Chess Mafia [Game Ended - 3rd party wins]

[BuJaber]

(No more excuses for anybody)

[BuJaber]

Vote Count:

Skoffin (2) - Pikanchion, ZaBeast

With 5 alive, it takes 3 to lynch.
Deadline: Sat 16th Dec, 4 am CC Time.

[ZaBeast]

@mandy
I was not claiming in case there was a 3rd scum, but given how unlikely that sounds, I'll save you the trouble of reading back (if you haven't already) by claiming (chances are pika is the king, so you'd know who the remaining scum is if there's another one anyways).

1- I am a black pawn. VT, but if I live long enough (up to D3), I get to chose a role (like pawns in chess). Which is why I think mitch's claim is believable. A bishop, that is a purely vanilla VT.
2- I chose to switch to cop (flavor cop) and got a rogue result on skoff last night (N3 I got a not rogue result on Rag)

[Skoffin]

There is no point in me claiming as we all know that Mitch will quickhammer me when he gets here.
If anyone actually wants me to claim and we can discuss this logically then someone can unvote me, otherwise let mitch come along and ruin the game with his impulsiveness.

[Skoffin]

By the way, if we go by the logic that I am lying AND Beast is telling the truth - the idea here is that there is one unkillable player, there was a doctor, we had a cop, we had a vanilla that became a cop and "there is no scum power to remove votes".

In this overpowered town, what exactly were the scum powers to make up for this?

[ZaBeast]

1-There is a vote blocker and i'd bet my money on you
2- The unkillable player had the lynch of our cop as his wincon
3-I turned cop only after D3. In a 9-player game, that still leaves a lot of time to get killed; thor was a pawn also, maybe there was some special ability he'd unlock if he managed to survive until then.

[ZaBeast]

1-There is a vote blocker and i'd bet my money on you

Or at least (and most probably) a 1-shot vote blocker

[Skoffin]

A 1-shot ability would not be enough powerful to balance the game with what town apparently have.
But more bothersome is that you think I am a super shitty player that would throw away their ability for no real gain.

I'd just like it noted for the record that, for some reason, Beast is not interested in hearing what my claim is.

[madmitch]

VOTE SKOFFIN

[Skoffin]

You're a stupid f*ck Mitch

[madmitch]

@ I love you too

[BuJaber]

Skoffin, Red Rook (Rogue Doctor) has been Lynched!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Day 5 has ended!

Final Vote Count:

Skoffin (3) - Pikanchion, ZaBeast, madmitch


Night 5 has begun!!

You have just under 48 hours to submit your night actions. (Dec 13th, 8 am CC Time)

[BuJaber]

In order to save time, I will end the game because there is only one logical end no matter how long it takes, and that is that mitch kills beast, leaving pika, mitch and mandy alive. There is no other way to end the game unless people specifically go against their wincon and lynch themselves/ beast lynches mandy / pika decides which team he wants to win and lose his wincon.

Pika the Checker Piece (3rd Party) has won!




First of all the dead chat: https://www.quicktopic.com/52/H/yFmdDuVeVPY9B
Mafia chat: https://www.quicktopic.com/52/H/v3tJk9DXpM7nQ

Roles

1. Mandalorian2298: You are King Hector. You are the righteous leader of the army (Town).

You are Bullet-Proof. (You cannot be killed with a night action)

You must survive until the end of the game. If you are lynched at any point during the game you and your team loses. You win when all Rogues are eliminated.

2. Ragian: You are the Black Knight. You are part of King Hector’s army (Town). Your role is Cop.

Each night you may investigate one player to find out if they are “Rogue” (Scum) or “Not Rogue” (Not Scum).

You win when all Rogues are eliminated. Your team automatically loses if King Hector dies.

3. dakky21: You are the Black Rook. You are part of King Hector’s army (Town). Your role is Doctor.

Each night you may choose one player to protect. They will be immune to any attempts to kill them in the same night. You may choose to protect yourself.

You win when all Rogues are eliminated. Your team automatically loses if King Hector dies.

4. DirtyDishSoap: You are the Black Pawn. You are part of King Hector’s army (Town).

You have no special abilities. However, if you survive until Day 3 you can pick one of these 3 powers for the remainder of the game:
• Cop: Investigate one player per night to find out if they are “Rogue” (Scum) or “Not Rogue” (Not Scum).
• Doctor: Choose one player per night to protect. They will survive any kill attempts for that night.
• Vigilante: Kill one player per night. (50% success chance).

You win when all Rogues are eliminated. Your team automatically loses if King Hector dies.

5. Flores/ZaBeast: You are the Black Pawn. You are part of King Hector’s army (Town).

You have no special abilities. However, if you survive until Day 3 you can pick one of these 3 powers for the remainder of the game:
• Cop: Investigate one player per night to find out if they are “Rogue” (Scum) or “Not Rogue” (Not Scum).
• Doctor: Choose one player per night to protect. They will survive any kill attempts for that night.
• Vigilante: Kill one player per night. (50% success chance).

You win when all Rogues are eliminated. Your team automatically loses if King Hector dies.

6. madmitch: You are the Red Queen. You are the Rogue leader (Scum). Your role is Blind Bloodthirsty Killer. Your modifier is Bullet-Proof x1.

Blind: You are arrogant and self-centered; you do not know who your fellow rogues are, and you do not communicate with them.

Bloodthirsty Killer: You MUST choose one player each night to kill. If you do not or miss the night deadline I will choose a random target for you.

Bullet-Proof x1: You will survive the first time someone tries to kill you in the night.

You win when Hector’s army is no longer the majority. (For example, if 5 players are alive and only 2 of them are town; scum wins). You also win at any time if King Hector is eliminated.

7. Skoffin: You are the Red Rook. You are one of the Rogues (Scum). Your role is Doctor.

Each night you may choose one player to protect. They will be immune to any attempts to kill them in the same night. You may choose to protect yourself.

You win when Hector’s army is no longer the majority. (For example, if 5 players are alive and only 2 of them are town; scum wins). You also win at any time if King Hector is eliminated.

Thorthoth is your fellow Rogue. You may communicate with them during the night.
Each night you and your fellow rogues will choose one player to kill.

This is your scum chat topic: https://www.quicktopic.com/52/H/v3tJk9DXpM7nQ

madmitch is the Rogue leader. They do not know who their fellow rogues are. You will not be able to communicate with them.

8. Thorthoth: You are the Red Pawn. You are one of the Rogues (Scum).

You have no special abilities. However, if you are alive and your team successfully kills a player on Night 2 you will gain their ability (if any).

You win when Hector’s army is no longer the majority. (For example, if 5 players are alive and only 2 of them are town; scum wins). You also win at any time if King Hector is eliminated.

Skoffin is your fellow Rogue. You may communicate with them during the night.
Each night you and your fellow rogues will choose one player to kill.

This is your scum chat topic: https://www.quicktopic.com/52/H/v3tJk9DXpM7nQ

madmitch is the Rogue leader. They do not know who their fellow rogues are. You will not be able to communicate with them.

9. Pikanchion: You are the Checker Piece. You are a 3rd party. You are an immortal Vote-Blocker.

Immortal: You cannot be killed or lynched.

Vote-Blocker: Each night you can choose one player. That player will not be able to vote during the following day.

You want the game to end in a stalemate. You must ensure that both King Hector (mandalorian2293) and the Red Queen (madmitch) survive until you are the only 3 players in the game.

Actions

Ragian Black Knight / Cop
Night 1: Mandy
Night 2: Thor
Night 3: Dakky
Night 4: Mitch

dakky21 Black Rook / Doctor
Night 1: Pika
Night 2: Self
Night 3: Self

ZaBeast VT turned Black Knight (Cop)
Night 3: Ragian
Night 4: Skoffin

madmitch Red Queen / Blind Killer / BP
Night 1:Attacked Skoffin / NK Vote: Ragian
Night 2: Attacked Thorthoth / NK Vote: Ragian
Night 3: Attacked Mandy / NK Vote: Pika
Night 4: Attacked Ragian / NK Vote: Pika

Skoffin Red Rook / Doctor
Night 1: Protected Self / NK Vote: DDS
Night 2: Protected Self / NK Vote: Pika
Night 3: Protected Self / NK Vote: Mandy
Night 4: Protected Self / NK Vote: Mandy

Thorthoth Red Pawn / Goon
Night 1: NK Vote: DDS
Night 2: NK Vote: Pika

Pikanchion Checker Piece / Vote Blocker / Immortal
Night 1: Blocked Skoffin
Night 2: Blocked Skoffin
Night 3: Blocked Skoffin
Night 4: Blocked Skoffin

My comments:
This game looked fairly balanced until the very end where it wasn't. Now I am not sure how much of that was caused by simply what happened or if it was a problem with the game structure itself but personally this is what I'm thinking right now:

1. Unkillable roles don't seem to work with such a small number of players. The idea in itself is not overbalanced and that is what I wanted to find out from this attempt, but they need a lot of work and they should not determine the game's outcome. I should have made Pika's wincon separate from the game in some way. Though my thought process behind his role was to balance the game, and that has happened. He soaked up a lot of kills (both night kills and lynches) that otherwise would have caused the game to end a lot sooner. In a small game nobody should be completely protected, only x-shot. Or have a very insignificant role be unkillable.

2. Make pawns get power roles after surviving 4 days not 3.

3. Vote blocker caused a lot of problems that I did not intend for. It was just supposed to be a way to keep the checker piece role engaged and not be bored and not motivated (since they can't be killed) and also help them have some control. I figured people would quickly ignore what they have to say so their only power would be to block votes. All of this I was wrong about lol. People reacted to Pika differently than I thought and the vote blocking was met with outrage especially from dakky. I think I should have made it 2-shot and made it so it only doesn't count the votes. Why 'block' in the first place and not just have it not count? Because this way it acts like a PR too, and I would have modkilled skoffin if she forgot twice. But this didn't work. For the record Pika didn't have any night actions in my original role setup. Only after consulting with strike did he tell me that he thought that role would be unmotivated and would end up probably going inactive so I tried to come up with a suitable night action. This role still needs work and like I said above unkillable for the whole game probably only works for larger games or if their wincon doesn't stop town/scum from winning also. I really liked the idea that 3rd party can win by trying to keep both teams alive in some way. Also that they can win alone but not by using the recruitment mechanic.

4. Skoffin says I should have told scum the king can't be NK'd. I don't really know about this one, but since I had docs and bulletproof people in the game I think this would have worked well actually. That way they'll have to try and figure out who the king is by wasting bullets. She also thinks scum was underpowered this game. I don't agree but I'm the mod so I want input here. With 3 scum and a doc role I think that made up for the power roles that town had. Even if mitch didn't know his teammates and in fact shot Thor. If red queen had figured out their teammates faster they would have had 2 kills per night and town would have been minced meat.

5. Beast should have called mitch out. I have no idea why he believed his claim. But maybe I didn't make it obvious that pawn is the only non-power role character. (Vig power would have been bishop hence the 50% since each bishop in chess can only move on one color) Who knows what would happen if he came up with a different conclusion.

6. This game was tremendous fun for me and a great experience. I definitely learned a lot. I want to host more and hopefully my next game will be better. Also shoutout to pika who played the troll quite perfectly and made me laugh a few times, Ragian who tried very hard to do the right thing, Skoffin who's situation was very difficult, Mandy for the awesome long posts that while not wrong led him to terrible conclusions in this game , and DDS for patiently missing all the action.

7. The game could have went VEEERY differently. There was potential for 5 kills in one night under specific situations. Don't discount the impact that each decision has on the overall game.

8. Next game I will not make role PMs have exactly the same structure. I will make few changes so no two VTs for example have the same exact PM. Nobody tried to use role PM's in an unfair way but just to prevent that.

9. The lynch mechanic is the single most important thing when it comes to balancing the game. I learnt this the hard way. So next time i'll have to pay close attention to every possible outcome during the day so that game doesn't end early by default because no team can get a majority. It is hard to lynch when the numbers are small is basically what I'm saying. And a mod needs to work hard to put this into account. This game needed more players. Even if I didn't give Pika a wincon that can only win if the other teams lose, we still needed more players.


I'd like you all please to comment on the game or if you have a response to any of my thoughts above.
Also please mention:
1. Did you enjoy the game?
2. What ideas in the game did you like? What things didn't you like?
3. What do you think could be improved?
4. Where there any frustrations?
5. Do you think there was anything that is completely out-of-place in mafia or should be cut out completely?
6. Now that you've seen everything, how balanced do you think the game itself is (ignore players' decisions/deductions)?
7. For moderator administrative stuff (PM's, vote counts, etc.) what did I do well? what did I do badly?

If you don't want to post your opinions here feel free to PM me, but I would really appreciate your feedback.

Thank you all very much for joining and playing my game. Hopefully there'll be more to come in the future. It was a lot of work but like I said very fun.

[Skoffin]

No, I don't agree that the game was balanced. Vanillas should not have been able to turn into another cop for starters.
but there are some factors that our outside the setup; I was already in a bad position with a retard like mitch as a mafia partner. Mitch either doesn't pay any fucking attention to games he plays or he just doesn't give a f*ck. There is literally no way to get him to understand that you are his scum partner without outright saying "HEY MITCH I'M YOUR FUCKING PARTNER DON'T KILL ME THANKS". I mean I already gave some hints, I even said "I bet mitch tried to kill his own partner" in hopes he'd stop for a second and think about it.

If you are in a position where you don't know the identity of your partners don't f*ck around in the game and actually try to figure out who they might be. We still had a chance to win the game, but mitch decided to be a dickhead and speedlynch me so we could lose instead. I literally had no power because my vote was being taken away during the day (which somehow got suspicion thrown on me, because people think I'm retarded and would waste an ability like that lol) and at night there was a 50% that mitch had control of the team kill and he was being stupid with it.
Going after mitch was mostly to appear active/scumhunting and gain cred if he was indeed lynched, but he literally put me in a position where I *had* to try to get him killed just so I had a chance to even do something in the game. Instead he successfully lynched his own partner to endgame against our side, and he wasted most of our night kills. Good play aye.


There were also too many unkillable players. If I knew we couldn't actually NK mandy I would not have kept trying for him and I would have formed another strategy, I only went for mandy because I needed the game over soon before mitch could f*ck us over. At least on the first attempt we should get notification he is non-nkable. And again, the game is far too small for two cops.

[Ragian]

Thanks for hosting, BuJ!

[madmitch]

thanks for the game ,it was fun, Sorry Skoffin could not read between the lines with you ,infact couldn't read anyone,this gameblew my mind

[ZaBeast]

Overall I liked it. I was pleasantly surprised when I read in my role pm that that vanilla townies could gain powers after some time.The most annoying though was not being able to lynch. Being unkillable, pika had no incentive to even look remotely helpful. A bulletproof 3rd party (especially with this setup) is fine, but I don't think he should have been unlynchable. Also, he shouldn't have known who the red queen was. With a scum team of 3 and him, that's already nearly half of town that shouldn't want her dead. With anybody other than mitch as scum leader, town had no chance to lynch her, except with a lucky investigation (given the vigilante role was a choice between 3, had 50% chance of success, would have appeared after N3, and that mitch was 1-shot bulletproof, flat chances he would be killed by a vig). Maybe his role should have been more along the line of having mandy and one scum alive at endgame, so he could be more helpful and involved. Another thing that was annoying was how many people were needed for a lynch, considering one person was forbidden to vote. For instance, D2, there were 8 players alive, but actually 7 voters. So even if 4/7 is not votes from a majority of players, it still is a majority of the vote, which, combined with pika's role, made it a nightmare to reach a consensus. Also, I feel cop result shouldn't be rogue/not rogue when there's a third party that can't win with town. Town/not town would have been better.

Comments to your comments
2. With the number of unkillable roles it could have gone both ways. The mafia team had a total of 2 kills per night after all so I think night 3 was reasonnable. We just happened to have a lot of no lynches that slowed the game down. I agree with skoff that having 2 cops was a bit too much though. I mean N3 after I investigated Ragian, apart from pika, I only had skoff+mitch as non-confirmed.
3. The problem with the vote blocking ability was that it gave pika too much power for the lynch. Pika was already never going to vote mitch (for obvious reasons), so counting mitch, pika and whoever he decided to block, everybody else had to vote mitch to get him lynched. And to think he was brought at L-1 two times anyways...
4. Hard to say about the scum team being underpowered. It all depends on how quickly the red queen figures out who is on her team I guess.
5. As I said, the fact mitch's claim made sense doesn't mean it couldn't be made up. But really, last night, I investigated skoff thinking it didn't matter as I'd have voted mitch if the result came negative.
9. See 3

[Ragian]

Yes, everyone had to vote for mitch, but some players can't see beyond their noses

This felt like a win to me anyway, so I'm happy

[mandalorian2298]

Firstly thank you for the game BuJaber.

1. I did. primarely because it was very actively played. After Zabeast replaced Flores, people very as active as could be hoped for (Mute Skoff and Mad God Pika, obviously, had less incentive to post a lot, but that made sense because of the setup).

2., 3., 4., 5. I like how ambitious the setup is. The game on the whole was actually pretty badly balanced, but that was the result of you trying too hard to make something new.

Pika's role was overpowered and unplayble at the same time. This is completely forgivable because you tried to make a completely original role based on an interesting idea and it just didn't work. It sucks when it happens, but it's necessary to experiment in order to create something new.

What is not OK is to ignore the core rules of Mafia:

a) If Mafia don't know who eachother are, then they are no longer Mafia.

Mafia was invented as an experiment aimed at measuring political power of informed minority vs. uninformed majority. If the minority is uninformed, that underminds the whole point.

b) Changing basic Mafia roles.

I understand the wish to inovate and I consider "tradition" to be a dirty word. That being said, the main reason why basic roles function the way they do is because all the previous attempts to of tinkering with them have proven less satisfactory then the basic role.

There is a reason why Docs can't protect themselves: so that they are unable to claim. Doc is an increadably useful role, especialy in that it can protec a Cop after he has claimed. To BALANCE this, Doc can't protect himself meaning that he is going to be almost always killed the first Night after he claims.
Allowing Doc to protect himself makes the role unbalanced.

P.S. This doesn't concern this game, but since I'm on the subject I would like to remind future mods that Cult Leader can't recruit Mafia.

Frustrations: Mainly came from the Pika/Skoffin unaccountbility/muteness. I'm not sure that it could have not broken the game even with more players, but 2 players were about a half of lynching bandwagon worth of votes so that made it pretty unbalanced.

6. Also, 3 Mafia + gamebreaking 3rd party who doesn't kill Mafia = totally unbalanced. I mean you endgamed it with almost half of players left alive because it was almost theoretically solved.

7. You are a gentleman and scholar.

@Ragian Yes, I was right about only 2/3 scum and the 3rd one wasn't even supposed to be in the game. I suck.
If only I could improve myself into becoming a n00b who discusses the game in other threads and thinks that "Mafia is that game in which we mass-claim on Day 2."

[BuJaber]

Thank you for all the comments.

Yeah this was an experiment, quite scientific if I may add lol, and even though this was only one game with this setup I gained a lot of info. I had ideas, hypotheses and predictions to go with them, and I specifically wanted to test them out and see what happens. Many of the things that indeed turned out to be imbalanced or indeed going against mafia 'rules' were as a result of my attempt to introduce checks and balances to things that (at least as far as I know) have not been tried in previous mafia games.

Mandy your points make a lot of sense. On mafiascum wiki doc role does sometimes protect itself but I can see why that is rare and probably should never be played.
As for uninformed minority, to be fair only red queen did not know. But you know I understand why that made the game crazy. It was a result of me envisioning the character before drafting out the setup. I wanted queen to be powerful, I wanted something to show 'arrogance' and somehow it had to be balanced with the other ideas I had. (Mainly a 3rd party who can't be killed who's purpose is to try and help both teams in some way and a King that can die by getting lynched). As usual my imagination got the better of me and I got carried away in the story I had in my mind. Next time maybe I'll actually write a story and host a separate mafia game to satisfy both urges independently

[Ragian]

Lol, Mandy. Keep costing games, keep explaining why you're still right. I'm loving it. I hold no grudges. Hopefully, you don't either.

[mandalorian2298]

Lol, Mandy. Keep costing games, keep explaining why you're still right. I'm loving it. I hold no grudges. Hopefully, you don't either.

Of course not. Trash talking and bickering is just a part of the game, especially for the players on the losing team.

Which makes me realize that I forgot to say earlier : Congrats to Pika!

[dakky21]

I truly believe that if I was Pika, I would win this game as well. He knew who the King and the Queen are, he just needed to steer the voting in a right direction, nothing else.

[DirtyDishSoap]

#PraiseMitch

[Skoffin]

As to the notion that Pika's role has to be given the blocking power to stay interested and play; that is not an issue with the role itself, that is an issue with the attitude of a player. Pika's role didn't need to have a blocking power at all and that would have made him have to put more effort into steering people in a way that he wanted, as it was he had pretty much control of the vote/lynch and didn't have to really say much.
The role had a near certain victory to it with that power added.
At the least the scum team should have been full aware of each other. And honestly the second mitch was put as the red queen it would have been best to reroll all the roles.

thanks for the game ,it was fun, Sorry Skoffin could not read between the lines with you ,infact couldn't read anyone,this gameblew my mind

You say that every single game and it is not acceptable; stop joining games that you don't even try to understand. Who did you think was scum with you, did you actually attempt to figure it out?