, as Rend and EB have mentioned. Most likely sure, but it was not unimaginable.
Regardless, if you feel cheated over the mechanic I apologize for that. It was not intended to make the game impossible to win on your side.
Edit 2: Thanks for your offer of help for when I eventually get back to the top of the list. If I run this again I will be doing it with a co-host.
Also, we happened to be, for whatever reason, the two Greeds that y'all didn't vote out of the Current Day. Had either of us fallen to the vote, we would have shown up as Greed.
We spent the most of the first few days trying to find the guards, when we did, it became a bit easier.
kay was a pain in the rear. We kept trying to hit her, but she kept redirecting it to others. That was frustrating. But then we gave up on that plan and just figured we'd leave her be.
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I don't feel cheated, I'm just saying that it's not "confirmed that there are thralls" because the assumption that he was a special role and unique was not only a logical assumption but the correct one.
The random "vanilla mafia" becoming thralls was unexpected and a gotcha. I'm not complaining about a gotcha, I'm just saying you're not considering it as such and that's incorrect. 8-)
Not inviting vanillas the the network boards "just in case" is just that, a pretty standard course of action.
Yes I forgot to comment on this.
This was an obvious blunder by the village. MrB had the optimal village voting strategy down cold from his first post, much to his credit.
A valid point.
I think your suggestion of obscuring the mechanics more if I run this again is also a valid one, which may alleviate this issue. Thanks.
But once I got the hang of it (about 2 days ago), it was tonna fun.
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I too am amazed that I lived as long as I did, mafia. You correctly assumed that I would be in the network by midgame at the latest, since you knew I wasn't mafia and by that time I would either be (a) seered or (b) vigged.
I'm sure I would have been seered day 1 or 2 if not for having revealed to Rend the seer at the start of day 1. :^: I was guarding specials the entire game except for the day Rend died, where I didn't make it back before day close from work.
6pm is a little rough for me haha.
I just didn't think on that early enough in the game to rid us of your presence fast enough, Infy!!!
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I live on the West Coast but I had to move out East for the summer, and coupled with my schedule that led to an unfortunately early vote close. That said I wasn't about to postpone this for three more months over a vote close time.
Bah, we really should have been using vote switches a bit more earlier on to 'seer' more people, using the 'risky' plan Orange Soda (a Greed!) put forth. Still, if we had done that... would we have won? I don't think it's a certain thing. With the vigilantes dying early, our ability to deal direct damage was greatly decreased - and noting the number of players alive at the end, and the number of mafia players, we would have required a perfect vote run and I don't think we would have had enough time to realize the nature of the thralls in the game to do that even with a better voting strategy.
*sigh* Oh well, what is done is done. It was a bit rough around the edges, but it was an interesting idea for a game. Good work.
Thanks, that's greatly appreciated.
It was tough not to say anything around day 6/7 when everyone saw an inevitable village victory and there were several comments on the mafia proboard about the game being impossible to win. :P
As you say, it wasn't a sure thing, but it would have made things significantly more likely in my opinion. Consider that you could've used the Day 1 or 2 vote to cycle through several candidates over the course of the game.
I was hoping the village would use it as a mechanic.
But yeah, when the village lost both Vigs (both due to mistakes, especially Zellpher) so early the game balance shifted significantly.
Nothing you can do about that as a host. I say good show all 'round.
Just because both sides thought they were going to win doesn't mean that the game was actually close...
Yes, we would have been more likely to win, but what's the marginal percentage? How many targets could we have cycled through? How quickly could we have picked up on the existence of thralls? Would we have time to react? With so many factors in play, it's hard to tell. I still think the win chances would be slim, especially with the loss of vigilantes early.
Seems like there was also a fine-line balance in mafia power: as powerful as they were (and 3-4 kills is incredible), any less strength and the village might have had enough time to figure things out. If lonelyahava and Trust were not thralls, then the village would have won.
*sigh* I don't know why it bothers so much that we didn't use the vote to its fullest power, but it does. I got kind of blinded somewhere and didn't consider the full range of possibilities.
Using the votes as a seer became much less useful when we'd lost both vigs, as our only kill was the vote anyways.
I really liked the mechanics, and the game, but I urge you not to be so quick to use nebulous rules next time. I'm not a regular Phalla player, but I find unknown rules coming back to bite you extremely annoying; Mafia (the base game, not Phalla) is at its heart a game of math and logic, and I prefer it that way, which is why I took to the timeline system like an eight year old to a gallon of ice cream. Adding in too many nebulous rules is also very frustrating for the villagers, I think, since they never know anything and get stuck watching the results.
We had our kill order in on Zellphor before he revealed IIRC. I think it was more like.... lol why wasn't he in the network? Oh well he'll be stone dead in a moment. Unless my memory is bad.
I'm sorry to disapoint you but this was arguably the least nebulous main game that has been played in some time. If anything I made it too transparent and people got bored.
No, I was saying I liked it because it was transparent, I was just arguing against making it nebulous in the future.
I don't know if or why other people got bored, but I was F5'ing the thread like crazy precisely because it was transparent and I could set my mind to work figuring things out.
If you had used the Day 2 vote on OS as you suggested, and then switched 5 more votes over the course of the game you could've death seered everyone who made it to Day 9. As such I view the marginal utility of vote switching very very high.
This is how we got Zell:
Well, the way that the specials were shifting people around in the past, we would not have been able to exchange Orange Soda and dunedainjedi on the Day 2 vote. I don't know if we would have had the time to look at the targets we needed to either, especially since the village was under the impression that there were no mafia thralls.
What we should have done was not listen to Rend and death seer OS day three.
And that opinion has nothing to do with me being alive as a result. :winky:
You wouldn't necessarily have needed to hit Trust and lonelyahava.
If you hit Tabula Rasa players and confirmed them the only other possibility would have been false seer results on the others and you would've had it.
Losing both vigs so early was crippling though.
Been reading this, and I just have to say: Rend, learn to keep your mouth shut :P
Also, I asked Enlightenedbum to suggest me for the vote. I'd formed a smaller network with some of the villagers I'd brought back and I was confident we could manipulate the vote to keep me out for a few days. Dammit Bum! :P
I think losing both vigs so long before we lost the guard had more to do with the loss than anything else. If one of them lived until the night after the guard died I don't see how we could have lost.
I was very torn about whether or not to reveal that the seer revealed to me.
I would have most likely used this to pick good targets still, but not as much talking it out with the thread. I wasn't sure how far I should draw the line of betrayal.
Lucky for me that decision was soon taken from me when lonelyahava admitted to having the seer reveal to her.
This was my response
At this point I was still undecided on how to resolve the situation. Once the cat was out of the bag via lonelyahava, I exploited it to our full advantage for the purpose of picking targets.
Again dude, I am sorry for the terrible betrayal... but lonelyahava was technically the one to betray you.... :P
The first one is a valid point, but I don't think it's really too important.
However, the second two were really what killed us... Sorry for not guarding you ebum
And we really were foolish for not exploiting the voting more. Bleh.
Really though, I liked the game a lot Varcayn! I always follow Phallas after my death, so I particularly enjoyed being able to talk after I died, and still make a difference and such. That was a definite perk. Looking forward to Timeline 2.0!
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I think it was the lack of death; there was no reason to protect yourself as a villager, and thus no vested interest. I knew from the moment that I started that there was no reason to protect myself; I voted myself to the top precisely to prove that I was TR, and keep moving players through the "death seer" grind.
This was a game between the mafia and the specials; everyone else was just here for the ride. At least, that's how I saw it. (And keep in mind, the last few days I've been seeing it through the wonderfully hazy curtain of painkillers
I mean, as soon as I died I was basically a vanillager too (I haven't even been sending in orders for days now, because it was pointless). And although I didn't really do much speculating either (I was busy and having fun anyways :P), we were really in the same boat.
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I think more experienced players than I would say that the main 'play' of a phalla is examining the data you have at your disposal, sifting through it to determine who you think is mafia. As a dead player with access to the network proboards, you had access to all the network's data, and could suggest targets for the next day's vote. That's all the specials could do anyway.
edit:
In normal phallas, once people die they can't help the network talk through ideas. In this I felt like the network would be gaining an exponential amount of activity and speculation to bring us down.
That was why I was so mad at inactives. You had so much information at your disposal, were confirmed good in a way that the mafia couldn't touch and all you had to do was brainstorm for the last mafia. You could say anything in the thread with no repercussions from the mafia. Misdirection, confirmations, threats, etc. I really felt like some of the TRs didn't take full advantage of the awesomeness this phalla could have been for them.
And my heart broke every second of it!
You took advantage of my betrayal though, Sunkist!
So it's absolutely your fault!!
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Yeah I would say the blame was 90% mine, but your 10% took the burden out of my hands for deciding whether or not to do it. I do thank you for that.