I had so little idea what was actually going on in the game, dispite being the seer. I can't say I was particularly surprised though, because I didn't get a mafia until the very end and I never returned roles.
My friend is working on a roguelike game you can play if you want to. (It has free demo)
Except if SaberoverEasy would have narrated overlapping kills...which I'm not sure if he would have. And there was another explanation that made more sense than a day 1 guard getting lucky.
Phew, I can't believe that actually worked. Congrats to Mojo are in order.
So here is what happened. Smoove joined our cabin on the second last night. Retaba on the last.
Smoove tries to convince me and Mojo (privately) that we should guard-kill Retaba. We're more or less okay with that (sorry!) because of the whole 'not dying of exposure' thing.
Then Mojo gets in touch with me and says that he's been told that Smoove is a seered mafia (I now know that it was SLyM via inantp, but at the time it was just something Mojo had heard). Nevertheless, it made sense (and had the seer imprimatur) so we rolled with it. The plan was to guard-kill Smoove now. He was guarding, though, and we weren't sure if he'd agree to drop his guard, so our backup plan was to just all send in orders to exclude him from the cabin. Figured it was a long shot, and he was probably element-immune, but maybe he'd get eaten by a bear or something. Smoove ended up not using his guard (so he could kill, although we didn't know that they were mutually exclusive powers at the time and so Mojo was sweet-talking him into saving his guard for tomorrow) and the guard-kill happened. My job, as I'd guarded the night before, was merely to stay out of the way and not screw up.
Glad it didn't come to that.
At one point there was this really surreal multi-level conversation going on where:
-all four of us were shooting the shit in the cabin
-smoove, mojo and I were 'plotting' to kill Retaba
-and Mojo and I (and presumably Retaba and Mojo in another conversation) were plotting to kill Smoove.
All at the same time. I was terrified that I was going to respond to the wrong pm chain and give everything away.
No proboards for the stabbin cabin, unfortunately.
Thoughts: Really enjoyed the soft networking element of this game. It was a lot of fun. Inantp's commitment to that growling role was admirable. Rend deals: don't take 'em. The mafia had a tough road to walk after night one, and they did a really good job of working their way back. Good game, all.
Yay team blood death! I am excited that two of our members hooked up with a ghost and then killed all skinchanging demons. I'm sad that I got killed so early, I really loved the mechanics of this game.
I was confused about why the mafia made a narration about INANTP, which basically publicly confirmed him, at least as not mafia. Not only that, but the narrations and the OP really made it clear that there was only one threat, so the SK implication seemed really unlikely.
Getting hit with two losses on the first day is rough, but I think this game was pretty well balanced. Two things I noticed that might have needed some sort of tweak (but I actually don't know how to fix):
a) the everyone can guard/vig mechanic was interesting, but was actually only really used for vigging and denying certain targets to the mafia in the game. Since players could form their own cabins, the mafia was certainly going to have at least one person in at least 4 cabins right off the bat. That meant that they knew who was guarding, and how many people were guarding. So there were no guards at the beginning of the game, and towards the end of the game, so many people were tired/sick that the mafia didn't really need to know who was guarding or how many either. Basically, the time that you would need a skillful guard (at the end) was hindered by the mechanics, and the time when you had the ability, the mafia was going to easily counter.
Now, it did hinder the mafia in that they couldn't wholesale slaughter the village in one night, and it made them have to choose different targets than they might have liked, which worked well. But when you're talking about giving players the ability to block attacks, it can be kind of a letdown when it is proven that you actually will not be blocking any mafia attacks during the game, just mitigating them somewhat.
That said, I'm not really sure how to fix it without unbalancing other parts of the game, it was just something I was thinking about once I was out.
b) I forget the other thing, I'll probably remember when I am in my meeting today.
I thought it was weird that I got killed on day 2, when I was so wrong about barons.
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AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
I was not able to play as much day 1 and 2 as I would have liked, and it sucked we were down 2 to start. Of three others in our cabin, we choose you Langly, because you had successfully called one kill last night and the village seemed to be listening to you.
Ah well, good call on the cabin switching INANTP, I had no idea why I died, but I see you guys played it well.
Also, having not one, but two members of the mafia make Rend Deals with the vig is silly. If I would have known that, I WOULD have just told Team Blood Death Cabin, given we had no chance to win.
It was amusing watching you all vote out your vig, however.
Village, you should be chastised for just going "rysk says he rend dealed, and rend is probably bad? Well of course I will vote for rend, considering that if there was a rend deal in place, rysk would absolutely know one way or the other"
Rend, you bank too much on people listening to you just because you are rend. Nothing was prohibiting you from saying I am the vig dudes do not vote me out.
If the mafia wasn't already fucked with smoove being seered and the early hits they took, you would have seriously fucked the village by just vaguely going ehhhhhhh vote for the other guy maybe.
Ok I see how it happened now. Sad because I think smoove may have had a chance to dupe you all.
Guys, the one conversation you can't see right now is the PM for cabin monocle that went sort of like this after Assuran died:
Rysk: I'm going to confess to the thread and call GG
Rend and jdark: don't do that it wouldn't be fun
Rysk: ok; LET'S DANCE
Did you guys have more fun than the game ending on day 4 because of an an aberration of a Renddeal? Those were the alternatives. I'm asking honestly because you know what my opinion is now.
Langly, you can't blame the village for voting out Rend. It was clear that one of them was mafia, the question was, which one.
Rend phrased all of his statements so that even if he were a mafia, he technically wasn't lying, which, given your reputation as never lying, implicated him in my book more than Rysk.
Rysk was doing the same thing, but in his case it was clear that it was a restriction of the deal, and not his general playstyle.
Not that I think we would have won (especially since I had been seered), but how was I guard vigged? Our role PM doesn't suggest that we can't be a guard, only that we have an effective guard strength of 0. It was my understanding that Mojo and I were both guarding last night, with a combined effective guard of 1. And I got guard-vigged while on guard?
Again, I don't think it would have mattered in the end with the seering, but did I miss something?
Also, this was a great game Saber, I feel kind of bad that several factors ended up making this a rather 1 sided victory from the mafia standpoint:
1) An anomalous RendDeal put 2 mafia, the village vig, and a super-guard in the same cabin all staring at each other awkwardly.
2) 2 mafia died day 1, exacerbating the first problem AND limiting the mafia's kill power significantly
3) 2 out of 3 of the remaining mafia (Assuran and I) suffered from debilitating "real life" and made the mafia boards a pretty quiet place devoid of any real strategy going on.
@Mr.MojoRisen and @GrimmyTOA,
Ha! I respect well placed machinations. Being killed in a writhing orgy of lies and secrets is the BEST phalla death.
Alright! It's been a really interesting 5 days for me.
First off, thanks to everyone for playing and trusting a first time phalla host. My number one goal was for everyone to have some fun, so I hope you all enjoyed the grouping/guarding/killing.
I'm very curious to know what everyone thought of the guarding/team mechanic. Was it fun? Would you want to play in another phalla with it? Was it too much? Did it feel like it didn't do anything? From a mechanics perspective, I thought it was cool, but I'd like to know how it worked for everyone in practice.
I think phalla design is also fairly cool. I realize that other people might not If you're interested, my initial thoughts on Camp Phalla Lake are spoilered.
The biggest influence on this game was ObiFett's Star Wars Phalla (not coincidentally, the first phalla I played).
I really enjoyed everyone having something to do every day, the soft networking that happened, and the general lack of seering. I also found that having a secondary mechanic for people to discuss, analyze and strategize about on day 1 is important. I wanted to ensure that secondary mechanic could also be used to hunt down mafia, especially with several days of information.
At it's heart, I wanted Camp Phalla Lake to be about information and how much to share. The mafia is a tad under-powered compared to the village. The only abilities they have are their kills (which are not guaranteed) and their guard-block poison. The village has a seer, vig and busdriver; not to mention all of the vanillager guards/vigs.
Both the seer and the vig are designed to be very fragile. The seer can't guard, and is at the mercy of the guard vig unless he reveals. The vig can't guard or be guarded when using his ability. The busdriver is limited in the targets he can busdrive to, meaning he needs to think and be careful with his ability or it will fail.
The mafia on the other hand should have lots of information. They can infiltrate cabins and know who is guarding. Any public cabin information in the thread will also help them. The more they know, the more they can optimize their attacks and get more kills. The potential to get 5 kills per night is very strong. Even the difference between 2 kills and 3 kills (which boils down to knowing whether a group has 1 guard or 2 on a given night) can be huge in a 28 person game.
The mafia can also mess with cabins and arrangements with their poison. If they know who is planning to guard the next night, they can stop it. If they haven't infiltrated a cabin, they can disband it for a night by just poisoning everyone. On the other hand, the poison can also be used to confirm villagers. If they mafia doesn't also claim to get poisoned , they may find themselves accidentally confirming a bunch of people.
Overall, I've tried to give every ability an inherent use and drawback. Getting organized means the vanillager guards will be useful, but also allows the mafia to use their kills efficiently. Being alone means you don't need to fear a guard vig, but you might randomly die.
As a first time host, this has also been a great learning experience for me. For other newbie hosts in the future, a few things I've learned:
1.) If you have a role with multiple abilities, bullet them out in your PM/Rules
2.) Make sure you are VERY specific with what you want/expect to see in your orders.
3.) Even if you've thought about clarifications before hand, try to tighten them up so they are easy to explain. Especially if there's some sort of conflict resolution, get the process to do it as streamlined as possible.
4.) Always, always, ALWAYS perform your own vote count.
Finally, some game time thoughts:
Day 1
- The day 0 rend deal in monocle cabin was always going to be a problem. Especially when two of the mafia who weren't involved died day 1. Moral: Rend dealing in non-faction games (particularly on day 0) probaly won't get you where you want to go.
- The mafia really needed to do their own vote counting. A vote switch got missed in the running tally, which made it inaccurate (especially with who was in the lead) for most of the day.
- I really enjoyed the RPing. Sir Fab's comic was a highlight.
Day 2
- Retaba begins his sojourn in the woods. I keep trying to kill him, but the dice don't let me.
- I was really impressed with all of the theories around the poison/sickness. While the reality was much more boring (it was a mafia ability that could only target someone once per game), I really enjoyed the paranoia around PM's
Day 3
- The mafia's going after INANTP with the narration ended up backfiring, as it caused the network to suspect and kill Assuran (under the impression that he had tried to vig INANTP and failed).
- I definitely needed a more stringent inactive policy. I had hoped that the exposure would take care of things, but with how I ended up handling teams, it wasn't as strong as I had hoped.
Not that I think we would have won (especially since I had been seered), but how was I guard vigged? Our role PM doesn't suggest that we can't be a guard, only that we have an effective guard strength of 0. It was my understanding that Mojo and I were both guarding last night, with a combined effective guard of 1. And I got guard-vigged while on guard?
I didn't do a great job of describing what happened when the mafia said they were guarding. As I was developing the game, it went through a lot of different configurations. I finally decided on allowing you to say you were guarding whenever you wanted, but just having it not do anything.
Unfortunately, I don't think I updated the writing in your PM well enough to really communicate that. My intention was never that you could nullify a guard vig or mess up a team by claiming to guard. REG had asked a similar question a few days before on the guard vig, and when you asked last night I realized the role PM really wasn't clear. I tried to let you know with the clarification, but I also had some real life and just got back to you a bit late.
I'm very curious to know what everyone thought of the guarding/team mechanic. Was it fun? Would you want to play in another phalla with it? Was it too much? Did it feel like it didn't do anything? From a mechanics perspective, I thought it was cool, but I'd like to know how it worked for everyone in practice.
I wouldn't make another game exactly like it, but I like games where everyone has something to do. Everyone doesn't need a completely unique ability, but just something across the board like you did here that makes everyone have a decision and action every day, it's nice. Having to team up was also cool, I enjoyed that.
I felt like it was useful to guard, even though I'm not sure if it ever "did" anything. But I felt like, as long as we were guarding, that would stop the mafia from being able to kill 5 people a night or whatever. Which more or less reflected the reality, so that's good!
4.) Always, always, ALWAYS perform your own vote count.
- The mafia really needed to do their own vote counting. A vote switch got missed in the running tally, which made it inaccurate (especially with who was in the lead) for most of the day.
Wait a tic. What / where / when?
Right here. You got Capfalcon's initial vote, but missed his change to stever.
Yup, thanks for running this Saber! I hope you had as much amusement with Monocle Cabin as we did.
Based on the narrations, I think he enjoyed everything to do with Monocles and your cabin :P.
Thanks for playing Kime! I'm glad you enjoyed.
There was actually a great piece of analysis in one of the PM's ( I can't find it at the moment or remember exactly who wrote it) that went:
There can't be an SK. Saber enjoys narrations way too much to not have hinted at it yet.
This comment was from INANTP to me. Also haha whee my assassination worked! Also, as you can all see, I had nothing to do with Alegis's death. I had fun with this game, the random death option from the exposure made things interesting. Sorry I wasn't all that soft-networking though it only came up in the end for me really.
My orders were last night was that I'm in the cabin with Mojo, Grimmy and Smoove and that I was going to guard and vig Smoove, I can see Mojo also did it so would Smoove have died with just Mojo?
My orders were last night was that I'm in the cabin with Mojo, Grimmy and Smoove and that I was going to guard and vig Smoove, I can see Mojo also did it so would Smoove have died with just Mojo?
No, you both needed to agree on someone to vig. Had one of you not put in orders to vig Smoove, he would have survived.
My orders were last night was that I'm in the cabin with Mojo, Grimmy and Smoove and that I was going to guard and vig Smoove, I can see Mojo also did it so would Smoove have died with just Mojo?
No, you both needed to agree on someone to vig. Had one of you not put in orders to vig Smoove, he would have survived.
...until tomorrow when I would've been voted out as seered mafia.
Not that I think we would have won (especially since I had been seered), but how was I guard vigged? Our role PM doesn't suggest that we can't be a guard, only that we have an effective guard strength of 0. It was my understanding that Mojo and I were both guarding last night, with a combined effective guard of 1. And I got guard-vigged while on guard?
I didn't do a great job of describing what happened when the mafia said they were guarding. As I was developing the game, it went through a lot of different configurations. I finally decided on allowing you to say you were guarding whenever you wanted, but just having it not do anything.
Unfortunately, I don't think I updated the writing in your PM well enough to really communicate that. My intention was never that you could nullify a guard vig or mess up a team by claiming to guard. REG had asked a similar question a few days before on the guard vig, and when you asked last night I realized the role PM really wasn't clear. I tried to let you know with the clarification, but I also had some real life and just got back to you a bit late.
What? You gave the village all guard and vig abilities and we had ZERO way to mitigate that? I still don't think I knew that at the end of the game and that is ridiculous lack of balance if so.
On a less critical note, I do think the game mechanics favored the village heavily. Some other restriction on the sickness was needed, because we were without people to use it on in the last day we had it, and technically we had to kill both people we COULD have poisoned on day 4. With all the vigs it would have made it dangerous for us to join cabins because they'd have a way to kill is without scrutiny.
@MrTLicious - I was not restricted in what I could say towards Rend in my attempt to get him voted out, but I played the "not lying" card as a sort of honorable combat attempt against him. His defense was...weaker than I expected. I didn't expect him to blatantly tell the truth, but you guys were so willing to kill him (based on a few votes from days prior and general suspiciousness) that I figured I won because I spoke first.
I hadn't considered the possibility of a seer even being in the game based on the mechanical setup. That's the thing that screwed us in the end.
What? You gave the village all guard and vig abilities and we had ZERO way to mitigate that? I still don't think I knew that at the end of the game and that is ridiculous lack of balance if so.
I hadn't considered the possibility of a seer even being in the game based on the mechanical setup. That's the thing that screwed us in the end.
True, but I gave you the ability to get 5 kills a night in a 28 person game (with the poison to help ensure that there would be unguarded teams), a weak vig (he couldn't be guarded if he killed AND his kill wouldn't be specified as village in the narration), a weak seer (he couldn't guard), the ability to kill whoever you wanted (there was no true guard, just ones you could go through) AND the ability to avoid the guard vig (by just not being on a team with villagers).
It's still eminently possible that things were unbalanced, but I tried to give the mafia tools to get where they needed to go.
Posts
This was a weird game for me, more thoughts tomorrow.
(I asked Retaba and Mojo to kill him)
so we got talked into assuran being mafia via me swapping cabins night 2 and egos being seered
and I was in contact with Rend..so that's how he died.
Until it comes out that he died some other way, putting you at number 1 on the list...
Well, it could have happened the exact way I described, so...
Twitch Stream
So here is what happened. Smoove joined our cabin on the second last night. Retaba on the last.
Smoove tries to convince me and Mojo (privately) that we should guard-kill Retaba. We're more or less okay with that (sorry!) because of the whole 'not dying of exposure' thing.
Then Mojo gets in touch with me and says that he's been told that Smoove is a seered mafia (I now know that it was SLyM via inantp, but at the time it was just something Mojo had heard). Nevertheless, it made sense (and had the seer imprimatur) so we rolled with it. The plan was to guard-kill Smoove now. He was guarding, though, and we weren't sure if he'd agree to drop his guard, so our backup plan was to just all send in orders to exclude him from the cabin. Figured it was a long shot, and he was probably element-immune, but maybe he'd get eaten by a bear or something. Smoove ended up not using his guard (so he could kill, although we didn't know that they were mutually exclusive powers at the time and so Mojo was sweet-talking him into saving his guard for tomorrow) and the guard-kill happened. My job, as I'd guarded the night before, was merely to stay out of the way and not screw up.
Glad it didn't come to that.
At one point there was this really surreal multi-level conversation going on where:
-all four of us were shooting the shit in the cabin
-smoove, mojo and I were 'plotting' to kill Retaba
-and Mojo and I (and presumably Retaba and Mojo in another conversation) were plotting to kill Smoove.
All at the same time. I was terrified that I was going to respond to the wrong pm chain and give everything away.
No proboards for the stabbin cabin, unfortunately.
Thoughts: Really enjoyed the soft networking element of this game. It was a lot of fun. Inantp's commitment to that growling role was admirable. Rend deals: don't take 'em. The mafia had a tough road to walk after night one, and they did a really good job of working their way back. Good game, all.
I was confused about why the mafia made a narration about INANTP, which basically publicly confirmed him, at least as not mafia. Not only that, but the narrations and the OP really made it clear that there was only one threat, so the SK implication seemed really unlikely.
Getting hit with two losses on the first day is rough, but I think this game was pretty well balanced. Two things I noticed that might have needed some sort of tweak (but I actually don't know how to fix):
a) the everyone can guard/vig mechanic was interesting, but was actually only really used for vigging and denying certain targets to the mafia in the game. Since players could form their own cabins, the mafia was certainly going to have at least one person in at least 4 cabins right off the bat. That meant that they knew who was guarding, and how many people were guarding. So there were no guards at the beginning of the game, and towards the end of the game, so many people were tired/sick that the mafia didn't really need to know who was guarding or how many either. Basically, the time that you would need a skillful guard (at the end) was hindered by the mechanics, and the time when you had the ability, the mafia was going to easily counter.
Now, it did hinder the mafia in that they couldn't wholesale slaughter the village in one night, and it made them have to choose different targets than they might have liked, which worked well. But when you're talking about giving players the ability to block attacks, it can be kind of a letdown when it is proven that you actually will not be blocking any mafia attacks during the game, just mitigating them somewhat.
That said, I'm not really sure how to fix it without unbalancing other parts of the game, it was just something I was thinking about once I was out.
b) I forget the other thing, I'll probably remember when I am in my meeting today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-28aExCW9co
Ah well, good call on the cabin switching INANTP, I had no idea why I died, but I see you guys played it well.
Also, having not one, but two members of the mafia make Rend Deals with the vig is silly. If I would have known that, I WOULD have just told Team Blood Death Cabin, given we had no chance to win.
It was amusing watching you all vote out your vig, however.
Village, you should be chastised for just going "rysk says he rend dealed, and rend is probably bad? Well of course I will vote for rend, considering that if there was a rend deal in place, rysk would absolutely know one way or the other"
Rend, you bank too much on people listening to you just because you are rend. Nothing was prohibiting you from saying I am the vig dudes do not vote me out.
You gave no reason other than ...don't?
Guys, the one conversation you can't see right now is the PM for cabin monocle that went sort of like this after Assuran died:
Rysk: I'm going to confess to the thread and call GG
Rend and jdark: don't do that it wouldn't be fun
Rysk: ok; LET'S DANCE
Did you guys have more fun than the game ending on day 4 because of an an aberration of a Renddeal? Those were the alternatives. I'm asking honestly because you know what my opinion is now.
Rend phrased all of his statements so that even if he were a mafia, he technically wasn't lying, which, given your reputation as never lying, implicated him in my book more than Rysk.
Rysk was doing the same thing, but in his case it was clear that it was a restriction of the deal, and not his general playstyle.
Not that I think we would have won (especially since I had been seered), but how was I guard vigged? Our role PM doesn't suggest that we can't be a guard, only that we have an effective guard strength of 0. It was my understanding that Mojo and I were both guarding last night, with a combined effective guard of 1. And I got guard-vigged while on guard?
Again, I don't think it would have mattered in the end with the seering, but did I miss something?
Also, this was a great game Saber, I feel kind of bad that several factors ended up making this a rather 1 sided victory from the mafia standpoint:
1) An anomalous RendDeal put 2 mafia, the village vig, and a super-guard in the same cabin all staring at each other awkwardly.
2) 2 mafia died day 1, exacerbating the first problem AND limiting the mafia's kill power significantly
3) 2 out of 3 of the remaining mafia (Assuran and I) suffered from debilitating "real life" and made the mafia boards a pretty quiet place devoid of any real strategy going on.
@Mr.MojoRisen and @GrimmyTOA,
Ha! I respect well placed machinations. Being killed in a writhing orgy of lies and secrets is the BEST phalla death.
_____________________________________________
HoTS: Schmutz#1686
Thanks for running, Saber! It was fun.
The roleplaying was hilarious, by the way. A++ would read again.
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
I look forward to your next game.
Almost nobody is left at camp but me. It's very quiet now. It's sad, but everyone gets quiet eventually.
Everyone but me.
I wonder where I shall go next. I wonder who I shall meet. I do hope they'd like to play for a while before they get quiet too.
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
First off, thanks to everyone for playing and trusting a first time phalla host. My number one goal was for everyone to have some fun, so I hope you all enjoyed the grouping/guarding/killing.
I'm very curious to know what everyone thought of the guarding/team mechanic. Was it fun? Would you want to play in another phalla with it? Was it too much? Did it feel like it didn't do anything? From a mechanics perspective, I thought it was cool, but I'd like to know how it worked for everyone in practice.
I think phalla design is also fairly cool. I realize that other people might not If you're interested, my initial thoughts on Camp Phalla Lake are spoilered.
I really enjoyed everyone having something to do every day, the soft networking that happened, and the general lack of seering. I also found that having a secondary mechanic for people to discuss, analyze and strategize about on day 1 is important. I wanted to ensure that secondary mechanic could also be used to hunt down mafia, especially with several days of information.
At it's heart, I wanted Camp Phalla Lake to be about information and how much to share. The mafia is a tad under-powered compared to the village. The only abilities they have are their kills (which are not guaranteed) and their guard-block poison. The village has a seer, vig and busdriver; not to mention all of the vanillager guards/vigs.
Both the seer and the vig are designed to be very fragile. The seer can't guard, and is at the mercy of the guard vig unless he reveals. The vig can't guard or be guarded when using his ability. The busdriver is limited in the targets he can busdrive to, meaning he needs to think and be careful with his ability or it will fail.
The mafia on the other hand should have lots of information. They can infiltrate cabins and know who is guarding. Any public cabin information in the thread will also help them. The more they know, the more they can optimize their attacks and get more kills. The potential to get 5 kills per night is very strong. Even the difference between 2 kills and 3 kills (which boils down to knowing whether a group has 1 guard or 2 on a given night) can be huge in a 28 person game.
The mafia can also mess with cabins and arrangements with their poison. If they know who is planning to guard the next night, they can stop it. If they haven't infiltrated a cabin, they can disband it for a night by just poisoning everyone. On the other hand, the poison can also be used to confirm villagers. If they mafia doesn't also claim to get poisoned , they may find themselves accidentally confirming a bunch of people.
Overall, I've tried to give every ability an inherent use and drawback. Getting organized means the vanillager guards will be useful, but also allows the mafia to use their kills efficiently. Being alone means you don't need to fear a guard vig, but you might randomly die.
As a first time host, this has also been a great learning experience for me. For other newbie hosts in the future, a few things I've learned:
1.) If you have a role with multiple abilities, bullet them out in your PM/Rules
2.) Make sure you are VERY specific with what you want/expect to see in your orders.
3.) Even if you've thought about clarifications before hand, try to tighten them up so they are easy to explain. Especially if there's some sort of conflict resolution, get the process to do it as streamlined as possible.
4.) Always, always, ALWAYS perform your own vote count.
Finally, some game time thoughts:
Day 1
- The day 0 rend deal in monocle cabin was always going to be a problem. Especially when two of the mafia who weren't involved died day 1. Moral: Rend dealing in non-faction games (particularly on day 0) probaly won't get you where you want to go.
- The mafia really needed to do their own vote counting. A vote switch got missed in the running tally, which made it inaccurate (especially with who was in the lead) for most of the day.
- I really enjoyed the RPing. Sir Fab's comic was a highlight.
Day 2
- Retaba begins his sojourn in the woods. I keep trying to kill him, but the dice don't let me.
- I was really impressed with all of the theories around the poison/sickness. While the reality was much more boring (it was a mafia ability that could only target someone once per game), I really enjoyed the paranoia around PM's
Day 3
- The mafia's going after INANTP with the narration ended up backfiring, as it caused the network to suspect and kill Assuran (under the impression that he had tried to vig INANTP and failed).
- I definitely needed a more stringent inactive policy. I had hoped that the exposure would take care of things, but with how I ended up handling teams, it wasn't as strong as I had hoped.
Based on the narrations, I think he enjoyed everything to do with Monocles and your cabin :P.
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
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I didn't do a great job of describing what happened when the mafia said they were guarding. As I was developing the game, it went through a lot of different configurations. I finally decided on allowing you to say you were guarding whenever you wanted, but just having it not do anything.
Unfortunately, I don't think I updated the writing in your PM well enough to really communicate that. My intention was never that you could nullify a guard vig or mess up a team by claiming to guard. REG had asked a similar question a few days before on the guard vig, and when you asked last night I realized the role PM really wasn't clear. I tried to let you know with the clarification, but I also had some real life and just got back to you a bit late.
Thanks for playing Kime! I'm glad you enjoyed.
There was actually a great piece of analysis in one of the PM's ( I can't find it at the moment or remember exactly who wrote it) that went:
I wouldn't make another game exactly like it, but I like games where everyone has something to do. Everyone doesn't need a completely unique ability, but just something across the board like you did here that makes everyone have a decision and action every day, it's nice. Having to team up was also cool, I enjoyed that.
I felt like it was useful to guard, even though I'm not sure if it ever "did" anything. But I felt like, as long as we were guarding, that would stop the mafia from being able to kill 5 people a night or whatever. Which more or less reflected the reality, so that's good!
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
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Right here. You got Capfalcon's initial vote, but missed his change to stever.
This comment was from INANTP to me. Also haha whee my assassination worked! Also, as you can all see, I had nothing to do with Alegis's death. I had fun with this game, the random death option from the exposure made things interesting. Sorry I wasn't all that soft-networking though it only came up in the end for me really.
No, you both needed to agree on someone to vig. Had one of you not put in orders to vig Smoove, he would have survived.
...until tomorrow when I would've been voted out as seered mafia.
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HoTS: Schmutz#1686
What? You gave the village all guard and vig abilities and we had ZERO way to mitigate that? I still don't think I knew that at the end of the game and that is ridiculous lack of balance if so.
On a less critical note, I do think the game mechanics favored the village heavily. Some other restriction on the sickness was needed, because we were without people to use it on in the last day we had it, and technically we had to kill both people we COULD have poisoned on day 4. With all the vigs it would have made it dangerous for us to join cabins because they'd have a way to kill is without scrutiny.
@MrTLicious - I was not restricted in what I could say towards Rend in my attempt to get him voted out, but I played the "not lying" card as a sort of honorable combat attempt against him. His defense was...weaker than I expected. I didn't expect him to blatantly tell the truth, but you guys were so willing to kill him (based on a few votes from days prior and general suspiciousness) that I figured I won because I spoke first.
I hadn't considered the possibility of a seer even being in the game based on the mechanical setup. That's the thing that screwed us in the end.
True, but I gave you the ability to get 5 kills a night in a 28 person game (with the poison to help ensure that there would be unguarded teams), a weak vig (he couldn't be guarded if he killed AND his kill wouldn't be specified as village in the narration), a weak seer (he couldn't guard), the ability to kill whoever you wanted (there was no true guard, just ones you could go through) AND the ability to avoid the guard vig (by just not being on a team with villagers).
It's still eminently possible that things were unbalanced, but I tried to give the mafia tools to get where they needed to go.