Vigilante Mafia Game Thread - Game Over, LoVE wins!

[CT075]

6 hours ago, Shinori said:

Cam claimed to track Aster who claimed a failed action when targeting an ascetic.

I claimed to have tracked Aster night 1 when Eury was still alive, so the story was that Eury made Aster a ninja (and that's why I didn't see anything). It would have had nothing to do with the Ascetic.

That said, BBM did point out that I slipped and referred to Marth as empowerer when he had only claimed motivator LOL

Edited July 27 by CT075

[BBM]

Postgame Part 2! (Part 1) 

With the photos btw, I only looked them up last second while sending out the role PMs. I sent them out in order of signup. It took me until the 3rd or 4th one to figure out a theme (photos with edgelord quotes), so Yuri Lowell (first one) has a sort of different tone and Light (the second one) doesn't have a quote. I also couldn't find a very good one for Lelouch and this was right after the Trump assassination attempt so I was like uhh better stop with some of these searches. It was also hard to find a good one for Joker as a silent protagonist and Robin Hood, who wasn't supposed to be a furry.

 

@Bartozio - Archer, the LoVE Gravedigger

Spoiler

Dear Bartozio, you are Archer, the LoVE Gravedigger.

You are a Servant from Fate/Stay Night. SPOILERS you’re actually SHIROU EMIYA, probably from the SUPERHERO Bad End in the Heaven’s Feel route, where he becomes a cold and merciless killing machine in the name of justice. After a lifetime spent in the service of humanity, you became disillusioned with the idea of being a superhero and just wanted to die. But you couldn’t, because the powers in charge of the Holy Grail made you be able to be summoned after your death to serve humanity again and again… So you decided that the only way in which you could end your life was to kill your past self. It’s kind of convoluted, but then so are mafia games. You have the following abilities (you cannot use more than one on the same night):

Unlimited Blade Works: During the night phase, you may respond to your role PM with ##USER, you are the bone of my sword. If they are to die at any point after this during the game, including that night phase, you will create a 1x item that will let you use a weaker form of any active abilities they possess, as long as they also belong to LoVE. If they belong to either RAT or BAT, you will instead be able to use both of your abilities the night following their death. 

Noble Phantasm: During the night phase, you may respond to your role PM to use an item you have created, with the appropriate syntax.

You are allied with the League of Vigilante Extremism. You win when all threats to them are eliminated.

I mostly created the roles and then decided after which characters would be which roles, but I did specifically create Gravedigger for Archer, since Gravedigger is one of my favourite roles. This was pretty non-traditional however, in that Archer had to visit his targets before they died, as opposed to just targeting any dead player every night. I thought it was more of an interesting twist and required more thought behind it. I felt this also had the potential to be among the strongest roles with good targeting, so the idea of creating items allowed Thief to be able to mess with it a bit more and prevent it from just stockpiling items.

Bartozio, I thought it took you a while to get going, but like I said I thought your wagon on Aster was integral to town winning the game. I don't think you played badly early, just had really wrong reads? I think once you got to D3 and suspicion on you died down for a bit, you were able to do better, so I think the next step is for you to become better at defending yourself with less energy so that you can simultaneously scumhunt as well.

 

@DefyingFates - Joker, the LoVE Ascetic.

Spoiler

Dear DefyingFates, you are Joker, the LoVE Ascetic.

Your canon name is Ren Amamiya, better known as Joker from Persona 5. After being expelled and forced to join a new school due to the actions of a corrupt politician, you were awakened to the greatest power of all - the power within. You and your friends created a group called the Phantom Thieves, who beat people into submission make sinners have a change of heart and see the errors of their ways. As a silent protagonist, you don’t have a ton of personality, but luckily that’s not necessary for mafia. You have the following ability:

Metaverse: You spend most of your time in the Metaverse, and any visitors with non-lethal actions will be too lazy to follow you into there. As such, any non-lethal actions that target you will fail. Killers will be a little more determined though.

You are allied with the League of Vigilante Extremism. You win when all threats to them are eliminated.

Ascetic served a few purposes- firstly, given that I expected Friendly Cop to generate two clears, I wanted a slot that couldn't be cleared. Secondly, DefyingFates was new and didn't do it, but Ascetics typically claim up-front. I wanted to prevent the Watcher from faking Ascetic to avoid being targeted until they got a guilty. As it ended up, not claiming worked out- it drew Hooker N1 and was never targeted by any town roles.

DF, obviously it was your first game and it's tough. A bunch of people sent you some guides and advice on what to do when starting out, so I'd suggest reading those if you haven't already. Like people said, I think the biggest thing when you're first starting is just to try and ask people questions about why they're doing what they're doing, and don't be afraid to vote. You can always unvote and change things around, and it's an important part of showing your thought process. Now that you've played, hopefully it'll be easier for you going forward to try and see what's scum intent based on how you saw scum act vs town act.

 

@Elieson - Dexter Morgan, the LoVE Gunsmith

Spoiler

Dear USER, you are Dexter Morgan, the LoVE Gunsmith.

You’re a closet psychopath who roams the streets during the night as a serial killer, from the Dexter book series and TV show. During the day, you work as a blood spatter pattern analyst because you just can’t live away from blood (you would think that would tip people off…). Anyways, the moral code you were taught by your father makes it so that you only kill people who are themselves murderers. You do get closer to humanity as the series progresses though, and even fall in love (too bad she dies before you realize it, RIP). You also have the dubious honour of having one of the worst series endings ever, but that didn’t stop you from getting both a prequel and sequel series years later. Now it’s time for one last act - mafia! You have the following ability:

Dark Passenger: You are urged to kill by a homicidal voice in your head called the Dark Passenger. Twice during the game, during the day, you may respond to your role PM with ##Unlock USER’s Dark Passenger. You will release the killer inside your target, preventing them from using their role that night and forcing them to kill somebody instead. This does not prevent the use of factional actions.

You are allied with the League of Vigilante Extremism. You win when all threats to them are eliminated.

Once I decided I did want a Vig in the game, I had to decide what kind of role they should have, since a regular 2x vig or whatever would be too simple. I briefly considered CPR Doc as a funny role people don't use enough (imagine if Bart had survived!), but I thought Gunsmith was better thematically. Once I settled on that, the match with Dexter was probably my favourite flavour in the game. If it hadn't been, I might have tried editing the role to be for Dexter the scientist instead.

Elie, I mean... you played well when you were actually playing! You were wrong on Marth, but you correctly pegged Eury and Cam as scum even if some of the reasoning was wrong. I really don't understand why you were so anti the Neighbour concept. There was a while where I was like "is Elie really going to flake two games in a row" but you came back! I wasn't sure why you idled so long, but the Boron target was an inspired decision once she claimed. Just play more man.

 

@Grace / @beeboat - Harry Dresden, the LoVE Friendly Cop

Spoiler

Dear Grace, you are Harry Dresden, the LoVE Friendly Cop.

You’re a wizard living in modern-day Chicago- even advertising yourself as such in the Yellow Pages! You are the main protagonist of the Dresden Files, where you start as a for-hire wizard who often consults for the police and helps out by dispatching supernatural baddies in your town. As it progresses though, your actions, abilities, and involvement in the supernatural community evolve, and to protect the people you love, you begin to do more and more morally questionable things. As the series currently stands, you’ve started multiple wars, all your love interests are dead, and you’ve become the servant of a sociopath. All in the life of a mafia player! You have the following ability:

Soulgaze: During the night, you may look directly into the eyes of a player by responding to your role PM with ##Soulgaze USER. You will initiate a soulgaze with them, where you and your target see inside each other’s souls and discern each other’s true motivations. As a result, your target will learn your alignment, and you will learn your target’s alignment. However, this is extremely tiring, and as such you can only use this ability once during the game.

You are allied with the League of Vigilante Extremism. You win when all threats to them are eliminated.

I expected people to hostspec and assume I would give Harry Dresden a strong role, and was like yolo I'm gonna do it anyways. This was another role I created specifically with the character in mind. It was funny that the last two characters remaining unpicked were Harry and Black Widow, and Grace decided not to care which one to pick, since there might not be a bigger role swing between this and the scum neighbour. I think this role was maybe a bit too good, but others thought it wasn't that much of an improvement over just 1x Cop so shrug. With the Watcher restrictions, this was really the main town info role, and obviously I did not expect this role to ever be lynched.

Grace, hopefully you're feeling better, and I wish you'd gotten to play more. Beeboat, hopefully you also get to play again in a more traditional game. That being said, I was a bit disappointed that you never even really tried, even if you found multiball hard. I had to prod you so much and if I hadn't messaged you an hour before the phase ended, I don't think you would have even claimed before dying.

 

@Shinori - Yuri Lowell, the LoVE Mayor

Spoiler

Dear Shinori, you are Yuri Lowell, the LoVE Mayor.

You are the hero from Tales of Vesperia. You were a poor orphan born in the Lower Quarter of Zaphias. You leave your home to chase down a thief responsible for shutting down your area’s water supply. You have high ideals, but become disillusioned with the law and try to take matters into your own hands by killing bad guys. But you realize that your actions have done nothing but make things worse, so you resolve to fix things. I wonder what other games involve well-meaning people making things worse… You have the following ability:

Fell Arm: Your Fell Arm, Blazor Edge Abyssion, has absorbed a portion of the life force of those that you have defeated. As such, your vote counts for 2 votes. However, by the end of Day 3, it will run out of power, after which your vote will revert to counting only for 1 vote.

You are allied with the League of Vigilante Extremism. You win when all threats to them are eliminated.

This role was originally supposed to be a Town Lyncher, where it gained abilities every time it was on the final wagon at the end. However, I decided that it was too similar to Gravedigger in terms of how it got stronger as the game went on. I still wanted it to have something to do with voting so I made it a Mayor instead. I disabled the ability after D3 (essentially around when *YLO would probably start) so that it didn't become too obvtown, but would still help the town to reduce scum thread control if they coordinated totally at the start.

Shinori, I still don't really understand why you were hiding your role. I feel like if you had survived longer and then sprung Mayor on the game, that could have backfired on you just as likely as you could have surprised scum. I guess you never really NEEDED the extra vote since your desired wagon was already leading, but it could have been something that increased pressure early and got things out of RVS more quickly. Beyond that, you were the most active D1, helped give advice to the newbs, and pushed scum D1, so good job.

Okay I'm tired so I'll post more on Sunday probably since I'm going to be busy tomorrow.

Edited July 27 by BBM

[Grace]

yeah i kinda wish i didn't get immense brainfog from getting covid, do not rate trying to amble out a post with no capacity for coherent thought

[Shinori]

On 7/26/2024 at 11:54 PM, BBM said:

Shinori, I still don't really understand why you were hiding your role. I feel like if you had survived longer and then sprung Mayor on the game, that could have backfired on you just as likely as you could have surprised scum. I guess you never really NEEDED the extra vote since your desired wagon was already leading, but it could have been something that increased pressure early and got things out of RVS more quickly. Beyond that, you were the most active D1, helped give advice to the newbs, and pushed scum D1, so good job.

I already talked about this.

I DIDNT WANT TO JUST GIVE INFORMATION AWAY.

Even if it supposedly 'backfired' on me, I was already cleared of being marth's buddy after day 1 and highly unlikely I would have been lynched in the following day phases realistically.

I didn't really need it for pressuring early realistically and it wasn't needed to ensure someone I wanted to lynch got lynched because I was pressuring bluedoom mostly the whole phase.

My role would have made zero difference realistically in how day 1 panned out.  The only possible change is maybe 1 or 2 people who voted me because it was weird, wouldn't have voted me.  Mayor speculation is NAI and wouldn't have actively helped the town especially day 1 that is already moving very slowly.  I don't want someone to come in, make one post and it just happens to half be about my role for pointless reasons.

There wasn't enough people voting or moving votes around for me to 'hide' my mayor in a group of people and I didn't want to just put a target on my head because SF hardly ever does SCUM mayors.

[Elieson]

On 7/26/2024 at 11:54 PM, BBM said:

I wasn't sure why you idled so long

D1, I wasn't really certain on any super strong townreads, and the fact the shot for Night 1 would be mandatory, I didn't think that it would be wise to send out a shot when basically no information existed.

D2, My gut just said that we still needed more information. I was considering targeting either Eury or Boron with my gun, because I was under the impression that Scum!Eury would've been caught overnight, or slipped up hard, but I'm glad I didn't. I would've given it to Shinori if he was alive, but I needed a new confident townread to give a gun to, and I just didn't have one yet.

D3, Boron was basically the only choice worth considering. The claim that she was targeted and interrupted had me thinking that scum would just mess with her overnight and specifically not kill her, and I didn't think that her claim of being interrupted was a fakeclaim, especially since it was reported so vocally. I took a gamble on her not being killed. If I were to give it to anyone else during D3, it'd have been Weapons, mostly because of Percivale's read on them.

D4, I was swinging back and forth between Boron and Jamie, mostly because while I could see boron pulling the shot off well, I felt like she'd also be the victim of any remaining full blocking capabilities left in the game. I was pretty hard Townreading Jamie after his clarification on Vampirizer being Reviver, and because he's not too familiar with SF terminology, Restless Spirit / Tree Stump aren't terms I'd expect him to use. The rule implying that a Spirit-maker exists had me feeling confident that he was town, since out of all the roles in the game that would be stupid for scum to have, that'd be the silliest and most useless one of all. I believed the claim because of the rule implying that 'death isn't necessarily the end', and also, because his play up until then was honestly, good enough to be a consistent "not scumread". Of course, we lynched Cam, and I submitted a gun to Boron anyway, but Jamie was a close second that I almost pulled the trigger on.

On 7/26/2024 at 11:54 PM, BBM said:

I really don't understand why you were so anti the Neighbour concept.

I wasn't anti-Neighbor; I was anti-"Neighbors would have knowledge". Neighbors are specifically, roles that allow people to talk to each other in private. Masons, are neighbors that know each others' alignment (and is therefore, an information role). I've never seen neighbors know anyone else's alignment, so I was in disbelief that you'd outright tell scumteam A, who scumteam B includes (and vice versa). 

On 7/26/2024 at 11:54 PM, BBM said:

I mean... you played well when you were actually playing!

I'll apologize big for this.

D1.... I just didn't realize game had started yet. D2 however;

Hurricane Beryl ripped apart Houston TX on July 7th thru the weekend, and specifically, it wrecked a lot of our power grids. While my home itself was never effected outside of a bit of power flickering, because I live right next door to a hospital and was lucky enough to maintain my power thanks to the emergency grid, my internet was unstable for about 2 weeks past the storm (it still is, even today), and both my office and some of my family were affected pretty significantly. No permanent loss or damages, but being as I was the only one in our family with power for the first 4 days after the storm, I was spending a lot of time doing recovery-related things for my affected family. The next two weeks, I spent a lot of time helping family and work (and coworkers) play catch up in a lot of ways. Once things stabilized and everyone got their power back, my job was way behind and I was stuck putting in additional time there. Eury made a joke about pulling me away to play FFXIV during some of the game, but I was just so physically and mentally exhausted during the storm period that by the time I was sitting at a PC, I barely had anything in me to sit down and try to ascertain thoughts in the game, hence my terrible D2 activity. My first game was a flake because of just derusting being really tough to climb out of in a game that was pacing dozens of pages. This one, I blame entirely on outside circumstances and my struggles to function thru them.

[Elieson]

26 minutes ago, Shinori said:

I DIDNT WANT TO JUST GIVE INFORMATION AWAY.

 

I'd bet $1 that scum considered shooting you under the assumption that you were withholding votes due to some powerful role-related reason. If you had voted per normal, you'd probably have survived into D2, even if your mayoral vote was made public.

If I were scum, I would've totally shot you immediately, and I would've shot you entirely because of your secrecy.

[BBM]

Postgame Part 2! (Part 2) 

Yeah so I'm just gonna do like 1/3rd at a time idk

@Sunwoo - Robin Hood, the LoVE Watcher

Spoiler

Dear Sunwoo, you are Robin Hood, the LoVE Watcher.

You are a hero from British folklore who robs the rich only to give the money to the poor. According to most versions of the tale, you were yourself born a nobleman, but were cheated out of your property and wealth. You then formed a band of outlaws (some of whom are almost as famous as you, such as Little John and Friar Tuck) in Sherwood Forest to bring justice to the land in the absence of the rightful king Richard the Lionheart. Now it’s time to bring justice to the world of mafia. You have the following ability:

Merry Men: Once per night, you may respond to your role PM with “##Watching USER”. You will tell a few of your band of outlaws to follow USER around and keep track of who visits him. However, since you’re outlaws, if anyone comes to visit you, you will run away from your target, causing your action to fail. There may be some actions that are exceptions to this rule. Note that you will not be informed whether your action fails due to being visited or due to another reason.

You are allied with the League of Vigilante Extremism. You win when all threats to them are eliminated.

Watcher is the first role I ever had on SF so I've always had somewhat of a soft spot for it but I find it typically to just be too strong in terms of being both an investigative role and pseudo-protective role, so I added the condition where it fails if it's visited by someone else. According to Boron this same restriction existed in Mystery Mafia 2, which I don't remember but I probably would have at the time I made this setup. The idea is that you can't protective-role circlejerk by having the watcher and doctor (or in this case Martyr) target each other. In hindsight though, this was maybe too strong a restriction given that it was a Martyr and not a Doctor and scum also had a Sneak, although Boron did also get pretty unlucky. For what it's worth though, the LoVE Safeguard and RAT Empowerer would have both been exceptions to the restriction, and also prevented the role from failing if another person also targeted the Watcher. The idea behind a scum role also not blocking it is so that the Empower/Motivator role basically couldn't soft-hook the Watcher the way Cam did with TrackerFollower. Also, this restriction did essentially make it so that it couldn't be found out by the scum investigative role, so that's something to note. Cam did actually target Boron N1 and didn't get anything useful because the act of doing so caused Watcher to fail.

Boron, you played a good game. As I said earlier, you got around to the right reads in the end and probably more importantly, you were huge in preventing the thread from stagnating on D2 and D3. I applaud the effort but I think you spent a bit too much time trying to hunt for meta from like 5 years ago. My main notes would be more regarding your role actions/claims. While it didn't end up mattering ultimately, it wasn't the right move to claim D3. I get your frustration, but the scum Sneak had just died, which meant that you could assume that the main scum counter to your role was gone. If Elie hadn't been around to make you a vig, you would have essentially ensured your role being softhooked (or hardhooked if the scum hooker was active) for the rest of the game, whereas otherwise you could have potentially gotten a valuable result on N3. I also understand the Bartozio vig, but I think I probably wouldn't have vigged him right after he led a successful wagon on scum, even though he could have been the other scumteam.

 

@j00 - Lelouch Lamperouge, the LoVE Martyr

Spoiler

Dear j00, you are Lelouch Lamperouge, the LoVE Martyr.

You are the main character of Code Geass. After saving a seemingly innocent-looking girl, you gained the power of Geass. In you, this power manifested itself as the ability to force someone to do what you tell them to do. Armed with this newfound ability, you began a quest to avenge the death of your mother and create a safe world for your sister. To accomplish this, you dress up as a masked man called Zero and act as a revolutionary trying to free Japan from the evil overlords Britannia. But then it’s revealed that you’re also a prince of Britannia, and your mother actually kind of faked her death and is living in somebody else’s mind and working with your father, whom you thought was the one who killed her. Basically it’s a huge clusterfuck that ends with you becoming the ruler of the world and then purposely dying… or maybe you just faked your death so you could play more mafia? You have the following ability:

Geass: Once per night, you may reply to your role PM with “##Forcing people away from USER, to me”. You will stand by USER and compel everyone attempting to target them to target you instead, including killers. However, since your Geass cannot affect somebody more than once, you cannot force anyone to change their target more than once.

You are allied with the League of Vigilante Extremism. You win when all threats to them are eliminated.

The main protective role of the game. Once I decided to have no docs, this was the next choice. I did briefly consider some sort of limited-use Blacksmith because I liked it as a mirror to Gunsmith, but I just didn't want that much kill-stopping power and I felt that the Inventor Commute item was sufficient. I did have a thing here where the Martyr could only redirect any player's actions once. Not really relevant for kills obviously, but I wanted to avoid a thing where the Martyr could just keep drawing hooks or something and act as a pseudo-safeguard with less risk.

j00, no real notes. You could have been a bit more active D1 but real-life stuff so I get it. Post-RVS you correctly identified scum and helped get them lynched D1 and then got killed N1. The perfect town game! Weapons wasn't a terrible target but I think just because of his playing style he probably wasn't the most likely NK either. If not Shinori, probably Boron or even maybe Cam or Eury although they were actually scum might have been better targets from an uninformed POV.

 

@WeaponsofMassConstruction - Batman, the LoVE Inventor

Spoiler

Dear WeaponsofMassConstruction, you are Batman, the LoVE Inventor.

Your name is Bruce Wayne, and you are the main protagonist of the comic book series Batman, and have gone on to star in several TV series and movies as well. You reside in the fictional Gotham City, where you pretend to be a billionaire playboy CEO who doesn’t really care about anything. At night, however, you dress up in a bat suit and use your inherited money to good use by having your Head of Applied Sciences, Lucius Fox, make a bunch of cool and ridiculously expensive gadgets. He’s the REAL hero, but he’s sent you here to play mafia since you’re well versed at staying up all night. You have the following abilities:

Magnifying Glass: Once during the game, at night, you may reply to your role PM with “##Giving USER a Magnifying Glass”. You will tell Fox to give USER an extremely powerful Magnifying Glass, which, once at night, will allow them to retrieve the full role PM of a dead player. Note that if a non-LoVE member is targeted, some factional information may be snipped.

Energy Drink: Once during the game, at night, you may reply to your role PM with “##Giving USER an Energy Drink”. You will tell Fox to give USER a super amazing Energy Drink, which, once during the day, will allow them to post without repercussions the following night.

Megaphone: Once during the game, at night, you may reply to your role PM with “##Giving USER a Megaphone”. You will tell Fox to give USER a high-tech Megaphone, which, for one day, will allow them to make as many anonymous announcements as they want.

Kevlar Suit: Once during the game, at night, you may reply to your role PM with “##Giving USER a Kevlar Vest”. You will tell Fox to give USER a fancy Kevlar Vest, which, once during the night, will allow them to disregard all actions targeting them.

You may not use more than one ability each night phase.

You are allied with the League of Vigilante Extremism. You win when all threats to them are eliminated.

I've always liked Inventors as sort of delayed JoaTs. Honestly only really the Kevlar Suit and Magnifying Glass were useful items, the others were kind of there as filler and to add some more targeting actions.

Weapons, I'm not sure if this was my fault in terms of how I wrote the role PMs or you borrowing my reading skills, but I don't think you ever understood how the Kevlar Suit worked? Other than not realizing it also blocked kills, I think you thought that it would immediately protect them that night, when it was something they would have had to use themselves on a following night to receive the benefit. In terms of your in-thread play, I think you had decent reads for most of the game, although I'm not sure why you dropped your suspicion of Cam near the end. I just always feel like you can be a bit more direct in terms of asking people questions, where sometimes it seems you're just stating opinions.

 

@JamieIsBored - Blade, the LoVE Reviver

Spoiler

Dear JamieIsBored, you are Blade, the LoVE Reviver.

You are a half-vampire who protects humans from other vampires, walking in the daylight. You come from Marvel comics, and are one of the first Black superheroes. You spawned the first successful Marvel movie franchise way back in the 90s. Without you, there may not have been any other Marvel movies… and yet it took Marvel decades more to make another film based on Black superheroes. :thinking: If you think about it, mafia players are kind of like vampires. You have the following ability:

Vampirism: Once during the game, at night, you may reply to your role PM with “##Infect USER”. You will use your vampire abilities to infect USER. If they are to die at any point in the game, including that night, they will be reborn as a vampire. They will not be able to use their role or vote in this weakened state, but they will be able to post in the game thread, as well as any out-of-thread communication they may have access to.

You are allied with the League of Vigilante Extremism. You win when all threats to them are eliminated.

Jamie called this Vampirizer and maybe that would have been more apt than Reviver? The main purpose of this role was to just give town more soft thread control by making it so that scum didn't just dominate the thread discussion after a few days if things were going badly for town. I did consider letting the tree stump vote as well but thought that would be too strong.

Jamie, I think you played decently but were just a little too tentative? I know it can be hard on a new forum but I think as a more experienced player (and afaik with no personal emergencies happening, my apologies if there were) you could have been a bit more aggressive in the early days. I was also really confused by some of your rolespeccing, particularly regarding a Bus Driver. There was absolutely no evidence that anyone had been redirected and a scum had literally flipped with the ability to hook multiple people at once. I felt for a while like it was going to lead you down some bad paths and almost made you lynch DF, but in the end you made the decisive hammer.

 

@Percivalé - Zorro, the LoVE Safeguard

Spoiler

Dear Percivalé, you are Zorro, the LoVE Safeguard.

You are one of the oldest American heroes, a precursor in many ways to today’s comic book superheroes. You are originally from a novel, but were popularized due to a movie. Born Don Diego de la Vega (ignore that the Antonio Banderas Zorro above is not Diego), of Spanish descent, you fought for commoners and the indigenous people of California, helping them fight back against tyranny everywhere. Better yet, you did so with dashing style, in your trademark all-black outfit of a cape, sombrero, and mask. Now it’s time to fight the tyranny of mafias. You have the following ability:

Guardian: Each night, you may reply to your role PM with “##Guard USER”. You will stay by USER’s side, protecting them from all non-killing abilities. Your fighting abilities are a bit outdated with today’s power creep though, so you won’t be able to stop killers. Your duties as a guardian don’t stop just because your charge is dead- as such, you may target both living and dead players. 

You are allied with the League of Vigilante Extremism. You win when all threats to them are eliminated.

I really tried to make Safeguard happen, but alas I think without being informed it was just too risky to ever use, especially since there was never an investigative roleclaim that survived. Ideally if Beeboat hadn't been lynched D2 for example, Safeguard could have targeted them N2. I also made it so that it wouldn't have triggered Watcher fail condition, and blocked a bunch of the scum roles, and could target dead players as a "safe" target to block Thief, but alas.

Percy, I mentioned it in the graveyard briefly, but yeah you had among the best reads but just didn't push them enough in time and then died. Outside of the consolidation vote on Beeboat you voted and were suspicious of basically only scum all game. You just have to be embody the mindset of the SKs you like playing as so you're not as worried about being wrong...

Edited July 31 by BBM

[j00]

I 5D chess'd myself, the main reason I didn't target Shinori was that he was the obvious Doc target to the point that I thought scum wouldn't risk a kill on him. I didn't know that scum could coordinate their kills either lol.

[BBM]

Postgame Part 2! (Part 3) 

it's finally done

@CT075 - Catwoman, the RAT TrackerFollower BPV Neighbour

Spoiler

Dear CT075, you are Catwoman, the RAT TrackerFollower BPV Neighbour.

You started off as one of Batman’s most iconic villains, but your portrayal has slowly evolved, to where you are now generally depicted more as an anti-heroine with a complex love/hate relationship with Batman. You love cats? You are a cat? Who knows, but in this male-dominated industry you make your mark regardless, having both your own comic book series and your own movies. Now you’ve gotten into a new love/hate relationship- mafia. You have the following abilities:

Predator: Each night, you may reply to your role PM with “##Track and Follow USER”. Through the tracking prowess of the mightiest feline predators and burglars, you will learn both who they targeted and which role actions they performed.

LoVEr: Who needs Batman, or men in general? These days, you’ve found a kindred spirit and a new lover in Black Widow! You may speak to Aster outside of the game thread. Unfortunately, this new relationship is no less complex than the last, for after revealing your alignments to each other, you discovered that Black Widow is a member of BAT, while she discovered you are a member of RAT. 

Mutually Assured Protection: As a couple, you and Black Widow share a single bulletproof vest. This will protect either of you from the first killing action you are targeted by. However, once one of you uses it, it is also gone for the other.

You are allied with the Red Assassination Team. You win when all threats to them are eliminated.

As I said in postgame part 1, the game was basically built around this role and the other neighbour. Adding the BPV to the Neighbour roles was a late decision; I think I just decided overall that RAT would just be too much at BAT's mercy without it given that they had the hooker. I think it was a good decision overall although essentially giving half the scum a BPV also meant it was significantly less likely that town would correctly vig someone. I will say though that "mutually assured protection" was probably my favourite rolewriting pun so that brought me a lot of pleasure. There was a version of the setup where this was a Rolecop and Eury's role was a Godfather instead of a Sneak, but I felt that Sneak was more symmetrical to Empowerer, and given that the Friendly Cop was 1x, Sneak would be an overall more useful action than GF. In hindsight maybe the scumteams were a little TOO symmetrical in a way that made it easy to rolespec at the end, but I'm also not sure it was avoidable given the central idea.

Cam, I've spoken a lot already about how I thought it was the wrong move to shoot Eury N2 so all I'll add is I think you could have bet on yourself a bit more to be able to lynch Aster in thread, and she was the Hooker, not Eury. I also think it was the wrong move to leave Boron alive N3. Yes she was a Tree Stump, but you would have still had to kill her at some point, and by leaving her alive you were forcing yourself to dedicate your role towards disabling her. Putting aside that it didn't end up mattering because of the Gunsmith, I think you also could have been caught out just from like, not correctly having someone's action from a tracking perspective. I think you would have heavily forced yourself into a 1v1 on D5 even if you hadn't been lynched/vigged on D4/N4, in a way that wasn't really necessary. Plus, Bartozio was lynchable and while you were probably banking on being able to lynch Elie, you have to give yourself allowance as scum for someone you thought was an easy ML ending up having a very town role. Nobody on town really pointed this out, but at least from an informed perspective I think all this also just led to you sort of flailing on D4. The Elie push on D4 post-gunsmith claim I thought was very blatantly scum-motivated.

 

@Bluedoom - V, the RAT Empowerer Motivator

Spoiler

Dear Bluedoom, you are V, the RAT Empowerer Motivator.

You are an anarchist and freedom fighter who wears a Guy Fawkes mask to hide your identity. You were created to depict very specific themes by Alan Moore, which of course means that he hates every single movie or TV portrayal of you that tries to do anything different. Nobody knows who you are under the mask, nobody knows if you’re a hero or just a crazy guy, but that’s okay, because both are necessary to play mafia. You have the following abilities (you cannot use more than one per day/night cycle):

Do-As-You-Please: Each night, you may reply to your role PM with “##Empower USER”. This will ensure that your target performs all role and factional actions without being roleblocked, redirected, or otherwise disabled. However, once your target successively bypasses such an action once, it can no longer be used. After all, just because you want a land without leaders doesn’t mean you want a land without order. Note that you may target yourself with this action.

Take-What-You-Want: Each day, you may reply to your role PM with “##Motivate USER”. This will allow your target to use any role actions twice in the upcoming night phase. In a land of greed, this is all you can do… Note that you may target yourself with this action.

You are allied with the Red Assassination Team. You win when all threats to them are eliminated.

As I said earlier, both non-neighbour roles had one ability that both countered the other team's neighbour as well as a townie. They were also meant to be like a pseudo 1x, in that you could use them without being afraid of wasting the role but it would actually only be impactful once. Arguably the risk of wasting it is quite large so I think this was a pretty significant buff over 1x. The motivate also fit sort of thematically with the empower, and I think while there's some empowerer/safeguard overlap, both empowerer and motivator were feasible fakeclaims depending on the gamestate.

Marth, I feel like you've definitely had better scumgames than this? I know you've also played occasionally off-site and I assume you must have rolled scum then once or twice. I just think that in the slow RVS period, you felt like you could lurk and do nothing as scum. You were maybe a bit unlucky to be the lurker of first choice but I feel like that beginning period just kind of put you into this lurk zone that you never broke out of even though you actually had more posts than I realized. As a guy who frequently gets wagoned for questionable reasons even as town, the lurkscum strat probably isn't good for you tbh.

 

@Aster - BAT Multi-Hooker BPV Neighbour

Spoiler

Dear Aster, you are Black Widow, the BAT Multi-Hooker BPV Neighbour.

You started off as a Soviet super-spy for the KGB, but eventually defected to the USA. You can fight, you can seduce, you can trick, you can torture, and most of all, your lack of superpowers and the fact that you now fight for “the good guys” doesn’t stop you from leaving a trail of bodies in your wake. Your star has also risen with the MCU, but unfortunately they didn’t really give you a movie until it was five years too late. Just like me retconning you into this setup! You have the following abilities:

Secret Operative: Each night, you may reply to your role PM with “##Hook USERs”. You will use your spy powers to knock out your target(s) and prevent them from executing their night action. You may target up to 3 players in one night. However, for every target past 1, you must idle this action for one night after.

LoVEr: You’ve dallied with a few different men, but no longer. These days, you’ve found a kindred spirit and a new lover in Catwoman! You may speak to CT075 outside of the game thread. Unfortunately, relationships between women of questionable morals come with drawbacks. After revealing your alignments to each other, you discovered that Catwoman is a member of RAT, while she discovered you are a member of BAT. 

Mutually Assured Protection: As a couple, you and Catwoman share a single bulletproof vest. This will protect either of you from the first killing action you are targeted by. However, once one of you uses it, it is also gone for the other.

You are allied with the Blue Assassination Team. You win when all threats to them are eliminated.

Flavour-wise, this was originally supposed to be Green Arrow and there was a joke about how Catwoman was rebounding with discount-Batman. That was back closer to when I cared about the Arrow TV show, and when I was reviewing the setup I was like wow there's only one woman here. It turns out vigilanteism is very male-coded, but this was a relatively easy flavour-swap and I found the lesbian angle funny as well in case anyone Coronered one of the neighbours and tried to flavour-spec. "I've been compromised, I got red" was also a funny flavour line so overall very happy with my decision to swap Black Widow in. Role-wise, one of the neighbours being a hooker was basically the first thing I settled on. Honestly I mostly added the multi part to jazz the role up a bit because I thought plain hooker was a bit simple, but I think it also added an interesting dimension of "when if ever should I use this aspect". Originally there was no limit to the number of people you could target, but I felt 3 was a good sweet spot just from a street-fighting mathematics perspective.

Aster, it's tough to be scum in your first game! Everything I said to DF also applies to you. Role-wise, I think you just shared a little too much with Cam for no reason. Beyond just that hooking Cam N2 was a bad move because you needed the kill, TELLING him that basically is what caused him to decide to shoot Eury. You can have the intention to partner with someone but if you're also dicking them over then are you really partnering with them, and will they want to partner with you? And if you're intentionally dicking someone over then don't tell them lol. You're probably not going to be in this specific situation too often in NOC, but if you ever play OC or EiMM those kind of interactions are very important to consider.

 

@Eurykins - BAT Sneak Thief

Spoiler

Dear Eurykins, you are Light Yagami, the BAT Sneak Thief.

One day, you were just a regular albeit brilliant student. The next day, you discovered a magical notebook that would allow you to harness the power of Death itself to kill whoever you wanted, however you wanted (as long as you knew their real name and face of course). Luckily for the world, you know best, so you only use your powers to kill criminals and you definitely never abuse your power. Your boredom has led you to the most challenging game of all- forum mafia. You have the following abilities (you cannot use more than one per night):

Death Note: Each night, you may reply to your role PM with “##Make USER a Sneak”. You will loan your Death Note to USER, allowing them to conduct all role and factional actions that night without being observed. But the Death Note has limitations, and once this action successfully bypasses an investigative report, it will be disabled. Note that you may target yourself with this action.

Charisma: Each night, you may reply to your role PM with “##Take items from USER”. As a handsome, charming, and smart youth, people will give you any items they have sole possession over. You’re also not above robbing from dead people, so you may target both living and dead players with this action.

You are allied with the Blue Assassination Team. You win when all threats to them are eliminated.

Similar stuff here as the other non-neighbour role. Honestly I was sort of struggling with what second ability to give this role, partially because I felt like Multi-Hooker could be so potentially strong in lategame that I wanted the secondary ability for this role to be fairly weak. I made decisions with how Gravedigger worked and Inventor instead of JoaT just to essentially give Thief something to do. In hindsight I think this flipping made Inventor too townie in a way that it wasn't supposed to be and I either needed way more item roles (defeating the purpose of this being a minor role) or for this to be totally different. I couldn't (and still currently can't) think of what that would be in a way that wouldn't break the symmetry or be too strong. Eury never ended up using the Thief but she almost used it over Sneak a bunch of times and did a bunch of speccing about how maybe everyone had items and how they were connected to role. This was partially my fault from a flavour perspective because of how I wrote the Sneak action to be tied to the Death Note, but also even if that hadn't been the case it's true that this role would have really had no idea that the Thief was mostly meant to be filler.

Eury, I think you mostly played well, I just have a lot of notes here because of how impactful your decisions were on the game. Early on, I think you were trying to cosplay as your town self in a way that seemed artificial. Your first wallpost when the game was still basically in RVS seemed SO fake because DF had made like three RVS posts and you made a giant wall about it. It got better as the game went on and there was legitimately more content to wall about, but there were still parts where I felt like scumnori had entered your body? There was a lot of bold and CAPS LOCK in the Elie arguments that felt like they were there just to take up space. I guess credit in that it mostly worked because only Percy suspected you and most people started skimming you, but I think your next scum game people might be a little bit more attuned to this. I think you did better a few days in but I felt you could have coached Aster a little more? Maybe given her one or two simple tidbits to point out. 

Role-wise, I'm putting commentary on both roles' actions here since you were more experienced. Outside of telling Cam about him potentially being a target, I think even just the decision to 3x hook on N2 was not good. I think "we're allying with Cam" was sort of too short-sighted a way to think of the relationship when you could not win together. N2 might have been too early for the backstab, but N5 would almost certainly have been too late. Especially since you were mostly firing the hook blind, I think it either should have been used N1 for maximum chaos, or you needed to save it as the anti-RAT trump card with the Empowerer dead. Also, I was baffled by the N2 decision to Sneak yourself to kill Percy but then let Aster visibly hook him. You could have just sneaked Aster to both hook and kill Percy and it would have let you avoid any tracker/watcher shenanigans. Aster got lynched D3 anyways but there was a world where if Jamie hadn't visited Boron she would have been seen as the only target on Percy and been lynched on a "guilty" even though she hadn't actually done it, so that was just an unforced error.

Also I realized I never shared the action spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OqURWzQIV89T_xGnbMoeal9nAYjZdX0er8h0lzpMRMQ/edit?usp=sharing

Edited August 2 by BBM

[Sunwoo]

@Aster Do not play EiMM or OC games, lol. Stick to good ol' (hopefully conventional) NOC.

[CT075]

1 hour ago, BBM said:

I think you also could have been caught out just from like, not correctly having someone's action from a tracking perspective.

I actually spent like two hours with a piece of paper to make sure I didn't claim anything that was falsifiable, but yeah I definitely should have just shot Boron N3 and been done with it. I waffled hard because Boron was townreading me and I lowkey expected her to defend me if we got to -YLO (but she could have done that while dead too so idk)

once the vig claim came out I was completely doomed anyway; I kind of thought the 1v1 was my only way out (because otherwise Boron would just shoot me and it'd be over in -YLO even if I managed to get Fates lynched)

 

EDIT:

oh yeah there wasn't much to show from scumchat since it was kind of just me cycling from "im fuking doomed" to "wait i can win" and back, but i did have this one (this was shortly before Aster told me they were thinking of hooking me and kickstarting the downfall of both scumteams...)

On 7/19/2024 at 7:18 AM, CT075 said:

i was lowkey salivating at the prospect of being confirmed scum and getting to dance around town with the "hmm i know who both members of BAT are" but i think that might be too much of a dick move to aster

 

if it was two vets i would out them in a heartbeat

Edited August 2 by CT075