Mini Mafia Round 2

[General Spoon]

This is the official Mini Mafia game thread where all discussions/game play/voting will take place. For those playing, all game-related posts should go here.

If you are dead or not playing, do not post in this thread. If you're dead, you're dead. I can't stop you from talking about the game outside of the forum, but by the honor system, please don't. It'll only ruin the fun of the game for others.

Gameplay/Rules

Each game day consists of the Day Phase and the Night Phase. Since my schedule is fairly busy and not perfect, there will not be a 100% set schedule for this. There will, however, be a minimum time limit of 24 hours per day phase. So from the time of my most recent update, you have at least 24 hours to post your votes. Once that time has passed, someone will be hung and the night phase will begin. Once I post that the night phase has begun, ya'll can start PM'ing me. I will post the results once all actions are submitted (or at least 24 hours have passed, in case people forget). This may cause the game to run a little slowly, but it also gives more time for forum discussion, strategy stuff, etc.

Additionally, I would ask that you do not change your name while playing the game.

Also, only edit your post if you are changing a vote. To edit your post for any other reason goes against the spirit of the game.

Day Phase

The Day Phase is when everyone decides to cast a vote to hang someone (or hang no one, if you decide). You do not have to vote. For this game, votes will be cast publicly on the forum. Votes must be bolded and obvious. If I miss a vote because you implied it or forgot to make it obvious, that's your fault, not mine. If you change your vote and make a new post with a vote, unbold your old one. If you change your vote and forget to unbold your first one, I'll ignore your attempt of change because, well, because I can. Remember, everyone (save for those who are dead) participates in voting if they decide to. You cannot vote for yourself.

Night Phase

The Night Phase is for those with special abilities (certain villagers have these, as do the Mafia). The most notable part of this phase is who the Mafia kill. To do your actions, send me a PM on this forum. Make it 100% clear who you are performing your action to. In the subject, put the Day # in there somewhere. For example, the mafia will PM me who they kill each night, if there's a doctor then he will protect someone, etc.

Special Roles

Everyone will receive their role in a PM. For this round (yes, we'll have more rounds later), I will be posting the approximate number of mafia members and what special roles there are. All roles are distributed randomly. No, it's not rigged, and no, I am not going to change the results for friends. I want to hold true to the randomness of the game. So, theoretically, the same person could be mafia 5 rounds in a row.

Town Roles

Townie

(what this role does shown here, actual Townie PMs just say that you're a townie)

You are a townie. You do not have any special powers, but may still try to outwit the mafia. You can also vote to lynch people during the day phase. PM me if you have any questions.

Tracker

The tracker can follow another player at night. The tracker will know who the person he tracked visited.

Doctor

Every night phase, this player can protect one person. Protecting blocks all killing actions done on that person that night phase. A doctor cannot protect himself.

Vigilante

At night, this player can take actions into their own hands and kill someone.

Mafia Roles

Vanilla

Regular mafia guy. Participates in the mafia's discussion and stuff.

The Cult

Cult Leader

The cult leader recruits players into the cult by visiting them at night. Once recruited, a player becomes a cultist. If there are two cultists alive, the cult leader does not have to visit to recruit. If the Cult Leader dies, the whole cult commits suicide. The cult can only recruit one player a night.

Cultist

A player who has been recruited into the cult. The role the player had at the start of the game is replaced with this role when recruited into the cult. Visits other players at night to recruit them. The cult can only recruit one player a night.

3rd Party Roles

Traitor

The traitor has turned his back on the town, and wants the mafia to win. He has no abilities, and must try to throw the town off track in order to win. Wins if the mafia wins. He counts toward the mafia victory (meaning, for if the mafia outnumbers everyone else)

Questions, Comments, Concerns

If you have an questions, post it in the mafia sign-up thread. If I forgot to mention something here, feel free to post about it there too.

Winning Conditions

The town wins if the mafia and cult are dead.

The mafia wins if they outnumber everyone else (traitor is counted as mafia for this purpose).

The cult wins if they outnumber everyone else.

The traitor wins if the mafia wins.

We have 13 players this game.

There are/is:

1 Tracker

1 Doctor

1 Vigilante

6 Townies

2 Vanilla

1 Cult Leader

1 Traitor

Player Status

Hikarusa -Alive (Culted Vanilla)

King Russell -Dead- Night 3- Killed (Culted Townie)

Pride -Dead- Day 1- Fish (Townie)

I Eat Tables -Dead- Night 1- Died (Traitor)

Fayt Zelpher -Alive (Townie)

CATS -Dead- Day 2- Noose (Vigilante)

WeaponsofMassConstruction -Alive (Culted Townie)

Crysta -Dead- Night 2- Owned by a soliloquy (Townie)

Balcerzak -Alive (Culted Doctor)

Ninji -Dead- Day 3- Fate? (Townie)

cheezperson -Alive (Vanilla)

Bizz -Alive (Cult Leader)

Trompe le Monde -Dead- Night 4- Bullets (Tracker)

Edited May 1, 2010 by General Spoon

[General Spoon]

Roles are being distributed, please wait.

Also, this will be a night start.

[General Spoon]

Roles have been distributed.

Night 1 Begins

Please PM me your orders.

[uguu]

annoyed

[General Spoon]

annoyed

Tell me about it.

[Tables]

So, who're we waiting for? And what's my role in this game? *Checks* Oh yeah...

[Percivalé]

Hmmmmm

[Crysta]

I guess we can assume some of the night roles are the more inactive players lol.

[General Spoon]

Night 1 Results

In the dead of the night, I Eat Tables the traitor was killed! You could almost hear the sounds of "Opps" and "Shit."

Day 1 Begins

Finally.

[Balcerzak]

Okay, so here are my first thoughts. We don't have a detective, so any leads we get outside of voting records, thread discussions, etc. are going to be from the Tracker.

There will be two possible cases if the Tracker actually sees the person he's tracking visit someone.

Case 1: The person dies.

Conclusion: He followed either a mafia or a vigilante.

Further conclusion: Probably a good target for lynching.

Case 2: The person lives.

Conclusion: He either followed the doctor or a cultist.

Further conclusion: Not an immediate threat.

Now I've never played in a game with a cult before, but here's my preliminary opinion on them, and I'd love corrections if I'm wrong. The cult are not an (immediate) threat. If you're converted to a cultist, you can still win. The only thing that happens is that your mortality rate has just doubled, as there are now two ways to die on any given night phase. In fact, a (boring) way for every one to be a winner, would be to just not kill anyone, and let the cultists recruit all the mafia and all the townies. This probably won't happen, seeing as the mafia seem to be wanting sole victory, as evidenced by the fact that they're killing people. So eventually we'll have to deal with the cult, but for now the focus should be on the mafia. After the mafia's elimination, we can decide how to handle the cult as a town, either hunt them down, or go and drink the same kool-aid they're drinking.

That said the cult isn't completely powerless. They can remove the empowered townies of their roles. This is bad for everybody except the mafia. I'm sure the cultists wouldn't mind having those three around until after the mafia are dead either, as if the doctor somehow protects their leader, that would be the best possible situation, if the tracker can can a killing role they'll also want it removed from play, and if the vig hits any non-cultist, they'd be thrilled. Unfortunately for us and them, they have no way of knowing in advance if they'll be neutering the town or not.

Does anyone know if the cultists communicate at night? (Spoon?)

[Percivalé]

Now I've never played in a game with a cult before, but here's my preliminary opinion on them, and I'd love corrections if I'm wrong. The cult are not an (immediate) threat. If you're converted to a cultist, you can still win. The only thing that happens is that your mortality rate has just doubled, as there are now two ways to die on any given night phase. In fact, a (boring) way for every one to be a winner, would be to just not kill anyone, and let the cultists recruit all the mafia and all the townies. This probably won't happen, seeing as the mafia seem to be wanting sole victory, as evidenced by the fact that they're killing people. So eventually we'll have to deal with the cult, but for now the focus should be on the mafia. After the mafia's elimination, we can decide how to handle the cult as a town, either hunt them down, or go and drink the same kool-aid they're drinking.

I've played with a cult only one other time before, and I remember being the Tracker and discovering him to be the cult leader in the first place. The next night he died, taking about half of the remaining town with him, and... it was chaotic. So, while I agree that the cult is not an immediate threat, it could become pretty disastrous for the town if we end up with a suicide party.

That being said, judging by the role descriptions, I'd assume that they might be able to communicate at night, but I suppose I'd also ask Spoon for confirmation on this.

It's kind of a relief that the traitor died on the first night though~

[General Spoon]

Oh, sorry about that. The cult can communicate with each other whenever the hell they want. Same goes for the mafia.

[WeaponsofMassConstruction]

Cult is a threat that should be dispatched as soon as possible.

Vote: Balcerzak

[Percivalé]

What the hell, WoMC?

Balcerzak clearly stated that he's never played with a cult before, so he's only trying to gather up some facts >_> That was maybe one of the most irrational moves I've seen in a while. "The cult is a threat, Bal must die!"

EDIT BECAUSE I ACCIDENTALLY MADE A FORUM SMILEY AGAIN and they just bother me

Edited April 27, 2010 by Bizz

[WeaponsofMassConstruction]

Your reaction is noted.

[Percivalé]

Your reaction is noted.

... You're scaring me

It's just that I'd refrain from voting at the moment because the town is so small. I don't understand, what caused you to vote the way you did? I'm curious. Did something in that post kind of glare out at you that I'm not seeing? See, though I would not like to have Balcerzak as an adversary (because he's smart) that was obviously just a long post that was meant to assess the situation at hand. I can understand why you voted him, because for a moment I almost did, too, but it's so early, and with a smaller game you have to be more careful. FYI, your reaction was noted, too; I find it a little odd.

[Fayt Zelpher]

I'd like to hear what other people have to say before I cast a vote, if you guys don't mind telling me your suspicions.

[Percivalé]

I'd like to hear what other people have to say before I cast a vote, if you guys don't mind telling me your suspicions.

I'm feeling uneasy; it's like Weapons knows something that we don't

[uguu]

I feel like No Lynch for now

[Life]

I'm also going for WoMC because of what he said about the cult. What Bal said seems right. The cult will not kill us at night. The Mafia will. If we can kill the mafia members, then the town only has to pick off the cult leader. WoMC saying that the cult is an immediate threat is wrong and it just seems like he'd want the cult gone first (even more than the Mafia which makes me think that he's a Vanilla).

EDIT: Vote changed.

Edited April 27, 2010 by King Russell

[cheezperson]

I gotta agree with Mr. Hantz on that one. I vote WoMC because of a possible word slip on his part and the fact that Bal could be a good ally for the rest of the game.

[WeaponsofMassConstruction]

Thing is, I have plenty of experience with cult, and the longer the stay around, the bigger they grow, and so the more of a threat they become.

Of course, there is no clear way of differentiating between mafia and cult.

Now Bizz strikes me as suspicious, while cheezperson seems more town.

[Tables]

I hate you all.

Have a good game, now I've just been outed from THREE games overnight (one finished, two mafia kills)

[Crysta]

Killing the cult leader seems like it'd be fun. The longer he lives, the bigger that threat becomes, and this is a smaller game. The mafia doesn't grow as far as I can tell. I'm leaning more towards supporting WoMC, to be honest, though not to the point where I wanna lynch Bal yet.

EDIT: Not saying killing the people who can actually kill us aren't a threat, but it'd blow if we focus entirely on the mafia and wind up with a bunch of cultists who steal away the victory.

EDIT PART DEUX: Going to vote for Pride right now. I'm not sure if he's paying attention to this thread or not, and the night phase was slower than usual. I don't see much else to go on besides WoMC's sudden vote for Bal, which I don't find completely without merit.

Edited April 27, 2010 by Crysta

[Balcerzak]

Okay, so I slept on the matter, and reread a few things, and I do think I have to revise my earlier opinion. I was clearly mistaken on what exactly the win conditions for the cult were (which should be obvious upon reading my post, and I'm surprised nobody pointed it out before).

The mafia win conditions of winning when they tie/outnumber the town is simply due to expedience. At that point, victory is unavoidable for them.

For the cult, though, since there is always a risk of death for the cult leader, at least as long as any night killing role remains alive and unculted, I assumed that the game would need to play out much longer for a cult victory, since their unavoidable win is more difficult than the mafia's. As the rules in the topic go however, the cult wins as soon as they outnumber everyone else, regardless of the still possibly existent chances of a night death for the leader.

That let's construct the following worst case scenario (in which the town only lynches other town, and the mafia only kills town):

Day 1: 2 mafia, 2 cult, 8 town

Day 2: 2 mafia, 3 cult, 5 town

Day 3: 2 mafia, 4 cult, 2 town

Day 4: Cult victory

That's... actually a pretty fast win for the cult, and leaves quite a few people out in the cold, in contrast to my previous assumption of near universal victory. Furthermore, as Bizz alluded to earlier, a suicide party at that point (i.e. the town lynches the Cult Leader) would result in short-lived utter confusion followed by immediate mafia victory. So clearly, my initial estimate may not have given the cult's presence its full due respect.

On the other hand, I think we still need to lynch someone today, as with three, maybe four people max, doing any sort of night visiting at all, expecting usable information to come in from the Tracker is kind of foolhardy. Furthermore, since there's a guaranteed cult presence of 2 at this point, if the Tracker follows a cultist from this point forward it's only just going to be a peon cultist, and not the head honcho.

The question now is "who to lynch?" I do like to say, I'm appreciative that a giant irreversible bandwagon didn't form on me while I was away, and Bizz has seemed honestly helpful, and up to her more or less usually twitchy self. I have no particular suspicion of her at the moment.

Weapons, is hard to read. On the one hand, he could have put the poison in the wine in front of me. If he's cult, attacking me because I initially made light of a cult threat (and the fact that he would know, due to communication, that I haven't been inducted) would be a safe move for him to make, as it wouldn't impede his win, and would buy him at least a measure of belief that he's not cult himself. However, it appears his move may have backfired, in leading people to assume that his suspicious behaviour indicates a mafia motive. However, if Weapons actually were mafia, he ought to have predicted this, so clearly I cannot choose the wine in front of him... Oh fuck it. The Weapons situation is confusing at best, mind-shattering at worst. I'll table that for now and think more upon it as the day progresses.

The only other vote out there (not counting no lynch), is Crysta's vote against Pride. While an interesting theory, regarding the inactivity aspect, I know from prior experience that Pride never seems to post much in-thread period. I maybe saw two votes from him the entire Mafia vs Werewolves games (consisting of a single bolded name in each instance), and in Choral mafia, his only participation was sending in vigilante kill orders. So inactivity is his MO, and may not actually mean anything at all. Unless of course, you mean overall forum inactivity, in which case I can't claim for certain, but I think I saw him in the FE4 thread since the game opened, though my memory on this is less than certain, and I would need to double-check it.

Furthermore, we should ask ourselves, which night-roles would necessitate an extension of the phase? Given the existence of two vanilla, I might assume that in lieu of a response from one of them Spoon might just accept the vote of one to act out a kill, treating the other's silence as tacit agreement, but I could be wrong here. Obviously the Cult Leader's night move would be vital on night one, as would the Tracker's and Doctor's. I'm unsure if he would hold up the game waiting for a Vigilante's orders, as they often don't hit the ground running killing. If we were to lynch someone solely on the grounds of it being probably they act in the night phase, would that be to our advantage here? I don't know, I'd say it might be 50/50, or more pessimistically anywhere down as far as 33/66. Then again, those are still better odds than a purely random vote, so the situation definitely ought to be considered in the absence of anything stronger. Anyway, there's a host of other people who haven't been particularly active as well, though I'm not sure exactly whether their lapses fit in well with the suspicious period. I may have to make a visit to the search function to double-check things later this afternoon.

This has been yet again another long-winded post of perhaps questionable substance. I can't seem to make up my mind on who to vote for yet. Expect more to come later.