Didn't expect that the town wouldn't have a Doctor. The game lay out seemed pretty pro mafia, even with town catching on pretty quickly that Wolfpacks was insane. Good game though

Very interesting game and a lot of fun to watch for me!

 

 

Here are a few of my thoughts and notes about the game:

 

-The original mafia team only consisted of three players (KevinH, Yehom, Mazuurek/iSocialism).

-They were not given safe-claims and were all dementors in flavor.

-Wolfpacks was indeed an Insane Cop. I thought that it would be an interesting twist to the game, especially when combined with possible framer results.

-Even though Wolfpacks was insane, the town picked up on it reasonably quickly when Ali was lynched. It was pretty crazy that Wolfpacks managed to investigate three mafia members in the first four nights.

-It was interesting to see how the mafia game plan changed when they discovered Wolfpacks sanity.

-Rhizoctonia was a member of the mafia but he was a Mafia Traitor/Framer. The scum team did NOT know of his existence until the first mafia member (KevinH) was killed. At that point he was recruited into the main mafia faction.

-The scum team was convinced that Rhizo was a serial killer up until the point that Kevin was lynched. They kept him alive hoping that he would help take out the town when he realized that his investigation result came up the same as Kevin's and Yehom's when investigated by Wolfpacks.

-I thought that the game was definitely over when the town laid out the plan to lynch Kevin, then lynch Yehom, and then lynch Rhizoctonia all on consecutive nights. Following that plan would have only left iSoc alive and it would have been very difficult for him to be the last man standing.

-D34THBR1NG3R received two different results from me for his tracker actions. His results were as follows:

 

Night 1: Tracked KevinH - "Did not see anything" - Didn't see KevinH perform the kill because he was a Ninja.

Night 2: Tracked King Hitler - "Did not see anything" - Didn't see anything because he had no night action.

Night 3: Tracked Yehom - "Did not see anything" - Didn't see anything because Yehom was a Godfather and didn't perform a night action.

Night 4: Didn't use his action.

Night 5: Tracked Sister Midnight - "No Result" - He received a "No Result" return because he was role-blocked by iSocialism.

Night 6: Tracked iSocialism - "No Result" - He received a "No Result" return because he was role-blocked by iSocialism.

 

The town wrote off the discrepancy in his results but these two results that he received were intentional and did not mean the same thing. He received "No Result" returns the last two nights because he had an investigative role and was roleblocked. From the mafiawiki entry about the Roleblocker: "Any role that receives results (such as Tracker or Watcher)
but is blocked should receive a "no result" message, rather than told their target didn't go anywhere or nobody visited their target." Realizing this discrepancy could have clued the town into a Roleblocker's existence.

 

-The demise of the town was Wolfpacks final two investigation results:

• Night 5 was the turning point in the game. After being recruited into the main mafia faction, Rhizo framed his scum buddy iSoc. This was the same night that Wolfpacks investigated iSoc. This resulted in Wolfpacks receiving a "guilty" result on iSoc which actually meant "not-guilty" given Wolfpacks' insanity. This result "cleared" iSoc and would at least keep him safe for awhile.
• Night 6 Wolfpacks investigated King Hitler who was also framed by iSoc. This resulted in Wolfpacks getting a "not guilty" result which actually meant "guilty" with Wolfpacks' insanity. This led to Wolfpacks choosing to vote for King Hitler (instead of the long known scum Rhizo) during the day. iSoc and Rhizo promptly jumped on the wagon and hammered King Hitler, ending the game.

 

 

Overall, I was shocked by the outcome honestly. The mafia had a very small chance to win once KevinH, Yehom, and Rhizo all investigated as scum. They literally needed everything to go exactly right the rest of the game from that point and it did. If Rhizo would have been voted for instead of King Hitler, only iSoc would have remained. Another townie may have been lynched before him, but I'm not sure that he wouldn't have been caught anyway.

 

For those who are interested, here is the mafia chat: https://www.quicktopic.com/52/H/XdvdFHRmXPh

Didn't expect that the town wouldn't have a Doctor. The game lay out seemed pretty pro mafia, even with town catching on pretty quickly that Wolfpacks was insane. Good game though

There were certainly a lot of twists present in the game but I wouldn't say that it was pro-mafia honestly. The scum team only started out with three actual teammates (18.75% players). This was fewer members then a normal game. Of course Rhizo was really a mafia member as well but the scum team did not know of his existence. You could have just as easily targeted him for the night kill and killed him before he could really help in any way.

 

The town also had 6 power roles compared to the 3 (4 if you count Rhizo) that the mafia had. Perhaps the biggest blow that the town faced was losing Lyner (3-shot Role Cop) on night 1. Had Lyner survived the night the town probably would not have ever lynched ABT. Lyner investigated ABT on night 1 and learned that he was a vanilla townie. If Lyner had survived he would have been able to contradict Wolfpacks' result on ABT which could have saved him from a lynch AND clued the town in to Wolfpacks sanity (or insanity) much sooner.

 

Another thing that was in the town's favor was that the mafia did not receive safe-claims.

I do agree that killing Lyner was a huge blow to town that early and honestly just a very lucky kill on our part. I suppose the game would have gone very differently if we didn't kill Lyner right away. On the counting of PR town versus mafia, mafia had a Ninja to counteract the Tracker and Follower, Godfather to counter the Cop, Roleblocker and a Traitor Framer, so the roles were balanced but slightly pro-mafia, if you ask me, as town had no protection expect for the Bodyguard who also got lynched pretty quickly. Rhizo though came in at the absolute best time possible so I guess timing and luck did make the game a lot easier for us. If Rhizo turned out to be any other sort Traitor, we would have lost. The Framer strategy was our saving grace after we found out that Rhizo wasn't a SK. Also every piece of the puzzle had to fall perfectly for us to win by my calculations, because I was sure that it would be Wolfpacks, iSoc and SGB would be the 3 last men standing. 

I had pretty much chalked this up to the loss column after the failed attempt to lynch Mandarijn happened, and Kevin was lynched.  All 4 of the scum were on the Mandarijn wagon, and up to that point I had sold myself pretty well as a town.  I believe the vote was 3-3 before I voted Mandarijn, and I sat for awhile trying to figure out what I was going to do.  Jumping on Mandarijn would likely seal our fate if we didn't get him lynched, however had Kevin been lynched, it would likely push the idea very highly that WP was insane.  Not only that, but at the time, people were pretty sold Yehom and Isocialism was likely scum...and being a traitor, I didn't know if it ended up where all 3 of my other scum got killed if then we couldn't do a night kill because I wasn't technically apart of it.  I only realized afterwards once Kevin was killed that I was "recruited" in and part of the scum.  The AbT lynch and the Mandarijn failed attempt were tough decisions for me to make, be it stay looking townish and vote a scum, or vote with scum fearing that if Kevin was voted off, I maybe soon after if they start believing WP is insane.

I'm honestly surprised that Scum felt I was a SK.  Mainly because there was a SK last game and be surprised if it was 2 games in a row, and the fact they only had 3 members of scum which normally with this size it would of been 4.  I thought they might of got that I was a traitor after I came up the same as Kevin.  

 

It was a tough role to play, trying to look town while also not trying to be killed at night by scum.  I tried to throw little shots and arguments at scum throughout in hopes they wouldn't kill me off in fear of being put in spotlight (before they found out I came up investigated the same as Kevin).  WP's results likely helped, as it kept my alive at night because they didn't want to kill me off and realize that WP was insane.  I also felt most of the game Yehom/Kevin seemed to come off to close together

Why on earth didn't you guys lynch Rhizo 1st?

Good game. It had a lot of twists.

I'm surprised I was lynched over the established plan but what happened has happened.

I still had my concerns Isocialism was scum and once SM was killed, I was sure there was something I was missing.

 

Now to read scum logs!

Also, wasn't it dead obvious why the scum kept you alive WP? Because they needed you, so they could frame someone... Why else would they still keep you around when we had 3 confirmed scums and you could confirm the 4th? You guys should've sticked to the game plan and lynched the 3 confirmed scums 1st...

Rhizo wasnt active and i didnt think there was a framer, we knew he was scum so i thought if we got rid of the other scum sbg we could just wrap it up by lynching Rhizo. Something in my gut said there could be a framer but once again i ignored it and the result showed i should trust my instincts more.

Also mafia (and I don't know how town thought about this) thought there was a Doctor still present in this game, so it's likely that Wolfpacks was going to get protection anyway, which means that killing random townies was a better strategy then taking a 50/50 on killing the (insane) Cop. The further we got into the game, the more plausible it was that there was no Doctor to protect him. 

I never thought there was a Doctor from the moment Ali posted the likely roles he thought were present in the game.

Good game.

I was impressed that Wolfpacks investigated so many scum so early.

He was insanely lucky!

Good game.

I was impressed that Wolfpacks investigated so many scum so early.

He was insanely lucky!

http://img.pandawhale.com/post-14251-Eddie-Murphy-I-see-what-you-di-PAQX.jpeg

I knew there was something odd about "No result" rather than "Did not see anything" 

 

Also: this is my second game where I was one of the last-standing town, I wonder if it's because I act so scummy that scum feel it's good to keep me around and get everyone sus.

Heh, I got killed early enough - I was debating a gambit of claiming my commuter on a night I DIDNT commute and then trying to lure scum into hitting me on a night I did commute afterward, but at that time I was pretty low on hours to spend reading and posting.

 

I had a strong suspicion Wolfpacks was a cop as of when I got killed - the way he kept coming back to Ali with seemingly no evidence made me think he was pushing without claiming, but I didn't want to say that aloud and out the potential cop.

 

From what I got to watch of this after I died, I was 50/50 on there still being a doctor - the bodyguard was a weak doctor substitute, and when Wolfpacks turned out to be insane then I felt having the bodyguard as a 'backup' doctor could be meant to compensate for that. I was thinking the scum might have had the same idea, since WP was left alive so long.

 

However I was not aware a Framer could make scum appear not-scum; per the mafiascum wiki it just makes anyone return a "mafia" result. They note there's a variant to make scum appear non-scum, the Tailor - but what we had was just a Framer. Obviously interpretation was up to TW, but being able to 'protect' themselves in that way is interesting.

http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Framer

 

Also curious about the last night where they got to use both roles *and* do the faction kill. In previous games the norm has been that scum chosen to do the night kill cannot also use their role unless that role modifies the kill like strongman or ninja. From the scum chat log, it seems Rhizo thought the same thing until TW said that they could do all three. Their initial plan of having iSoc kill SM while Rhizo targets SBG would have resulted in iSoc being seen by D34TH, in that case.

 

The scum definitely turned the game around using what tools they were given, but some of what I read in that last page of the scum chat log just feels off logisticially.

 

-Preston

 

 

I had pretty much chalked this up to the loss column after the failed attempt to lynch Mandarijn happened, and Kevin was lynched. All 4 of the scum were on the Mandarijn wagon

 

This. After that vote it was obvious who's who. If there was a scum voting along with Mandarijn all he needed to do was to switch his vote to end game. I can't believe you guys have lost it . 

I'd say this game actually leaned pro-mafia a bit.

- Town didn't felt more powerful. Sure they got one more role than usually but combined powers of those roles wasn't better: insane cop is inferior to standard cop and Bodyguard is poor mans Doctor. Mafia at the same time got 2 more roles than usually, albeit having a drawback of one of their own being hidden in the town-crowd

- Secondly with insane cop, godfather and framer on board there was so much misinformation that town was guaranteed to make a misslynch. I need to be honest - it's much more fun than standard thoughtless PR "fire and forget" action and big props for TW for trying it out. However this game has limited depth of play (measured by amount of possible misslynches) and by the time town realizes that cops results are almost "random" (there are to many unknown factors to create a pattern) it's over.

 

This is however skewed by one more factor - which is terrible activity. We've lost days with so many people not playing and it was to easy for the scum to vanish and not participate.

 

All in all it was a very fun setup and it's really a shame we didn't got the most of it due to activity.

However I was not aware a Framer could make scum appear not-scum; per the mafiascum wiki it just makes anyone return a "mafia" result. They note there's a variant to make scum appear non-scum, the Tailor - but what we had was just a Framer. Obviously interpretation was up to TW, but being able to 'protect' themselves in that way is interesting. http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Framer

 

Also this. Framer can only make people guilty, therefore he does nothing when targeting other scums. Sure TW can do whatever he want's with his roles but he shouldn't call those custom roles the same, since Framer here is not a Framer we can read about on mafia wiki.

I'm glad you enjoyed it despite the activity from some. It is unfortunate when everyone who signs up cannot afford to dedicate the appropriate amount of time to the game and in larger games it is more difficult to find replacements because most of the active mafia players are already involved.

 

In my opinion there are really only a couple things we can do to rectify low activity/lurking issues as a community:

 

1) If you cannot afford to actively participate in a game at a certain time, sit it out. Don't hurt the game by going inactive for a week.

2) Make a concerted effort as a mafia community to eliminate lurkers and severely inactive players by choosing to get rid of them during the early game days if replacements are not found for them. I want to stress this point in particular: it is obviously easier to eliminate someone who has said or done something relatively suspect early on, but just remember that every player in the game has the exact same odds of being scum. Roles are assigned completely randomly so an inactive player could be scum just as easily as an active player. If we make a real effort as a group to get rid of lurkers/inactives early in games it will either force them to actively participate or stop them from signing up and affecting other future games.

 

However I was not aware a Framer could make scum appear not-scum; per the mafiascum wiki it just makes anyone return a "mafia" result. They note there's a variant to make scum appear non-scum, the Tailor - but what we had was just a Framer. Obviously interpretation was up to TW, but being able to 'protect' themselves in that way is interesting. http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Framer

Also this. Framer can only make people guilty, therefore he does nothing when targeting other scums. Sure TW can do whatever he want's with his roles but he shouldn't call those custom roles the same, since Framer here is not a Framer we can read about on mafia wiki.

 

I will admit that I should have probably labeled Rhizo's role as a Tailor instead of a Framer in this particular game, however, I will also note that if that question had been asked of me during the game, I would have responded and confirmed this as a possibility. Questions can always be asked of the mod in-game or in a PM. Whether or not an answer is given to a particular question is up to the mod's discretion of course but you won't know if you don't ask.

 

 

2) Make a concerted effort as a mafia community to eliminate lurkers and severely inactive players by choosing to get rid of them during the early game days if replacements are not found for them. I want to stress this point in particular: it is obviously easier to eliminate someone who has said or done something relatively suspect early on, but just remember that every player in the game has the exact same odds of being scum. Roles are assigned completely randomly so an inactive player could be scum just as easily as an active player. If we make a real effort as a group to get rid of lurkers/inactives early in games it will either force them to actively participate or stop them from signing up and affecting other future games.

 

This really won't solve problems. It's KevinH's way (of killing low posters) and it always leads to town loosing the game. I think it would be better for a Mod to prepare a contingency plan: For example when there's a game with 15 people, mod could also had a setup for 13 players (reducing/increasing powers, adding/removing roles, etc) so that if needed game can drop inactives and transit into new mode.

Changing a game's mechanics mid-game would not be a very easy thing to do. There are a lot of balance issues that need to be figured out. It would essentially require each game mod to prepare two entirely different setups for the same game. That's a lot of work.

It's KevinH's way (of killing low posters) and it always leads to town loosing the game.

 

I can't leave that unchallenged.

 

Of the last 10 games, the town has won 5 of them. Of those 5 town wins, I was part of 4 of them.

 

I might not have always been successful in my lobby to kill low posters, but to say that it always leads to the town losing the game is patently false.

I'd say this game actually leaned pro-mafia a bit.

- Town didn't felt more powerful. Sure they got one more role than usually but combined powers of those roles wasn't better: insane cop is inferior to standard cop and Bodyguard is poor mans Doctor. Mafia at the same time got 2 more roles than usually, albeit having a drawback of one of their own being hidden in the town-crowd

- Secondly with insane cop, godfather and framer on board there was so much misinformation that town was guaranteed to make a misslynch. I need to be honest - it's much more fun than standard thoughtless PR "fire and forget" action and big props for TW for trying it out. However this game has limited depth of play (measured by amount of possible misslynches) and by the time town realizes that cops results are almost "random" (there are to many unknown factors to create a pattern) it's over.

 

This is however skewed by one more factor - which is terrible activity. We've lost days with so many people not playing and it was to easy for the scum to vanish and not participate.

 

All in all it was a very fun setup and it's really a shame we didn't got the most of it due to activity.

 

 

I wouldn't really say it was pro-mafia really in my opinion.

 

 As you already mentioned, scum was unknown that they had a 4th, only I knew there was 4.  That alone comes as quite a disadvantage, as not only could we not discuss my night actions, but more importantly, I could just as easily been killed off at night, not only wasting their one night kill but killing one of their own unknown to them.  I tried as best to look town to the rest of town, but also have scum not take me out.  Looking to agree with them at certain points, while also calling some of their scumminess out in hopes they would be afraid to lynch me.  But I could very well of been a target, especially when I was apart of a late effort to get Kevin lynched the one day (I purely was hoping the admin would come on and end the day before others jumped ship on Kevin and he actually go lynched).  I felt that scored me some bonus town points, but it also put me as a target to want to kill at night.  Once WP came out with his findings, I was more safe coming up the same as Kevin, and killing me would expose that WP was insane so they had to keep my alive for awhile.  Not only that, because they didn't know my role, and all along thought I was an SK, wasted like 2 night actions roleblocking me when they could of used it elsewhere.  

 

The Godfather didn't actually give any mis-information.  The Godfather role in general was no help.  The Godfather (Yehom) came up helpful, exactly the same as I and Kevin did who didn't have investigation immunity.  The mis-information would still be a result of the Insane Cop, the Godfather role did nothing to change that.  In all honesty, it was pointless role in my opinion, as Yehom would of came up the same if he was a Godfather or if he was simply a mafia Goon, it did nothing to help him.  I was actually surprised when Yehom came up the same as us...knowing WP was insane, it would of been much more helpful to the mafia if the result changed to Non-helpful to resemble what you and other town came up.  So really, Godfather wasn't even a useful role to have.

 

 

I think scum not knowing they had another partner and could possibly kill off their own, along with basically having a useless Godfather role, it wasn't that pro-mafia..along with my role being useful if hit right, but chances being pretty low.  

I do agree that the Framer role was very circumstantial, but very powerful if used perfectly and to our credit we did exactly that

Still it was my fault that town lost, i threw away the framer suggestions and just went with my investigations, if i had stayed with the plan, town would have romped it