Prince of Tennis Mafia - Game Over

[Prims]

Don't you love how I can now mask my faction by simply acting like myself.

Last I checked I wasn't suspicious of you in this game until you started acting like yourself.

[Paperblade]

spurned

[Kaoz]

Postgame

Spreadsheet

I decided to do this as audio instead of written, because, well I think you saw how long it took me to get the SSBBM postgame (kinda) done. Feedback on whether that's acceptable for you or whether you would rather wait a bit longer for a written version would be appreciated for future postgames.

Setup (00:05:59)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11187088/PoTM%20Postgame_Setup2.mp3

[Kaoz]

General Notes (00:08:50)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11187088/PoTM%20Postgame_Gameplay.mp3

[Kaoz]

Player specific notes (00:24:08)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11187088/PoTM%20Postgame_Players.mp3

Apologies for any slip ups. Also, my apologies for the triple post, media limit.

[Paperblade]

Primary complaint about audio is that I can't go over it while in a public place (I'm on a train atm).

[Kaoz]

It seems that I only mentioned that Bal was one of three assigned roles, but not that the other two were eclipse and Paperblade.

My apologies and thanks eclipse for catching that.

[Zkirsche]

I approve of the audio style of postgame. It seems quicker to do and is still engaging. I have headphones so I won't encounter the same problem as PB.

And yeah I can see what you mean with the whole activity thing. I just lose interest with a role like vanilla, which just backfires even more. Ibelieve the term is "bored blue" and that sums up this game perfectly for me after C1. I did consider asking to fake claim cop so I would be killed off, but Bal said he ran out of messages and I kinda forgot to ask PB. Looking back, I don't know if it'd have done any good though, as they probably would've shot someone else thinking I'm docced.

[Balcerzak]

Primary complaint about audio is that I can't go over it while in a public place (I'm on a train atm).

I tried transcribing the first two segments, which should also allow for easier quoting/discussion on some specific subsections. I'm not sure I'm really looking forward to doing the whole half-hour-long player segment though... Obviously this won't be word-for-word necessarily, and I'm sure mistakes were made, but it should be a decent first pass. More specific thoughts and comments will probably follow later

---

Hello everyone this is Kaoz with the first part of the Prince of Tennis Mafia postgame.

In this part I will talk about the setup and the reason why this was an invite-only game.

To start with the setup: there were seven town-aligned players, two mafia with two members each, and one third party.

I chose to make the game no outside contact because people tend to be more active there, and I chose cycles over the day/night system because, well we didn't have them in a while, and also it makes the game a bit more faster paced, which I personally like, though obviously it's a matter of preference there.

To talk about about the roles, the town had two investigative roles: a role cop and a watcher/tracker combination and each mafia had one role to counter one of those investigative roles. There were three split roles, basically the player could choose one of two possible role pms every cycle and this would used as the role pm for all intents and purposes. They were meant to allow for a bit more variety in a rather small game, and provide some non-trivial choice to the player. I think that's pretty obvious with the watcher/tracker combination and martyr/reverse martyr combination simply because they are useful in different situations. It's a bit different for Networker/Hunter combination simply because it's a lot less straightforward and in general you would want to use Networker over the Hunter. But Networker isn't necessarily a town-aligned role in a game with more than one mafia so Hunter was provided there as a bit of cover there. The Doctor only had two successful shots basically so that the mafia's kills couldn't be blocked over a longer period of time simply because it greatly imbalances the game, and he turned into a one-shot vig afterwards first of all it fits the character and secondly you could see it as a way to make up for the blocked kills. The mayor was included to allow the town one mislynch without losing lynch control completely, though obviously that isn't true the mayor itself gets lynched but I guess that's an acceptable risk here. The mafia roles were chosen in a way that they counteract the town ones I already touched on that earlier with the investigative roles, but also roleblocker and martyr/reverse martyr fit into that, especially with no way to provide results, where it only says "your target did that and that" and not "X player did so and so" so you wouldn't know if you were redirected for example. Furthermore all of the roles with the exception of ninja were usable as fakeclaims if you wanted to do that and I also provided the mafia with the possibility of learning some role names that weren't in the game in case they didn't feel comfortable with claiming their original ones. The third-party didn't really have a reason to choose one side over the other but could benefit from either side in different ways. So basically he could choose to ally with the town a bit closer to avoid getting lynched himself and instead of scum-hunting maybe to collect some claims, which is what happened. Or he could ally with the mafia to learn their members and then to automatically know who was part of the town.

To talk a little bit about the SMS system it was an attempt to introduce limited outside contact in the game. Mostly because I was searching for possible ways to introduce more people to outside contact games and I will try a few different methods in upcoming games I host for that. Yeah, the town could use it as a way to organize and the mafia could use it to join forces maybe, organize their kills a bit better and stuff like that.

Now for the reason why this was an invite only game. There are three reasons for that. The first one was that I wanted to see if it would have an affect on the activity level and the number of subs I would need. The second one was that if you look at the setup every faction could be put at a great disadvantage in a single cycle the mafia could outright lose the game in a single cycle, the town could theoretically lose lynch control. So I wanted to have as many experienced players as possible for that. Lastly it was also the last game on Serenes Forest for Paperblade and Snike, at least for a while, so I wanted to ensure at least reasonably high level of play there. I hope I didn't anger too many people too miuch with this move. I probably won't do it again for awhile. Maybe next year for another year end game but probably not before that. Yeah, that's it for part 1.

Welcome back to the Prince of Tennis Mafia postgame. In this part I will address some general things regarding the game although some may only be distantly related.

To start off with the example role I provided at the beginning of the game, it apparently confused quite a few people. The reason I neither confirmed nor denied its existence was because Balcerzak mentioned in his role pm that he had some interesting ideas for the game, and he did so right before posting that and I don't really like foiling someone's plan if it isn't absolutely necessary for the game's balance.

The second thing I would like to address is rule 7, the inspection rule. That rule will be in all of the games I host, without exceptions, simply because I think that in general you should never really take it for granted that your result is accurate and it's more or less a reminder of that. I would theoretically be okay with not including it yet still including things like godfather but according to the survey we had some time ago that is generally not well liked so that's why it's always there.

Then the next thing I would like to address is actually something that happened midgame, the encrypted message eclipse posted and I have to wonder why nobody questioned that at all, like you took it kind of for granted that it's alright like that, yet you really didn't have much of a chance to talk to other people outside of the SMS system and that was only 1200 characters per player at best, so I was surprised that no-one came out and like wondered how she could possibly clear someone that way and how she got that information that someone was clear in the first place etc.

Then I also want to talk a bit about meta-gaming in general because it was quite apparent at some points in the game. This is more like personal opinion on the subject, others may have different opinions. I think that in general it's accepted as long as it's used sparingly but it's completely useless in my opinion when it's overdone. Simply because people can change the way they act from one game to another. For one, people can evolve their playstyles and it won't be the same any more so you cannot rely on it, and secondly they can just pretend to play like they did in a previous game in which they were town if you're relying on metagaming then and we all know that's not that hard to do. Examples are games with post restrictions where people usually don't have problems following it.

Another thing I would like to address are town leaders. This game kinda allowed for them because of the limited outside contact. I don't think it would work so well either if the game was larger or if the mafia had survived just a bit longer, simply because eventually you will run out of messages and that's the appeal of the town leader in the first place which kind of gets destroyed that way, but yeah, I also wanted to ask you guys if you think it should be further limited or if it was fine that way. Possible limitations would be that players can't roleclaim privately, like at all, you can't say "I'm the inspector" or something like that, or alternatively that players could only receive a limited amount of SMS per phase. There are multiple ways to do that, the most simple one would be to just have a limit of say 3 messages or 2 messages and then as soon as that's reached it's over and the person who tries to send that player gets an error message or something like that. Or you could also store the messages until the end of the phase and then either try to make them priority based, based on their content like... I don't exactly how you'd do that I'd still have to work it out a bit... but of course that the more important messages go first and the less important ones go last, or you could randomize them. The latter two methods would be more useful, or more fair rather, if you consider timezones, whereas the first one would probably allow for a bit more freedom and be a bit more realistic if you want to have that taken into account.

Lastly for this part I also want to talk a bit more about fake-claims. I've done so already in the Super Smash Brothers Mafia postgame which went up yesterday which you may or may not have seen. The mafia in this game as I said before had 75% of their fakeclaims laid out for them. Like the roleblocker could claim roleblocker if they wanted to, the martyr could claim martyr, and the, what else did we have, the jack-of-all trades could for example claim safeguard. I admit the roleblocker is a bit iffy because it's not generally considered a town role by everyone but it certainly exists and certainly a plausible claim. I'm not sure why this generally wasn't done here. For example, the bulletproof claim that Strawman used... In theory I think that bulletproof is a rather good claim for a mafia and I've frequently used it myself in the past, but after a ninja flips though and you see that, or you can anticipate that there will be a watcher or a tracker in this game, I think it's not the best idea to claim a passive role simply because those roles will see when you kill. So it's a better idea to claim a visiting role and I mean you can't really prove for example with the tracker... that say the last phase of the game like how strawman killed paperblade, and assuming he would have claimed safeguard instead you couldn't have proven it at all that he was really the killer. Like he was a possible subject, but not a definite one. Of course it's a bit different with the watcher if there's simply nobody else visited the person that day, but I think you see where I'm coming from when it's limiting the risks overall. So that's it for part 2.

[Percivalé]

>Logic

I have no idea what that word means~

[eclipse]

It means "If Psych is acting like his usual self, and making ridiculous claims, does this mean he's mafia, town, or a troll role whose only purpose is to cause a mislynch?"

Thanks for posting this Kaoz.

[Kaoz]

>Logic

I have no idea what that word means~

I'm sure you have more or less logical reasons for your suspicons (even if you're not aware of them), otherwise you would perform far worse in the long run.

[Psych]

It means "If Psych is acting like his usual self, and making ridiculous claims, does this mean he's mafia, town, or a troll role whose only purpose is to cause a mislynch?"

Thanks for posting this Kaoz.

>New game play method

[Prims]

Amusingly, I actually wondered if Psych's odd insistence on there being multiple scumteams was a scumslip, but I never actually brought it up.

Oh well.

[Balcerzak]

Welcome back again to the Prince of Tennis Mafia postgame. In this last part I will give my general opinions on the players in the order they are in the spreadsheet.

First off is Naglfar, whose greatest contribution certainly was the Snike lynch. I believe it was mostly based on gut feeling, or at least I haven't seen any indication it was otherwise. You could have been a bit more active overall, all things conidered. Like, a lot of your posts felt a bit... spare and you could have contributed a bit more continuously. Also there were some points during the game where you should have defended your own opinion a bit more than you actually did, I think I know which ones I'm talking about. Mostly regarding your suspicions, like it just doesn't look very good when you vote for someone and then unvote with neither being a very strong reason.

Next up is Levity. Overall solid play, I don't have much to say here. She was active and made some good points. Something I noticed is that you often justify things with gut feelings and less with any actual logical process. I would maybe suggest that you keep a spreadsheet for yourself: maybe with the people you voted for, and at what times you voted for them, and the reasons you voted for them. So bascially that you can, if you want, look back on it later during the game and still know why you were doing what you did. And secondly, maybe to formulate your opinion a bit more so that others can see where you're coming from.

Next is Kay and Proto. Kay was pretty inactive during the first cycle and considered asking for a sub. I decided to add Proto to the role PM rather than sub him in completely because I wanted to have a slight experiment and see whether two semi-active players would produce as much content as a single active one which obviously wasn't the case but yeah, I was interested in that. They consulted each other a bit for targets which is the second aspect of this shared role that's positive, that you can exchange your thoughts with another person and see whether they make sense. Yeah, but overall too inactive. Kay had I think 12 posts or so and Proto had like 2 after he got subbed in. If you don't consider the vote-only phase (Cycle 4) and mod posts or posts of players that aren't playing as well as cut down a bit on posts where people double posted a lot, you get an average of approximately 16 to 17 posts per cycle per player, and yeah it's not really good when you're below that over the overall course of the game. I think their choices for protection were sensible at least and given that the doctor shouldn't be too aggressive anyway it kind of worked out in the end.

Next we have Prims. Made some very good points for two mafia factions after the Cycle 1 lynch. I intervened a bit there because of the color. The rest were still very valid points and I didn't want you to drop them, but just because of my choice of color I don't thik you should conclude anything about the setup or anything like that. I could make the town purple if I felt like it. And I felt that you kind of dropped the idea after my post which isn't something I wanted to reach actually and I'm sorry if I confused you a bit there. In general don't interpret anything to my posts that I didn't say. It's usually something you should take head-on. Otherwise played very well, was active and contributed a lot and made some pretty good reads overall, so I don't have much to say here either.

Paperblade. I think I should explain why he played first. I put him on the player list without asking him, at all, or I threatened him rather that I would send him a PM whether he wanted it or not. And I convinced him more or less to play the game at least for the first cycle and then see whether he still wants to sub out or whether to continue playing and thankfully it was the latter. I also designed the game slightly with him in mind because he's not too fond of no outside contact games. That's where my idea for limited outside contact originally came from. And also I gave him a role that at least allowed him to talk to one person per phase. As for his performance, maybe you should assume a little less about the setup at times, you should realize what I'm talking about or at least consider more possiblities than just the one. In case the primary one doesn't turn out to be true and don't base too much off of it. Otherwise, also very solid play. I can't really say anything bad about what he did otherwise.

Next up is Kevin. Definitely overreacted to the two votes at the beginning of cycle one. Otherwise I found him solid in the second half of cycle 1 and te first half of cycle 2 like after he dropped that and got a bit calmer about the situation. Went inactive afterwards which was probably the reason why he couldn't think of any reason why he shouldn't be lynched in the end and had to get lucky there that Paperblade deduced something else. Especially if you have a vanilla role like this time it's certainly a good idea to stay active throughout the game, I think you should work on that a bit. Your activity level is very inconsistant at times and yeah, without that you don't really have a chance to defend yourself against the lynch and also maybe consider playing a bit less aggressive if you notice that you're pissing people off with it. Usually will bite you in the ass later on.

Next up is eclipse. Two very different cycles I found. Like... concentrated too much on kevin during the first cycle. You mentioned your opinions on others but they were kind of only in one sentence and kind of to the side. And I had a feeling you cast those thoughts aside pretty quickly again. Got a lot better after the first summary you made and I think that helped you out a lot in organizing your thoughts. If you might recall what we were talking about before the game, about anonymous games, I think if this game was anonymous you wouldn't have spent so much time dealing with kevin during cycle 1 or even during the first half of cycle 2, so maybe you want to look at that and try to distance yourself a bit more from the persons themselves and look really only at what they say and then don't get too hung up over past games. Cycle 2 was a lot better than cycle 1 I think that being able to talk to Paperblade helped also a lot in this. And I disagree with regarding Paperblade as clear because of this role especially because you thought that it was possible that there were more, 2 mafias, and Prims made some good points for it, but... yeah otherwise the encryption was a clever idea and overall after the whole kevin thing was over I think that you did pretty well.

Then we are coming to the mafia. First of all the spot that had 3 people playing in 3 cycles. To start off with Tables. You should work a bit on getting rid of that habit I told you about and when I reread the game I really had the feeling you were having a big neon sign over your head that read "Hello, I'm scum, lynch me." And yeah, you shouldn't overdo that or well you'll see, you saw how it turned out in the other game. Yeah, sad that you had to sub out, got ill. Otherwise this might have turned out differently. Tables told me that he wanted to drop some hints regarding Lefties and Righties into the thread during the last part of cycle 1 and try to contact the other mafia, like they had thought that there was a second one right at the beginning. Or both mafias rather had thought that. And yeah, it's kind of a shame that no-one else tried doing that.

Then Psych. Please don't sign up to any games if you're not willing to catch up to what's happened so far. And really the most he did was make the mafias' lives, and especially Core's life a little more dfficult. I'm not sure why you decided to kill eclipse either, during the second cycle. Like, she was probably one of the worst kill targets. You could have taken advantage of the fact that the encryption was a bit shady overall, and especially I don't think it's a good idea to shoot someone who outright says "I will clear someone else when I die." That's not really great. As for the nurse claim, I already covered fake claims a bit, as for the nurse claim I thought at first that when done cleverly it had some potential, like for example outing the doctor or forcing a mislynch or something, even though I have to admit that I forgot about the SMS there for a second, like that the doctor could claim privately. But in the end it turned out to not really be a good claim, and yeah as I said before I don't know why you didn't just claim martyr or reverse martyr, they're perfectly fine roles for town, you could have proved them easily.

Then the third one was Core. I thrust him into a rather difficult position, I have to admit. I'm sorry about that. At least managed to get the lynch off of himself for a cycle. Yeah, afterwards he got lynched because of his claims. Not much he could do against it, he tried to defend for a bit but overall didn't really work out.

Then the second role in that mafia was Ether or Strawman. Ether also had to sub out right at the beginning so not much to say about him. For Strawman I think that Bal was a decent target for the silencing in cycle 2, but something I was wondering about, that maybe I should have mentioned in the last part also, was why nobody wondered why there were no silences during the cycles 1, 3, and 4. Like, it's understandable if you say it could be odd/even night silencer, as strange as that might appear, but if you're only have one cycle where it happened, you might want to consider other possibilities like Jack of all Trades, and I think that also had the possibility for you to escape that lynch. Like... you could have... well something I would have done, I don't know how well it would have worked, but driver would have been a possibility, that you were driven and that... or well you knew how I post results, that I only say "your target did that and that", and not that "X player did that and that" so, that would have been somewhat a viable alternative, but in general you could have just claimed safeguard as I said before. Lastly, it's not really a good sign when I ask you "why did you kill someone?" and you don't know, like if you don't know why your partner says they want to kill someone, then you shold ask them.

Next up is Snike. Unlike Paperblade I didn't have to force him to play, though I should probably explain why he wasn't subbed out. The reason for that is simply because I offered him the same deal I did with Paperblade, like play until then end of cycle 1 and then see whether you still want to play and if not then I'll sub you out. And he ended up being slightly more motivated at the end of cycle one so that's why he stayed in. Made some very good posts when he was actully playing, like I think if he had paid more attention, especially during cycle one, that it would have been a much more difficult game for the town, and something that really could have made the town's life difficult was if he had voted Naglfar at the end of cycle 2, I saw you were around for that, because it would have brought the town... it would have been 4 town, 2 mafia, and one 3rd party after that because of the forced no lynch the next cycle. In otherwords the town had only really 1 mislynch left and at that point Strawman for example was considered rather clear.

JB seemed kind of indecisive at the beginning and he ended up contradicting himself a bit at times. Overall started doing something against the votes on him too late. I think it would have been better if you had claimed a stronger role, like cop or doctor instead of backup. Simply because it gives the town an incentive to actually unvote you, and even if someone had counterclaimed, still during cycle 1, you would have had that person as cop or doctor or whatever. If things worked out better than you could have even lived another cycle if the cop or doctor wasn't around to counterclaim. So yeah, that's so much for that.

That leaves us with Bal for the last one. He stayed in the middle of most people's suspicion list for the first cycle, which was optimal for his role. Originally he planned to side with the mafia but decided against that after his cycle 1 inspection results and the lynch. He has posted a huge wall of text about that in his role pm, I won't go over all of that because it's just too long, but he's welcome to post that by himself. He decided to become town leader at the beginning of cycle 2, which was quite risky, but could help him out a big deal, of course, by getting claims quickly. He had hoped on the doctor's protection as well but that didn't turn out to be that way, not that it hurt in the end. He was also a bit inactive at times, yet just active enough to play his role properly, which I had kind of anticipated, and was one of the reasons I gave him this specific role. Balcerzak was one of 3 people who I specifically assigned roles to. He got this one mostly because of his activity level and because I thought he'd do well with it. Overall the mafia was lynched a bit too fast for him, he couldn't be 100% sure in his last action, and he also reflected on that in said post in his role pm, saying that he maybe should have tried to get the town to mislynch a bit more, which is certainly possible, but then again, he'd also run the risk of the town not trusting him anymore. He mentioned also that he felt he played this role incorrectly because of that, which I don't necessarily agree with because it's a tough choice to say that I'll go against the town when I'm in that position. So yeah, overall I think he did quite well, made very little mistakes, his risky play paid off. Yeah.

That leaves us with the MVPs. For the town I would say that Prims and Paperblade, I can't really decide between those two. They were both very active, made very little mistakes, and contributed a whole lot to the town's victory. Yeah, I don't think I have to say much else to that. Mafia MVP, would probably be Snike if he was just a little more active and I think he could have prevented his lynch just by that, now that he isn't it it's Core instead. At least he managed to get the lynch of him for one cycle. The overall MVP I would say is Bal, simply because his role was probably the most difficult one, he managed to win with it still and did a very good job as I said before. Yeah, after the game was over, Kay asked me whether I was satisfied with the quality of play in this game. My answer to that question is "No", if I was satisfied then this file would be one minute long instead of twenty because I wouldn't have anything to critique. Yeah, I think that's about it. This is Kaoz, signing out, I hope you enjoyed playing this game and that you will continue playing here in 2012. Let's move forward without hesitation and Happy New Year.

I suppose as long as I'm silenced and can't really do anything I should at least babble on in here and explain my actions.

My initial hope for this role was to have scanned a mafia, claimed that I was survivor cop and wanted to joint with them. To this end, I needed someone I felt like I could trust to broker an agreement with and aimed for Bizz. I had all kinds of delusions of grandeur about taking the scum path to victory, even.

When C2 flipped that we successfully lynched scum (JB), I felt this plan was no longer viable, due to the shift in power balance, and that I needed to lead the town to victory. The fact that Bizz flipped town didn't help matters either. After a bit of a flumux, I felt that if I projected myself into a position of prominence as town leader I could guarantee night protection in the form of doctor, hopefully enabling me to live long enough to collect my reports. (In addition, I didn't think that Bizz would necessarily do the best job organizing the town as my clear, given her distaste for OC. This may be an unfair assessment.)

I probably played this wrong, as the ideal case would have been to lead mislynches and extend the game-time to whittle down the playing field as small as possible. (At 3-man lylo this role would likely have an easy win.) However there's always the unfortunate tendency for Town Leaders to die anyway, even despite there being doctors, or other provisions. Also, while fairly suspicious of Snike, and thus willing to let the Nag vote slide as mutually beneficial, I actually didn't completely anticipate him flipping scum either.

When it came this far along, I was running some math and if it had been a 4:1:7 spread for maf:me:town, while the C1 no-kill would ensure two mislynches before an easy joint would be possible, I did feel that the set-up had to be either 3:1:8 or 3:2:7, and with what was apparently Core locked down for mafia I felt it was worth going out on a limb. If he was the final mafia and the game ended without me ever attempting to meet my win condition then I would lose by default and that would just be pathetic.

At this point, my gut tells me I need to hunt around for a second self-aligned, though I suppose if it was indeed a 2:2:1:7 split, a second mafia faction (righties?) becomes possible, as that would have ruled out the easy joint idea. I more inclined to believe Kevin's vanilla claim because it came relatively promptly and before vanilla existence was common knowledge, though it may indeed have been somewhat hinted. For this reason I'm selecting Strawman's Bulletproof as my investigation.

While losing eclipse was the second best thing that could have happened for town (in terms of power roles), I will admit I was sad my (lame) attempt to paint Strawman as having a useful role failed to bait the trap to get them to shoot him. This plan would have obviously failed if he was in fact mafia, or if they read through my ruse.

I suppose I could waste my scans on obvtown players like Prims, but I foresee catching a lot of flack from the town for that, and while a lynch isn't particularly probable, I think it would be safer for my survival to forego risky play and continue to pass myself off as pure town cop.

I have to admit getting silenced was a royal bitch, as it forced me to use up all of my SMS leaving me with no recourse in case I actually do scan scum, and basically forcing me to out c4 (provided I live and the game hasn't ended).

I probably also let slip too many soft-claim tells about my cop nature in the c1 discussions, so I'm just happy I didn't get roleblocked and managed to get away as far as I have with this. Paper apparently picked up on my ploy right away, but I guess that was to be expected.

I am not entirely sure I'll be able to win this in the end, but it is a great challenge, and I'll still be trying as hard as I can.

The reason for my c2 investigation of Paper was because "strange role" felt like it could have been independent, and I was definitely looking out for that. Also, I did feel that as a backup Town Leader he would be hands down the best choice on the field. I should apologize to Prims for ruling him out and cutting short his dreams of glorious OC experience, but before I noticed he'd started to take up the mantle, I'd already been trying to cram what needed to be said into 200 characters (not always the easiest, and some of my attempts at compression backfired it seems). Also, I didn't have him as explicitly clear, though I guess the ninja thing should have tipped the scales enough...

Eh, postgame will be interesting regardless. I guess I'll let you off with this for now.

I will also say I was mighty impressed eclipse used all her SMS on c2. For a vanilla townie, that was the best thing she could do. Dying without having made contact would have been like a vig dying with unspent bullets. She did a fantastic job in the role she was given. At the time I was frustrated with her because it kept me from getting clarification, but that more than likely was just me being selfish rather than actual fault on her part.

[Kaoz]

Thanks Bal. Very much appreciated.

[Prims]

I read through the transcription but I don't really have anything interesting to say about it! I'm fine sharing town MVP with Paperblade, I felt he played pretty well. Bal's usage of his role was pretty clever as well.

Overall, I had fun, so thanks for the game.

[eclipse]

Oh, right, what that message of mine said. . .

The first encoded part: "I'm vanilla, and"

The second encoded part: "Paperblade is my clone and clear"

I lied about my SMS messages - thanks to Paper's NOC role, I had three left. One went to Snike, one went to Paper for reasons I no longer remember, and one went to Bal to claim my role. I chose to "out" my lack of SMS messages, because if Paper needed to clear himself, I found a way to squeeze all the RSA keys into four SMS messages.

[Prims]

How exactly was Paperblade clear? Scum Neighborizers can exist (I've been one before), so I don't see anything that should have proved him as town to you. Am I overlooking something really obvious?

[eclipse]

Game balance. I'm not sure how a neighborizer works in CARA, but this was full OC. I kept a bunch of logs in my role PM.

[Prims]

I've never seen a Neighborizer in a CARA game.

All my experience with Neighborizers comes from a Touhou forum which I first started playing Mafia on. The variants I've seen just open up a quicktopic with the target for the following day, with no indication of alignment. All rules that would apply in the game thread apply to the quicktopic (meaning no copy and pasting role PMs).

Edited January 2, 2012 by Prims

[eclipse]

Hmm, this was something similar, but instead of a QT, I knew who I was dealing with. Here's what I knew when I saw the, erm, notification in my role PM:

1. I was vanilla

2. JB was a mafia untraceable

This told me that there were probably townies with roles, and I wasn't one of them. Furthermore, it hinted that the mafia probably had roles that could screw with the town directly. The majority of my past mafia experience is OC, and I know just how powerful being able to converse privately with someone is. Paperblade, like me, started with OC, and he pulled a hell of a victory in his first OC game (multifaction, no less). From this, I felt that mafia OC coordinator (especially Paperblade, of all people) would've unbalanced the game way too much in the mafia's favor.

[Balcerzak]

This took longer than expected because I wasn't giving top priority to thoughts on postgame replies, until I had some spare time.

Some replies to some of the specific comments in the audio postgame,

The Doctor only had two successful shots basically so that the mafia's kills couldn't be blocked over a longer period of time simply because it greatly imbalances the game, and he turned into a one-shot vig afterwards first of all it fits the character and secondly you could see it as a way to make up for the blocked kills.

At first when I was listening to the file I had thought you said he would turn into a one-shot Weak, and assumed a Weak Doctor, which while it traditionally means they die if they target a mafia, for some reason I thought maybe they just died regardless on the "3rd protect". I think it wasn't until I visited the spreadsheet that I realized my mishearing. While I cannot comment at all on the flavor, I'm not really sure that a 1-shot vig is really the right move there. After getting off 2 successful protects, it's going to be well into the game, and while yes it does put another kill on the table to prevent stagnation, that vig shot will be coming in with a lot of information and be low probability to misfire, which isn't helping the balance toward the mafia-side any. That said, it was a complete non-issue, and that was just an initial gut reaction without running any numbers.

[invite Only] I hope I didn't anger too many people too miuch with this move.

I personally don't see any problems with hosting an Invite game every now and again, nor do I take issue with the practice of matching roles to players. As long as it's not done all of the time, sometimes a little variety can be a good spice. I at least wasn't angered at all, and actually had just assumed you were having trouble filling slots when you had initially come soliciting my interest.

Then the next thing I would like to address is actually something that happened midgame, the encrypted message eclipse posted and I have to wonder why nobody questioned that at all, like you took it kind of for granted that it's alright like that, yet you really didn't have much of a chance to talk to other people outside of the SMS system and that was only 1200 characters per player at best, so I was surprised that no-one came out and like wondered how she could possibly clear someone that way and how she got that information that someone was clear in the first place etc.

To be fair, I did give this some consideration, but I also wasn't the typical case because she did provide her claim via SMS. I considered the possibility that she may have been trying to trap me by saying lynching her would provide a clear (despite claiming vanilla). If I had followed through on that easy mislynch, I figured she'd call me out on my motives, and thus I absolutely couldn't lynch her. There was really no-way to reconcile that for me with her claim of vanilla, which I actually trusted a fair deal at that point, based on kevin's claims, and her comments about "only room enough for one useless townie". So I was pretty sure she wasn't an "You know that Character X is in the Game and is Aligned with the Town" knowledge role (what's that called again, Neighbors?) which she could then have conceivably by SMS divined who was who, and thus clear. Also, I probably didn't actually waste as much time trying to crack the code as I let on, and while I was fully aware it probably wasn't Blowfish, I had ended up doing the wikipedia crawl, so I figured I'd name-drop random things for kicks.

In short, you're probably right, in that there should have been a lot more public doubt on that matter, but it never ended up mattering due to other circumstances.

For Strawman I think that Bal was a decent target for the silencing in cycle 2, but something I was wondering about, that maybe I should have mentioned in the last part also, was why nobody wondered why there were no silences during the cycles 1, 3, and 4.

It was conceivable that during Cycle 1, a silencer may wish to idle to avoid being tracked, as it was a no-kill night, and I'd heard somebody try to tell me that roleblockers should idle N0 if no kills (which I personally take issue with and disagree, but apparently there is a different camp of opinion, so I wasn't ruling it out). I did make a brief question of Strawman after he was tracked doing the kill, of whether he had to forgo silencing if he was busy killing, but despite giving up to the lynch, he wasn't tilting his hand on that matter, which made me understandably disappointed. I don't think I'd ever encounted scum-Jack before, so I hadn't considered that, which would have actually made my Cycle 4 nerves a lot calmer, as I was somewhat worried about where the Silencer had gone.

Some IM convo with Bizz from after xmas but before the postgame was posted,

(11:41:29 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": Prince of Tennis went so well, haha!

(11:42:05 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": I felt like all I really did was clear Kay to Prims though rofl

(11:43:25 PM) Balcerzak: It was truly a charmed game. I was so worried at the end for nothing though, lol.

(11:49:07 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": Haha, I'm a little surprised there was a third-party at all

(11:49:15 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": To be honest

(11:49:19 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": That was a neat setup though

(11:52:41 PM) Balcerzak: It was definitely a nice change of pace from some of the monster games with tons of people

(11:53:08 PM) Balcerzak: I almost didn't sign up for it when Kaoz asked, due to worrying about playing a lot of games in a row and such

(11:53:20 PM) Balcerzak: but it was fun, and it was quick, and I enjoyed myself

(11:53:22 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": I was thinking of making a twenty or nineteen-person game in the future.

(11:53:34 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": Ohhh

(11:53:39 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": I enjoyed myself too, actually

(11:53:57 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": I got in because eclipse went asking me for one more person to fill in the spot

(11:54:06 PM) Balcerzak: that's good to hear.

(11:54:11 PM) Balcerzak: Sorry you got roleblocked N1

(11:54:15 PM) Balcerzak: *hug*

(11:54:23 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": And I couldn't find anyone and kaoz saw that I had renounced my retirement

(11:54:29 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": -hugs-

(11:54:37 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": It happened three times in a row at cara

(11:54:45 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": I should be used to it by now

(11:54:49 PM) Balcerzak: oh, is that what you were asking whispy about, and he mentioned dgg might be interested in a noc?

(11:55:05 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": Yeah

(11:55:26 PM) Balcerzak: well, I'm glad you played instead

(11:55:31 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": But it was a nogo apparently and I was going to try keltik too

(11:55:36 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": And then kaoz asked me

(11:55:37 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": Yeah!

(11:56:00 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": It was a nice change of pace for noc, even though there was a town leader kinda thing going on

(11:56:13 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": I think it was because I was town for the first time in a long time

(11:56:20 PM) Balcerzak: I kind of apologize for that, but I had my reasons

(11:56:30 PM) Balcerzak: the sms limit did make things an interesting twist

(11:56:39 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": Nooo, it was a really neat strategy

(11:56:42 PM) Balcerzak: I was so pissed when I was silenced

(11:56:51 PM) Balcerzak: I should have seen it coming, though

(11:56:59 PM) Balcerzak: and better that then them having hitmanned me

(11:57:08 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": And I almost outed myself but refrained from doing so because deep down I trusted you

(11:57:25 PM) Balcerzak: I was very careful to say alignment cop, just in case

(11:57:29 PM) Balcerzak: I'm glad you didn't out too

(11:57:31 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": And after you got silenced you were pretty much cleared at least

(11:57:35 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": Hahaha

(11:58:03 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": Well I was very careful not to even softclaim because I was so scared

(11:58:08 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": And got roleblocked anyway

(11:58:38 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": But oh well

(11:58:53 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": I noticed that whenever I random vote d1 I vote mafia at least once

(11:59:03 PM) Balcerzak: haha

(11:59:19 PM) Balcerzak: I thought I remembered you mentioning getting third party vibes from me at one point too

(11:59:24 PM) Balcerzak: I was like... hmmmm

(11:59:47 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": Yeaah, my D1 vibes are usually on the money

(11:59:54 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": And D2 I second-guess myself

(11:59:57 PM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": And get a lot wrong

(12:00:21 AM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": I need to learn to trust my instincts rather than get too reckless

(12:00:30 AM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": Like not outing myself, for example

(12:00:37 AM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": That made me feel nice haha

(12:01:27 AM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": Your strategy was so awesome though

(12:01:57 AM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": Honestly i'm kinda glad i got roleblocked because it semi-cleared me lol

(12:02:13 AM) Balcerzak: haha, thanks. Apparently paper saw through it and guessed I was the cop, though.

(12:02:17 AM) Balcerzak: lucky for me he was town

(12:02:44 AM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": Honestly I almost thought you were the cop too

(12:03:02 AM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": Well, alignment cop anyway

(12:03:20 AM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": But I though a rolecop and alignment cop in such a small setup might have been odd

(12:03:32 AM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": And I haven't played an SF mafia in a while so yeah

(12:04:03 AM) Balcerzak: I think I was probably supposed to have played more mafia-sided as the third party

(12:04:10 AM) Balcerzak: but then cycle 1 lynch happened

(12:04:17 AM) Balcerzak: and I decided that was a bad idea

(12:04:55 AM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": Maybe I read your mind beforehand on cycle one and that's why I was hesitant to claim, haha

(12:05:01 AM) ~Levi-tah]-- "I'm ever so clever!": /shot

(12:05:04 AM) Balcerzak: lol

Other than that, I'm not sure I can think of anything else to really say on this game further.