Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 ... 23 24 [25] 26

Author Topic: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]  (Read 21201 times)

Skynet

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]
« Reply #360 on: February 11, 2021, 07:47:13 pm »

I think it is safe to say that this setup was incredibly (and unintentionally) unbalanced in favor of the Resistance, and I accept full responsibility for that.

While I do plan on modding games in the future, I think that, from now on, I'm going to be using Open Setups (either ones that I have designed and gotten approval of on Bay12's "Mafia Setup Discussion and Review" thread, or ones that were previously run on Bay12 or on other forums). Doing so would mean that knowledge of the setup could be scrutinized beforehand with as many eyes as possible, allowing me to detect if a setup is imbalanced (and if so, if it is even possible to correct said imbalance). I admit that using Open Setups would reduce the "flavor" of the game, but the truth is that no amount of flavor can help salvage a rigged playing field.

---

I'll address some parts of the setup, though as noted above, the setup was not very good overall.

For the bodyguard role (which was essentially a Doctor that protects against kills and seduction attempts), that was also another mistake on my part. In the Role PM, I did not mention whether the player would know if their action has succeeded, and I didn't even consider thinking about it until the night. I decided not to let the player know whether their action has succeeded in stopping a kill/seduction attempts, since the Doctor page on mafiascum wiki suggested that the Doctor not know whether their action was successful. In retrospect, considering the anti-Town nature of this setup, I should have revealed whether you stopped a kill/seduction...since any information you would have gotten would have helped you out somehow.

Vector, as for your setup, I think it's an interesting idea and it would be cool if you decide to run it. I think there does need to be some way of dealing with the Seducer role though, if you even decide to keep that role. Keeping it seems somewhat necessary if we want to stick with the original premise of Sarah Connor being seduced instead of terminated. But maybe the original premise wasn't so well-thought-out to begin with. One idea could be to replace a Seducer with a "Cupid role" who can turn two players into lovers, and who wins if they pair the Serial Killer with a Townie...but while this reduces the risk for the player for a mis-seduction attempt, it still relies on the player finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. So I don't really know what would be the best option.

The "Hybrid-Aligned" faction also had only one player because I wanted to distinguish between the Eco Party and the Hybrids - that's actually why you're a Double Voter, to equal the number of votes the Eco Party had at first. I (foolishly) thought the Eco Party was in a stronger position because it's easier to kill someone via a lynch instead of hoping for a successful seduction attempt...not realizing that the "don't lynch Sarah Connor" people would actually outvote the Eco Party. There is also a "Skynet-Aligned" player as well in the setup (FallacyOfUrist, the Survivor), so a person could be aligned only to themselves.

When designing the setup, I didn't think about giving the Serial Killer multiple actions (like, both a kill and a roleblock). Had I have done so, and left Sarah Connor alone as a SK without any Kyle Reese helping her, maybe this could have salvaged the setting. Or, alternatively, only have Sarah Connor as the SK with no roleblock because the town is so divided that she doesn't even need it. Certainly something to think about for someone else wanting to try their hands on this setting.

I'm happy to answer any other questions about the setup, but I know it's broken, and I am definitely treating this as a learning experience for next time. I hope people did have fun with this setup, even despite its broken nature.
Logged

Superdorf

  • Bay Watcher
  • Soothly we live in mighty years!
    • View Profile
Re: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]
« Reply #361 on: February 11, 2021, 07:50:18 pm »

I had a blast, but that's probably to be expected  :P
Logged
Falling angel met the rising ape, and the sound it made was

klonk
tormenting the player is important
Sigtext

Skynet

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]
« Reply #362 on: February 11, 2021, 07:59:34 pm »

Quicktopics
Resistance
Dead Chat

Resistance-Aligned
Spoiler: "notquitethere" (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: "Superdorf" (click to show/hide)

Eco Party-Aligned
Spoiler: "Caz" (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: "webadict" (click to show/hide)
Logged

Skynet

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]
« Reply #363 on: February 11, 2021, 08:00:21 pm »

Hybrid-Aligned
Spoiler: "Vector" (click to show/hide)

Skynet-Aligned
Spoiler: "FallacyofUrist" (click to show/hide)

Terminator-Aligned
Spoiler: "LuckyOwl" (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: "Secretdorf" (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: "TricMagic" (click to show/hide)
Logged

FallacyofUrist

  • Bay Watcher
  • Blatant furry. Also a hypnotist.
    • View Profile
Re: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]
« Reply #364 on: February 11, 2021, 08:07:52 pm »

The best part was definitely the flavor, though. You put a lot of detail into it. That'll serve you well in any future games you run.
Logged
FoU has some twisted role ideas. Screw second-guessing this mechanical garbage spaghetti, I'm basing everything on reads and visible daytime behaviour.

Would you like to play a game of Mafia? The subforum is always open to new players.

Superdorf

  • Bay Watcher
  • Soothly we live in mighty years!
    • View Profile
Re: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]
« Reply #365 on: February 11, 2021, 08:10:59 pm »

No kidding O_o
Logged
Falling angel met the rising ape, and the sound it made was

klonk
tormenting the player is important
Sigtext

Skynet

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]
« Reply #366 on: February 11, 2021, 08:12:03 pm »

Night Actions
- Night 1:
* Superdorf roleblocks TricMagic. (TricMagic, being a vanilla townie, had no power to speak of.)
* webadict protects Secretdorf from kills and seduction.
* FallacyOfUrist uses surveillance on Superdorf. FallacyOfUrist finds out that nobody visited Superdorf.
* Caz investigates TricMagic and found them to be Machine.
* notquitethere kills Caz.
* Vector tries to seduce Secretdorf, but fails due to webadict's protection.

- Night 2:
* Superdorf roleblocks Vector.
* webadict does nothing.
* FallacyOfUrist uses surveillance on webadict. FallacyOfUrist finds finds that nobody visited webadict.
* notquitethere kills FallacyOfUrist.
* Vector tries to seduce Secretdorf, but fails due to Superdorf's roleblock.

***

Yeah, I'm pretty proud of the flavor that I written. In any future Open Setup game, I'll make sure to make sure to add tons of flavor to it.
Logged

webadict

  • Bay Watcher
  • Former King of the Mafia
    • View Profile
Re: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]
« Reply #367 on: February 11, 2021, 08:19:20 pm »

Besides the unbalanced part of it, things that would help you out for balancing would be the following:
- Treating the lynch as a shared resource between all factions. Thinking of it as a Town-only resource will leave you in a bad position for balancing. More so if you start giving additional votes, because then the lynch becomes more of a power for anyone with vote powers.
- Vanilla Townies only have one resource, and that's the lynch. They should only lose that power by a lot of missteps.
- Always balance around your weakest role in terms of how much fun the game is gonna be, and always balance around your strongest role in terms of how unbalanced it's gonna be. Every role does not exist in a vacuum, and understanding how they interact is the most important skill to know. If you need help with that, play some quick thought games and see what happens with each role if they do XYZ. If you ever come across a specific scenario that's an utter catastrophe decide if the chance of it occurring is worth fixing it.
- I actually have no problem with not getting information from certain actions. However, if that's the case, avoid saying that nothing was accomplished in the flavortext or give an additional non-flavored acknowledgement. That can be very confusing. My suggestion is to have flavor that accomplishes their intended action indirectly instead of directly. (In my case, I could set up a hologram of the player somewhere to obfuscate their location.)
- A Town faction that's broken can work, but you should treat the broken factions as their own types of scum. By that logic, your factions look like 4(3+1)v5(3+2)v2v1. 4:2 and 5:2 is not a very balanced ratio for either Town. That's why having 4+ more Townies would make it a semi-balanced game.
- Survivors are essentially anti-Town. You can typically count them as half of a Mafia, though, at the same time, you can also count them as a half of a Townie.
- For a change to the Seducer, having their target die when they die (and not vice-versa) would have made missing okay. It also would be a way to use their powers for good. But, the Seducer does has multiple benefits over the Eco-Party in that all of their power is in one player.
- In addition to the last point, having huge consequences for missing can be okay for abilities that give huge upsides. They should not be used for actions that are necessary for winning by the role's design. An example of this is Vigilante, a role with a huge upside if it hits, and huge consequences if it misses, but its win condition doesn't necessarily rely on using its ability unless the game has gotten so bad that they have to.
Logged

webadict

  • Bay Watcher
  • Former King of the Mafia
    • View Profile
Re: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]
« Reply #368 on: February 11, 2021, 08:31:41 pm »

Also, the flavor was quite good. There was just a lot of it to take in at once. The one downside to this, of course, is that knowing Terminator lore would also have made this game more doable. If that's the case, having breadcrumbs to help deduce hidden teammates (Like Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese both being in the game and aligned) would be a great use of opening flavor.
Logged

ToonyMan

  • Bay Watcher
  • Danger Magnet
    • View Profile
Re: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]
« Reply #369 on: February 11, 2021, 08:34:29 pm »

The one downside to this, of course, is that knowing Terminator lore would also have made this game more doable. If that's the case, having breadcrumbs to help deduce hidden teammates (Like Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese both being in the game and aligned) would be a great use of opening flavor.
Spoiler: Yep (click to show/hide)

Crazy amount of flavor.
Logged

Secretdorf

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]
« Reply #370 on: February 11, 2021, 09:29:06 pm »

So I have been wondering all game, wtf is the deal with hammers? And now I got the answer. Vector, you told us there were three on each team. And webadict when I was telling you to claim why didn't you tell us you were eco party?

NQT and superdorf, you did a good job looking town. Funny I was thinking you two were town though I had lingering suspicions of superdorf.
The flavor was very good, skynet. And I was really enjoying the game thinking I was going to win. Some other time then.
Logged

Vector

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]
« Reply #371 on: February 11, 2021, 10:12:49 pm »

Vector, you told us there were three on each team.

Yeah, and I stuck with it despite knowing I was wrong because I wanted town to focus on getting rid of the ecofash faction and for scum to think I had potentially already lost.
Logged
"The question of the usefulness of poetry arises only in periods of its decline, while in periods of its flowering, no one doubts its total uselessness." - Boris Pasternak

nonbinary/genderfluid/genderqueer renegade mathematician and mafia subforum limpet. please avoid quoting me.

pronouns: prefer neutral ones, others are fine. height: 5'3".

Skynet

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]
« Reply #372 on: February 11, 2021, 11:29:56 pm »

Besides the unbalanced part of it, things that would help you out for balancing would be the following:
Thanks for the advice, webadict. :) I'll definitely keep them in mind for any future games I mod.
Logged

SHAD0Wdump

  • Bay Watcher
  • Hiding in SPAAACE!!!
    • View Profile
Re: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]
« Reply #373 on: February 12, 2021, 12:28:52 am »

Honestly, if I would have done a terminator themed mafia game, I would be heavily inclined to bastard mod it, have Sarah a sort of 'survivor' with Arnold tasked with protecting her.

 Sarah would have effectively no information, arnold would have shit-tons of power for protecting her day or night and know who she is, and everyone else would be terminators with stuff like inspects and/or kills.

 And I'm fully prepared to have that idea picked apart, kinda curious what problems that would have.
Logged

webadict

  • Bay Watcher
  • Former King of the Mafia
    • View Profile
Re: Skynet's Seduction [Resistance Victory]
« Reply #374 on: February 12, 2021, 12:54:02 am »

So I have been wondering all game, wtf is the deal with hammers? And now I got the answer. Vector, you told us there were three on each team. And webadict when I was telling you to claim why didn't you tell us you were eco party?
Because it wouldn't've changed anything. It would only paint a target on my back.
Logged
Pages: 1 ... 23 24 [25] 26