El SkidThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
edited October 2009
See Rolecalls in and of themselves are fine.
Villager: What is your role?
Not Confirmed Person: I am Papa Smurf.
Villager: That's two people claiming that role. Hmmmmm
It's this stupid "I will compare the text of your role PM to see if you really ARE a villager" thing that is stupid and meta. If it hadn't cost me the game, I'd be glad to see that Blarney punished people who tried to use meta crap to network themselves.
El Skid on
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Dac VinS-s-screw you! I only listen to DOUBLE MUSIC!Registered Userregular
People realize that quoting role PMs to prove shit is lame right? And breaks/makes the game pointless?
Kudos to people that actually try to reason things out, and those that didn't got what they deserved!
It was completely possible for the village to figure this out in the beginning days, don't blame Blarney making a design decision to not allow role calls.
Just so people stop making the "DAC VIN ATE EVRYTHNG OLOL" a meme, giving all the factions role PMs to the mafia was probably the very best thing about this game, and a genius masterstroke from Blarney to stop rolecalls.
alright: new meme people!
Dac Vin hates everything except things that prevent rolecalls OLOL
:P
And networks. Why do you think I'm like the only one who loves thralls duna? :P
The bodyguards were probably too powerful given that there was faction competition in the village. We were under a lot of suspicion and early losses, most of us weren't that much different from regular villagers, and if it weren't for infiltration (silly soft networks ) and motive confliction towards the latter half the bodyguards wouldn't have been able to deflect the vote repeatedly.
Infidel on
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El SkidThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
If it helps, we didn't know that the evictions came first until after the game. Ninja bodyguard threw the village off the most, and helped the mafia the most, but if they would have voted better (not sheeped as much?) the last few days for them woulda been easy. Hippie(Ninja) and myself(copycat) were highly suspected. If we would have been voted out early, clear movement patterns would have emerged. But, I don't want to shortchange myself or hippie, even though we were suspect, we must have been doing something right. Most of the time it takes only a gentle push towards a bandwagon on a suspicious player for a total village lynch mob, look at Typhus. We're still here at the end of the game. Don't ruffle feathers or make waves to stay alive as a mafia?
edit: last sentence should add unless you are houn or rawking.
oaklore on
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Dogbone33I bleed Red and Gold!State of ConfusionRegistered Userregular
Also duel motive people, was there any minus to being one? Or did they just have easier win conditions available to them?
I'm not sure what the single motive people got, but I was dual, and needed to have someone from one faction or the other kill Dr. Lucky, or I lost.
I found being dual to be tougher. I had twice as many people to try and trust/clear. Then I found myself working more with the revenge gang then the money gang. Then almost all the revengers went down so I had to throw in more with money. By then the money gang was already up a creek we just didn't know who it was. TT and I both knew it was infiltrated we just didn't know by whom. Beiung dual motive involved a lot more legwork.
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Looking over everything, if the Ninja Bodyguard didn't exist, that by itself would have made a big difference in the game. I understand why you put it in, but why not have that at least cost cards to use or show up in narration (not just a PM to the person who attempted to hit Dr. Lucky)?
As it was, the bodyguards had no special need to be in the room with Dr. Lucky until both the ninja and the copycat were dead, so a lot of the information that was available from movement patterns/failed attacks became much less useful. But we didn't know it.
El SkidThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
edited October 2009
I think the Ninja would have been a bit better balanced if anytime the ability was used, the mechanic was outed. As it was, the bodyguards were told on day 8 that if the ninja was deployed, the mechanic would be outed.
The bodyguards had no need to be anywhere near Dr. Lucky ever, so long as that one bodyguard was alive, and no incentive to not use the power until it was really late in the game.
Dunadan you should tell us all more about your superiority complex and how you had all the mafia pegged but didn't tell anyone because they are durrrr and unworthy of your magnificience.
But if you push a suspicion based on good intentions you are hurting phalla and you should stop it.
Dunadan you should tell us all more about your superiority complex and how you had all the mafia pegged but didn't tell anyone because they are durrrr and unworthy of your magnificience.
But if you push a suspicion based on good intentions you are hurting phalla and you should stop it.
Dac Vin hates everything except things that prevent rolecalls OLOL
:P
And networks. Why do you think I'm like the only one who loves thralls duna? :P
Look at that moving goalpost olol
With the caveat that I ALWAYS hated networks and what you said is hurting phalla I think actually help iOH MY GOD WHY DID YOU POST SOMETHING SO AGGRESIVELY STUPID
The whole mess happened because Gumpy let Rawking Goodguy into the network and not B:L, so... :P
Rawking was the core of the network, he was the first person to be invited to it and everything. I didn't just let him in as an afterthought |: Probably wouldn't have bothered to put one together if Rawking wasn't in the game.
Re: Ninja Bodyguard- I think it's a clever mechanic, but since it went against what was outlined in the OP, the fact that the village didn't know of the role's existence skewed things somewhat.
Of course this is coming from a man who once gave the mafia the power to block a vote-kill, so take that with a grain of salt...
Incidentally, the main reason I thought you were evil Gumpy was I suspected you'd been the one to tell B:L I was in your outfit. What was that all about.
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GumpyThere is alwaysa greater powerRegistered Userregular
Well, if I changed the rules on the ninja bodyguard, I don't think it would have made any difference for the first half of the game, since if an attack would be able to pierce Dr. Lucky's defenses, there would need to be four or fewer bodyguards remaining (the highest weapon value obtainable was 5, for attacks on Dr. Lucky). Until the bodyguards got down to something like six bodyguards or fewer, I think we would have seen approximately the same free-movement patterns as actually employed. Of course, the reason why I put in the ninja bodyguard in the form it did appear was to free up the bodyguards' need for positioning somewhat - the 'queen' piece to the 'Dr. Lucky' king, if you will - if might have tipped the scale in the other direction if that ability was replaced with a different one. Of course, it's hard to say for sure. The bodyguards still would have had a formidable presence, and their evictions coming before attacks would have still saved them from a loss had everything else played out the same.
People realize that quoting role PMs to prove shit is lame right? And breaks/makes the game pointless?
Kudos to people that actually try to reason things out, and those that didn't got what they deserved!
It was completely possible for the village to figure this out in the beginning days, don't blame Blarney making a design decision to not allow role calls.
I only cracked out the role PM when I was throwing down with RU and knew that there was something very, very wrong with the entire situation. That little exchange convinced me that the mafia had origional PM's, and since I knew they were the basis of everyone elses networking...
Yea, I'm going with the body guard specific abilities being the main issue when it came to balance. If the guards were like any other player, but masoned and with their two evictions a day (That came before everything else) that would have been fine I think
Ninja bodyguard ability caused the entire village to focus on me and boogey during the last days? Boo. no way of seeing that one coming. At least my theory that evictions coming first shutting dog down was right
To be fair, both were slightly BS. The ninja one because there was literally no way for us to know. Bodyguards that died didn't die with their tag line added, so there was no way to know that they even had extra abilities beyond mason, cards, auto-evict, auto-guard lucky, and all the stuff listed in the OP.
The evictions coming first was BS because they could remove players that were going to kill Dr. Lucky or them, EVEN if we had neutrallized ALL of their other defenses, and there was nothing we could do to stop it.
And regarding the quoting of role PMs, and how the MrB expertly prevented role call from working... I call FAIL boat. Were this a village Vs. Mafia game, it is perfectly acceptable. This, however, was described as a factions vs mafia. And since there were few methods of seering, how the hell else were the factions supposed to form or work as a group? They weren't masoned. Apparently only two of the factions actually had seers, the others just had to rely on luck of the draw to get an investigate card. And the seers couldn't use their ability every day without using all their cards.
I'd figure four non-mason'd factions should be more than enough to make things interesting, and to cause inter-village conflict/death. Mafia could have picked up parts of the role PMs from people that PM'd them, and tried to infiltrate the old fashioned way. That'd have been cool. But flat out handing them that... not cool.
Alternately, a mention in the OP that the mafia knew the many motives of the guests would have been acceptable, though tough on the whole factioning side of the game.
Well, if I changed the rules on the ninja bodyguard, I don't think it would have made any difference for the first half of the game, since if an attack would be able to pierce Dr. Lucky's defenses, there would need to be four or fewer bodyguards remaining (the highest weapon value obtainable was 5, for attacks on Dr. Lucky). Until the bodyguards got down to something like six bodyguards or fewer, I think we would have seen approximately the same free-movement patterns as actually employed. Of course, the reason why I put in the ninja bodyguard in the form it did appear was to free up the bodyguards' need for positioning somewhat - the 'queen' piece to the 'Dr. Lucky' king, if you will - if might have tipped the scale in the other direction if that ability was replaced with a different one. Of course, it's hard to say for sure. The bodyguards still would have had a formidable presence, and their evictions coming before attacks would have still saved them from a loss had everything else played out the same.
The big issue with ninja bodyguarding was that the bodyguards guarding requirements was one of the only bits of information that I believed was 100% true, and that information was what I based a hell of a lot of stuff off. Kinda came from left field
Well, if I changed the rules on the ninja bodyguard, I don't think it would have made any difference for the first half of the game, since if an attack would be able to pierce Dr. Lucky's defenses, there would need to be four or fewer bodyguards remaining (the highest weapon value obtainable was 5, for attacks on Dr. Lucky). Until the bodyguards got down to something like six bodyguards or fewer, I think we would have seen approximately the same free-movement patterns as actually employed. Of course, the reason why I put in the ninja bodyguard in the form it did appear was to free up the bodyguards' need for positioning somewhat - the 'queen' piece to the 'Dr. Lucky' king, if you will - if might have tipped the scale in the other direction if that ability was replaced with a different one. Of course, it's hard to say for sure. The bodyguards still would have had a formidable presence, and their evictions coming before attacks would have still saved them from a loss had everything else played out the same.
The big issue with ninja bodyguarding was that the bodyguards guarding requirements was one of the only bits of information that I believed was 100% true, and that information was what I based a hell of a lot of stuff off. Kinda came from left field
Shoot. It's the only reason I thought you were evils, cause rawkking went and left you in the same room as Dr. Lucks, and I was pretty confident that boogedy was good. (rawkking actually was on my evil radar ... but we never crossed paths)
Brawn wasn't working so well either. Oaklore was bloody well invincible with an auto defense of 2, PLUS failure cards.
Houn apparently had enough to block the mighty spatula. And I tried to punch Hipple too. He lived.
Though you had enough turns with Rawkking to use your patented metal hands of doom. Whats your excuse? :P
I already know your excuse, I just wanted to be able to post a :P
It was a bit of a ripple effect with the ninja bodyguard, yes? Well, I would like to try and continue my defense by saying that people seemed to be focused too much on eliminating Dr. Lucky, the end goal, rather than eliminating bodyguards, the subgoal. If this were a traditional mafia game, then it would have been 12 mafia among 65 players, a fairly standard amount (18.5%). Eliminating the mafia clears the path completely, and the village did not go far enough before going after Dr. Lucky. Was this in part due to the ninja bodyguard's presence? Perhaps. Then again, it might just be a different issue altogether that's just tied to the big picture in some other place.
As for the issue of giving the mafia the faction PMs, I've already explained before that I wanted to give the mafia a chance to blend in, in case the village decided to go on a non-faction player hunting spree. Of course, I expected most groups to form up fairly quickly, but there were a lot of people who did not join up with their factions. I probably could have hinted the bodyguards' knowledge somewhere in the first narration, but I think it simply slipped my mind. Despite the fact that most people knew that most others were part of opposing factions (and the game was labeled as such in the OP), I did want to keep a certain amount of secrecy and uncertainty in regards to how big the factions were. The village would need to have worked with simply trust within their factions to get a lot of things done.
In regards to the seers, the two players with the Detective roles were both dual-motive players on opposing sides of the spectrum - so technically all factions had some sort of seer.
Brawn wasn't working so well either. Oaklore was bloody well invincible with an auto defense of 2, PLUS failure cards.
Houn apparently had enough to block the mighty spatula. And I tried to punch Hipple too. He lived.
Though you had enough turns with Rawkking to use your patented metal hands of doom. Whats your excuse? :P
I already know your excuse, I just wanted to be able to post a :P
The 'defensive' daily events I put in place only served to exacerbate the amount of failure cards most of the remaining players had. If you weren't touched until later in the game, then it was likely that you would have lots and lots of defense at hand. I probably could have added a mechanic or daily event to resolve this problem, but it was too late to correct by the time the problem was seen. Sorry for that.
MrBlarney on
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GumpyThere is alwaysa greater powerRegistered Userregular
It was a bit of a ripple effect with the ninja bodyguard, yes? Well, I would like to try and continue my defense by saying that people seemed to be focused too much on eliminating Dr. Lucky, the end goal, rather than eliminating bodyguards, the subgoal.
I am pretty sure the people who ate delicious vote due to the Ninja were killed on suspicion of being bodyguards and not on suspicion of being Dr. Lucky :P
It was a bit of a ripple effect with the ninja bodyguard, yes? Well, I would like to try and continue my defense by saying that people seemed to be focused too much on eliminating Dr. Lucky, the end goal, rather than eliminating bodyguards, the subgoal.
I am pretty sure the people who ate delicious vote due to the Ninja were killed on suspicion of being bodyguards and not on suspicion of being Dr. Lucky :P
Well, the last three days had some people going "I'm in the same room as Dr. Lucky, I'm-a gonna go kill him now," without thinking enough about if it was possible. And the ninja thing... that was only on Day 8. On Day 9 and 10, there was a perfectly good bodyguard target in the same room as Dr. Lucky that could have been voted out.
It's this stupid "I will compare the text of your role PM to see if you really ARE a villager" thing that is stupid and meta. If it hadn't cost me the game, I'd be glad to see that Blarney punished people who tried to use meta crap to network themselves.
It would have been nice if he indicated in some way he would have been doing so. If he added something like "Additional Security Personal have been added to the Premises after word reached of several conspiracies to kill Dr. Lucky"
Standard Phalla rules apply: no sharing of host-provided PMs via screenshots and direct quotation. However, information may be shared indirectly, such as through rephrasing. No anonymous contact is allowed. All messages must be traceable to a player in the game. Play nice.
Find others with your mindset and put together a plan to make sure Dr. Lucky is defeated by one of your own.
(from role pm)
Networking was encouraged...I thought it seemed. And I didn't have any tools at my disposal, it would have been just "Ok you're in" which probably would have produced the same results
It was a bit of a ripple effect with the ninja bodyguard, yes? Well, I would like to try and continue my defense by saying that people seemed to be focused too much on eliminating Dr. Lucky, the end goal, rather than eliminating bodyguards, the subgoal.
I am pretty sure the people who ate delicious vote due to the Ninja were killed on suspicion of being bodyguards and not on suspicion of being Dr. Lucky :P
Well, the last three days had some people going "I'm in the same room as Dr. Lucky, I'm-a gonna go kill him now," without thinking enough about if it was possible. And the ninja thing... that was only on Day 8. On Day 9 and 10, there was a perfectly good bodyguard target in the same room as Dr. Lucky that could have been voted out.
You have to admit that the faction rivalry aspect of the game made it seem like much more of a priority to whack Lucky as early as possible, though.
As for the issue of giving the mafia the faction PMs, I've already explained before that I wanted to give the mafia a chance to blend in, in case the village decided to go on a non-faction player hunting spree. Of course, I expected most groups to form up fairly quickly, but there were a lot of people who did not join up with their factions. I probably could have hinted the bodyguards' knowledge somewhere in the first narration, but I think it simply slipped my mind. Despite the fact that most people knew that most others were part of opposing factions (and the game was labeled as such in the OP), I did want to keep a certain amount of secrecy and uncertainty in regards to how big the factions were. The village would need to have worked with simply trust within their factions to get a lot of things done.
An alternate would have been to increase the village size. With the dual motives, each faction numbered 14, and the village core was only 9. If you'd pull 2 from each faction, they'd have been at 12 each, but the village core would have been sitting at 17. That's a much better base for the mafia to hide in, and the village would not take kindly to an individual faction deciding to kill them off. And since only two factions could win (multi-attack tie stuff that wasn't revealed until day 8 anyway non-withstanding), I think that would have reduced the possibility of a non-faction bloodbath, while still allowing the factions to operate as factions, instead of as bodyguard hideyholes.
Brawn wasn't working so well either. Oaklore was bloody well invincible with an auto defense of 2, PLUS failure cards.
Houn apparently had enough to block the mighty spatula. And I tried to punch Hipple too. He lived.
Though you had enough turns with Rawkking to use your patented metal hands of doom. Whats your excuse? :P
I already know your excuse, I just wanted to be able to post a :P
The 'defensive' daily events I put in place only served to exacerbate the amount of failure cards most of the remaining players had. If you weren't touched until later in the game, then it was likely that you would have lots and lots of defense at hand. I probably could have added a mechanic or daily event to resolve this problem, but it was too late to correct by the time the problem was seen. Sorry for that.
The defensive stuff was ok, in my book. Though the spite tokens could have come sooner, rather than later, or been more powerful. (though the latter would not have helped me, what with eviction being before attacks - Really, I think that was the most annoying thing to find out.)
All in all, I had fun, I just think the mafia benefited from feature creep, where individually many of their powers were cool, all together they were slightly overwhelming.
I want to reiterate that I had a really great time with this game, even if it wasn't perfectly balanced (and let's be honest, how many games with a big new concept like this are?). I hope we'll see a sequel down the road somewhere. Thanks, Mr. B.
Uh huh. Good points, all. Lots of different ways out there to tweak and adjust the game to a more balanced state. But I'd like to think that I did a fair job of setting up the game for a solo effort and the preparation time available. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself, anyways. :P
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El SkidThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
Uh huh. Good points, all. Lots of different ways out there to tweak and adjust the game to a more balanced state. But I'd like to think that I did a fair job of setting up the game for a solo effort and the preparation time available. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself, anyways. :P
I'm sure it's possible to balance a game with entirely new mechanics on the first try, MrB.
I just don't think it's all that likely. If people had fun, it's all good in my book- And it seems that's the prevailing sentiment, so
Brawn wasn't working so well either. Oaklore was bloody well invincible with an auto defense of 2, PLUS failure cards.
Houn apparently had enough to block the mighty spatula. And I tried to punch Hipple too. He lived.
Though you had enough turns with Rawkking to use your patented metal hands of doom. Whats your excuse? :P
I already know your excuse, I just wanted to be able to post a :P
Hah, that auto defense of 2 was originally mine though. And I died on day four without having drawn a single failure card all game. More attacks going around earlier in the game would have resulted in less failure cards held toward the end.
As for the presence of the ninja bodyguard, I really don't think it was a bad ability at all. As Mr. Blarney said, it would not have changed the early game one bit, and in the end the ability wasn't used once. Incidentally, you have to admit that we played the ability well. Hippie stayed well under the radar all game, and the bodyguard team was fairly committed to defending both Hippie and Oaklore, and drawing attention away from them whenever possible.
Like having the role PMs, the ninja bodyguard seems to have worked just toward helping us blend in a little bit better. And honestly, the village did NOTHING to prevent that from happening. Right from the get-go, when I saw all the day one soft networks starting up I thought "this is going to be fun. muhahahahah"
I almost find it silly how easily we controlled the vote throughout the game. We shifted bandwagons off of Rawkking and Oaklore, then the B:L thing with Edcrab took a miniwagon off of Fatal3RR0R and dominated all discussion for two full days, and later on the vote was rapidly shifting toward Typhus and he also got saved.
What scared me the most as a bodyguard was how active and analytical the village was in the first few days. It seemed every single day began with a bodyguard's name showing up in bolded red. We made a pretty conscious effort, I think, to go after the folks who were doing the most thinking, though not necessarily the most talking. This culminated in evicting eeccccoooo, after which the village mostly descended into voting based on gut feelings.
So yeah, the ninja bodyguard ability definitely had an impact on the game, but what's the point of giving people abilities if they don't? If there was a balance issue I would suggest that perhaps lowering the number of bodyguards might have been the solution to it, since it would likely lead to the village discovering his presence earlier (or for that matter, at all).
EDIT: Oh yeah, and huge thanks to Mr. Blarney for running this! Can't imagine how much time he spent every night working out card movements and sending out PMs.
If you run the game again, assuming the chance of having a particular card drawn was weighted, i'd suggest having less failure cards drawn and more investigation cards. I had far too many towards the end of the games.
Posts
And of course those of us that did :P
Villager: What is your role?
Not Confirmed Person: I am Papa Smurf.
Villager: That's two people claiming that role. Hmmmmm
It's this stupid "I will compare the text of your role PM to see if you really ARE a villager" thing that is stupid and meta. If it hadn't cost me the game, I'd be glad to see that Blarney punished people who tried to use meta crap to network themselves.
And networks. Why do you think I'm like the only one who loves thralls duna? :P
Also duel motive people, was there any minus to being one? Or did they just have easier win conditions available to them?
The bodyguards were probably too powerful given that there was faction competition in the village. We were under a lot of suspicion and early losses, most of us weren't that much different from regular villagers, and if it weren't for infiltration (silly soft networks ) and motive confliction towards the latter half the bodyguards wouldn't have been able to deflect the vote repeatedly.
I'm not sure what the single motive people got, but I was dual, and needed to have someone from one faction or the other kill Dr. Lucky, or I lost.
Sucks if they revealed such publicly heh.
edit: last sentence should add unless you are houn or rawking.
I found being dual to be tougher. I had twice as many people to try and trust/clear. Then I found myself working more with the revenge gang then the money gang. Then almost all the revengers went down so I had to throw in more with money. By then the money gang was already up a creek we just didn't know who it was. TT and I both knew it was infiltrated we just didn't know by whom. Beiung dual motive involved a lot more legwork.
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Yeah, I have no idea how I lived to the end. I like to think that by keeping myself visible, though, no one was paying as much attention to you two.
As it was, the bodyguards had no special need to be in the room with Dr. Lucky until both the ninja and the copycat were dead, so a lot of the information that was available from movement patterns/failed attacks became much less useful. But we didn't know it.
The bodyguards had no need to be anywhere near Dr. Lucky ever, so long as that one bodyguard was alive, and no incentive to not use the power until it was really late in the game.
How could I be so wrong
Well except for this part:
Thanks for running it, Mr. B!
But if you push a suspicion based on good intentions you are hurting phalla and you should stop it.
Look at that moving goalpost olol
The whole mess happened because Gumpy let Rawking Goodguy into the network and not B:L, so... :P
Thanks for hosting, Mr. B!
With the caveat that I ALWAYS hated networks and what you said is hurting phalla I think actually help iOH MY GOD WHY DID YOU POST SOMETHING SO AGGRESIVELY STUPID
Rawking was the core of the network, he was the first person to be invited to it and everything. I didn't just let him in as an afterthought |: Probably wouldn't have bothered to put one together if Rawking wasn't in the game.
Of course this is coming from a man who once gave the mafia the power to block a vote-kill, so take that with a grain of salt...
Incidentally, the main reason I thought you were evil Gumpy was I suspected you'd been the one to tell B:L I was in your outfit. What was that all about.
Really
But that was such a great power!
The evictions coming first was BS because they could remove players that were going to kill Dr. Lucky or them, EVEN if we had neutrallized ALL of their other defenses, and there was nothing we could do to stop it.
And regarding the quoting of role PMs, and how the MrB expertly prevented role call from working... I call FAIL boat. Were this a village Vs. Mafia game, it is perfectly acceptable. This, however, was described as a factions vs mafia. And since there were few methods of seering, how the hell else were the factions supposed to form or work as a group? They weren't masoned. Apparently only two of the factions actually had seers, the others just had to rely on luck of the draw to get an investigate card. And the seers couldn't use their ability every day without using all their cards.
I'd figure four non-mason'd factions should be more than enough to make things interesting, and to cause inter-village conflict/death. Mafia could have picked up parts of the role PMs from people that PM'd them, and tried to infiltrate the old fashioned way. That'd have been cool. But flat out handing them that... not cool.
Alternately, a mention in the OP that the mafia knew the many motives of the guests would have been acceptable, though tough on the whole factioning side of the game.
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The big issue with ninja bodyguarding was that the bodyguards guarding requirements was one of the only bits of information that I believed was 100% true, and that information was what I based a hell of a lot of stuff off. Kinda came from left field
Shoot. It's the only reason I thought you were evils, cause rawkking went and left you in the same room as Dr. Lucks, and I was pretty confident that boogedy was good. (rawkking actually was on my evil radar ... but we never crossed paths)
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I only got a weapon card on the last day ]:
Houn apparently had enough to block the mighty spatula. And I tried to punch Hipple too. He lived.
Though you had enough turns with Rawkking to use your patented metal hands of doom. Whats your excuse? :P
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As for the issue of giving the mafia the faction PMs, I've already explained before that I wanted to give the mafia a chance to blend in, in case the village decided to go on a non-faction player hunting spree. Of course, I expected most groups to form up fairly quickly, but there were a lot of people who did not join up with their factions. I probably could have hinted the bodyguards' knowledge somewhere in the first narration, but I think it simply slipped my mind. Despite the fact that most people knew that most others were part of opposing factions (and the game was labeled as such in the OP), I did want to keep a certain amount of secrecy and uncertainty in regards to how big the factions were. The village would need to have worked with simply trust within their factions to get a lot of things done.
In regards to the seers, the two players with the Detective roles were both dual-motive players on opposing sides of the spectrum - so technically all factions had some sort of seer.
EDIT:
The 'defensive' daily events I put in place only served to exacerbate the amount of failure cards most of the remaining players had. If you weren't touched until later in the game, then it was likely that you would have lots and lots of defense at hand. I probably could have added a mechanic or daily event to resolve this problem, but it was too late to correct by the time the problem was seen. Sorry for that.
I am pretty sure the people who ate delicious vote due to the Ninja were killed on suspicion of being bodyguards and not on suspicion of being Dr. Lucky :P
Well, the last three days had some people going "I'm in the same room as Dr. Lucky, I'm-a gonna go kill him now," without thinking enough about if it was possible. And the ninja thing... that was only on Day 8. On Day 9 and 10, there was a perfectly good bodyguard target in the same room as Dr. Lucky that could have been voted out.
It would have been nice if he indicated in some way he would have been doing so. If he added something like "Additional Security Personal have been added to the Premises after word reached of several conspiracies to kill Dr. Lucky"
(from role pm)
Networking was encouraged...I thought it seemed. And I didn't have any tools at my disposal, it would have been just "Ok you're in" which probably would have produced the same results
You have to admit that the faction rivalry aspect of the game made it seem like much more of a priority to whack Lucky as early as possible, though.
An alternate would have been to increase the village size. With the dual motives, each faction numbered 14, and the village core was only 9. If you'd pull 2 from each faction, they'd have been at 12 each, but the village core would have been sitting at 17. That's a much better base for the mafia to hide in, and the village would not take kindly to an individual faction deciding to kill them off. And since only two factions could win (multi-attack tie stuff that wasn't revealed until day 8 anyway non-withstanding), I think that would have reduced the possibility of a non-faction bloodbath, while still allowing the factions to operate as factions, instead of as bodyguard hideyholes.
The defensive stuff was ok, in my book. Though the spite tokens could have come sooner, rather than later, or been more powerful. (though the latter would not have helped me, what with eviction being before attacks - Really, I think that was the most annoying thing to find out.)
All in all, I had fun, I just think the mafia benefited from feature creep, where individually many of their powers were cool, all together they were slightly overwhelming.
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yes..especially if you were single motivated. Your side has to kill Lucky or You Lose - No exceptions
TBH I would have been more wary of spies if this win condition didn't seem hard enough to achieve on its own.
I'm sure it's possible to balance a game with entirely new mechanics on the first try, MrB.
I just don't think it's all that likely. If people had fun, it's all good in my book- And it seems that's the prevailing sentiment, so
Hah, that auto defense of 2 was originally mine though. And I died on day four without having drawn a single failure card all game. More attacks going around earlier in the game would have resulted in less failure cards held toward the end.
As for the presence of the ninja bodyguard, I really don't think it was a bad ability at all. As Mr. Blarney said, it would not have changed the early game one bit, and in the end the ability wasn't used once. Incidentally, you have to admit that we played the ability well. Hippie stayed well under the radar all game, and the bodyguard team was fairly committed to defending both Hippie and Oaklore, and drawing attention away from them whenever possible.
Like having the role PMs, the ninja bodyguard seems to have worked just toward helping us blend in a little bit better. And honestly, the village did NOTHING to prevent that from happening. Right from the get-go, when I saw all the day one soft networks starting up I thought "this is going to be fun. muhahahahah"
I almost find it silly how easily we controlled the vote throughout the game. We shifted bandwagons off of Rawkking and Oaklore, then the B:L thing with Edcrab took a miniwagon off of Fatal3RR0R and dominated all discussion for two full days, and later on the vote was rapidly shifting toward Typhus and he also got saved.
What scared me the most as a bodyguard was how active and analytical the village was in the first few days. It seemed every single day began with a bodyguard's name showing up in bolded red. We made a pretty conscious effort, I think, to go after the folks who were doing the most thinking, though not necessarily the most talking. This culminated in evicting eeccccoooo, after which the village mostly descended into voting based on gut feelings.
So yeah, the ninja bodyguard ability definitely had an impact on the game, but what's the point of giving people abilities if they don't? If there was a balance issue I would suggest that perhaps lowering the number of bodyguards might have been the solution to it, since it would likely lead to the village discovering his presence earlier (or for that matter, at all).
EDIT: Oh yeah, and huge thanks to Mr. Blarney for running this! Can't imagine how much time he spent every night working out card movements and sending out PMs.
If you run the game again, assuming the chance of having a particular card drawn was weighted, i'd suggest having less failure cards drawn and more investigation cards. I had far too many towards the end of the games.