Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[mightymushroom]

My sincere apologies everyone.

It wasn't any one thing, but one too many things.

The shields could be worked around, but they really do slow down the rate of deaths compared to the rate of power growth.

Then the number of watches in the night comes into play.
Then the number of potential resurrections.

I could still access my partners' night actions. But I didn't have their votes and their arguments in the day. It wasn't realistic to think I could shift enough town far enough for long enough, rather I would have to ride the currents and pray there was always some excuse for why I didn't do what I was supposed to do in the night – super difficult if enough people followed the town 'prescription' and leveled in either surveyor or monk.

I didn't want to concede, but it feels to me about equally unfair to make you go through the motions.

[notquitethere]

No hard feelings. It was a tough spot to be in: 2/3rds of the scum team retreating on D1 is pretty unprecedented, and it required a cohesive and crafty scum team to create the wifom and co-ordinate the actions needed to navigate this setup, especially when you were already the #1 suspects:

mightymushroom we don't know
TricMagic we don't know
Egan BW we don't know

I popped mightymushroom, TricMagic, and Egan BW out of the list and reconnected everyone. Does this look good to everyone?

If we eliminate one of these three then there's no changes to make. If we eliminate someone else we can make the changes beforehand.

I still think this iteration of CYOM has a lot of promise and if there's interest I'll look to run again later in the year. Maybe even go back to having two mafia teams.

[ToonyMan]

I was exaggerating The Plan to scare scum.

Assuming Egan and Tric didn't abandon their homie Mightmushroom you could have:

1. Have Egan and Tric play along, maybe have one claim Magnetic like Web.
2. Have MM honestly claim they're Corrupt with a Vile skill.

At best The Plan would MAYBE catch one scum. It was going to be impossible to herd town myself after Day 1.

[mightymushroom]

I wasn't afraid of The Plan multiple nights -- the biggest flaw would always be human nature, the cooperation would break down.

I was afraid of the math behind the shields. Shield protection cuts the maximum rate of death down to something nearer 1.5/cycle than the standard 2.
This in turn changes the balance of how town outnumbers the scum -- town's primary advantage.

Then you add on role madness powers to the number advantage. Yeah, they would pick up flaws. But not everybody would have debilitating flaws. (Consider how few people were forced out of the daisy chain.) And there are strong counters for any one thing. But a crippled scum team can't perform enough counters to match every thing.

If we had played differently, would things be different? Sure. If the team hadn't broken up? Sure.
The hand that I had to play? Know when to fold 'em.

Egan must have dropped out by PM by the way, there was nothing in mafiachat either. Could be serious life stuff, I don't know.
And Tric was obviously dissatisfied, says he would have quit over the shield passing even as Town.

2. Have MM honestly claim they're Corrupt with a Vile skill.

me: ...

Because I have one of the flaws that forces you to use actions and an action that matches it. I'd rather not say which, but even being forced into claiming this much really narrows the possibilities, doesn't it?

There is one verifiable action I could do tonight. The verifiable effect will be too late for tomorrow's discussion however.

That would be Assassin: Frame.
Nirur Torir found a way to force me into self-confirming anyway.

[Caz]

An organised town is anathema for mafia

Tbh I think the ability to choose any lvl1 ability without getting additional flaws is kinda overpowered. Maybe choosing a new skill tree should cost you a flaw or something.

[ToonyMan]

I don't know why Egan quit so I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Tric is completely bullshiting, they would have kept playing as town 100%, most likely ignoring the plan and doing their own thing.

I do feel bad for MM here, if I was mafia I would be pissed if my partners gave up.

[webadict]

I do not fault the scumteam for that.

I think, NQT, there are a few changes that would make this better:

First, don't let people use new abilities the Night they get them. That definitely leads to drawn out games. It's an awful choice, because you always want ties to go to the attacker.
Second, to build on top of that, change the rules so that the Mafiakill can be done in addition to their normal ability.
Third, order some abilities. Make Shields a later priority than kills, so they're a reactionary ability, not a defensive and reactionary ability. Knowing you have a shield isn't super bad, but combining this with Mafiakilling make it not bad.
Fourth, add more professions that are helpful counterparts to the Mafia. If there's a confirmable part of one profession, have a profession that counters it 1 level earlier.
Fifth, give Mafia an additional profession/level of their choice on N0. Since they were setup for a potential Town pick, it's not really worth giving them equal ground here.

I think those changes will fix a lot of the issues.

[mightymushroom]

Tbh I think the ability to choose any lvl1 ability without getting additional flaws is kinda overpowered.

This.

If not a flaw, then maybe something like an XP system where you have to level 2 your existing abilities before taking another profession?
People who want a flaw-free strategy can still do it, but it doesn't let people switch to something easier D1.

I know the premise is Choose Your Own, but it's hard to balance everybody having the exact same thing early as we saw.

[notquitethere]

These are some reasonable suggestions, I'll have a think about it. Either delaying the purchase of powers until the end of the night, or giving flaws for switching profession trees could work here, though as ever part of the design is to allow players a great amount of choice each night.

I like the idea of giving mafia additional professions and letting them use the mafiakill for free. That stops some of the less interesting town confirmation-strategies.

Given the small number of nights in typical mafia games (there might have been just 5 or 6 if this game went to lylo), xp systems that are too restrictive just lock off options entirely.

Part of the point about the level 1 powers was they were mostly supposed to be quite underpowered so not necessarily worth switching to, though as we saw some (like sell shield) were more useful than others.

[Skynet]

Instead of conceding, I personally would have tried to get the Town to agree to a Draw.

Nothing compels the Mafia to use their Mafiakill or indeed do any action whatsoever. While The Plan stops the Mafia from killing, it also stops everyone else from killing as well (so you can't engage in vigilante actions against potential scum), and it doesn't help Town find scum (especially since Town loses a valuable source of information in the process - nightkills proves that someone is a pro-Townie player, which may be helpful for the surviving players who can re-read and take advantage of the pro-Townie's thought processes). So the game essentially devolves into Town trying to lynch person after person hoping to somehow stumble upon scum. It would be so much of a chore for Town that I think Town would be amendable to a compromise.

[TricMagic]

I'll note I either would have stopped engaging.(known commonly as lurking my way through.) And at the time, the latter wasn't going to happen. At which point, I'd die anyway. Shields for everyone is super demotivating and flaws for taking new skill trees would be a good balancing act and have people play with the cards dealt.

Seriously, it's depressing and I quit because it honestly wouldn't be any fun at all. If MM didn't have that particular flaw it would have been very different, as we could have gone with the plan. Ugh... I do not like it when an entire game turns out to be set to ultra-difficulty when you were expecting something else.


Ninja'd even in post-game chat. I'll take the money and leave thanks. That would have been a plan if I didn't burn out. But it would also be pointed out that lynching to confirm would become possible. And the only way to seem town is to take Surveyor to level 5, but MM would be forced to use Vile actions, and Egan left and would likely be first to go.. Just a long drawn out pain. Up till someone gets the bright idea to start dueling people with swords to speed things up.

[webadict]

Also, several Flaws are EXTREMELY horrible to have, and combining the random Profession with a random Flaw... Ow. My recommendation is that when you roll a Flaw, roll two and let the player pick OR make the Flaws more personalized to Professions.

Personally, I like the Flaws, but there are few choices you can make to use them! I want a Flaw that can be a boon if played correctly. Magnetic is a great flaw for a Doctor, for instance, but it makes a Mafia player unable to Mafiakill! If you want to make Magnetic still a Flaw but also workable, give me agency over when I self-target. Like, I self-target on even Nights, or I pick which Nights I self-target on.

I think Flaws, as they are, have a ton of space to grow in! Like, I want Flaws that I can pick myself! Here's some I thought of:

Polarized - Self targeted abilities can now onlt target other players.
From The Beyond - Pick an ability/profession you own. You can only use it while dead.
Fractured - When you use a targeted ability, pick two targets instead. Your abilities are delayed one Night.
Master of One - Pick a Profession you own. You can only choose to gain new Professions until Day 5. On Day 5, the chosen Profession becomes level 5.
Famous - Gain a new Profession. Abilities you choose from it and levels you gain in it always known. (Mafia only: You may fake abilities from this class, if you do not use the Mafiakill)

Stuff like that would be great, and make Flaws fun to have, instead of super debilitating!

[notquitethere]

Those are some good flaw ideas. The reason they're so debilitating is a reaction to how they were implemented under the point buy systems of earlier CYOMs: when players pick their flaws there are some flaws that they would never take and there are some flaws that are just benefits in disguise.

I like the idea of giving players a choice of two random flaws when they gain them, or tying flaw lists to profession types somehow, so there's more known risk (and the completely debilitating combos can be designed out). Giving players a pick of two random professions at game start would be quite nice too: basically the more informed choice the better while retaining enough randomness that there's a good deal of variation.

[Caz]

Also, several Flaws are EXTREMELY horrible to have

This is exactly why I chose Vulture.

I really like the idea of choosing between 2 randomised flaws and professions instead of it being totally random though.

[webadict]

Yep, I think Flaws can be good, but many of the current ones equate to "You can't do half of your things." I want Flaws that says things like "Your things have a twist that can be potentially helpful."

Here's some more ideas:
Short-sighted - Your untargeted abilities can ignore players of your choice. You can only target players adjacent to you on the scoreboard.
Doublecast - You can use two different abilities each Phase. Your abilities can only be used twice.