Tales of Desolation mafia Engame

[heuristically_alone]

Make me a death masoning vig again and I'll kill Bessie first every time.

[boomfrog]

Mak - You played a good game, solid townie behavior and good energy and scum hunting. I think you were totally fine on theBubblez thing. You didn't do anything unreasonable and pressuring people with exaggerated suspicion is a completely ligit and standard practice.

EGW - You basically town so hard that you make it very difficult for yourself as scum. It is what it is and I don't think you should feel guilty about that as scum. I wonder if the thing that makes you so confident as town also makes it so hard for you to fake scum hunt as scum. At it's core, both are due to your difficulty mentally believing two conflicting possibilities at once.

As scum I literally imagine myself as town when reading and see what I would find interesting or suspicious. It requires imagining an alternative world. As town considering two or more possible game solves I also need to imagine alternative worlds. I think if you practice this you will help both issues.

As a first baby step, try not changing anything except when you post a solve say 'my current best guess is x, y, z are the scum team but I may change my mind. " instead of "x,y,z are scum 100%". You don't need to belive you will change your mind but writing the words will help shape your thinking.

Moody - Congrats on the greatest honor of being NKed N1. Thanks for sticking things out, I know some people feel deenegized by losing their vote. A townies greatest asset is their voice. And you made some good calls on who to trust as town.

Wam - What a way to go. You were doing pretty well too. I'll post more thoughts separately about the incident, but I regret taking you out that way. I do think you were a likely yeet D2 but I wish you'd had the chance to talk your way out of it.

Sabrar - As I said in gojoe, the headbutt protocol is real. I'm honored that after being double copped I was still sus enough to block again. You played a great game. Congrats on living to end game as town! We almost got a clean sweep after D1, but you were right to let the cop night results play out.

ahippo - it was fun playing with you again. I still had a lingering suspicion the whole game because I remember you hiding behind a claim in fridge mafia 2. Glad I didn't get burned for not bringing it up.

TehBubblez - Sorry you had a bad game. You'll probably never read this but hope you can find a way to enjoy the game. I promise we will go easier on you next game.

Somitomi - Thanks for subbing in and keeping the game running smoothly and fairly.

Bop - We were ligit vibing all game. I hope to pay with you again. Be warned, I am infamous for having the same level of play as scum.

Bessie - Woof.

Freddino - I was pretty sure you were town, kinda sucks you got the random PoE yeet. You took it with grace which I appreciate.

JC - This goes for Fred as well. Once I got over it I'm glad you stick to your preferred playstyle. We are here to have fun. I won't try to bully either of you into playing differently.

heuristically_alone - Awesome showing man. I would have been sus of bessie D2 so it was good to get her alignment cleared up. And nice shot on madge. Were you influenced at all by my End if D2 sus of her?

Madge - Gotcha.

Laserguy - I'm glad I gave you space. I hope all is well. Take the vow of no rereading with me.

Santygrass - Epic showing man. You really moved the game forward. I have some feedback about some of your read of you are untested in discussing. Thanks for subbing in, it was huge.

[heuristically_alone]

heuristically_alone - Awesome showing man. I would have been sus of bessie D2 so it was good to get her alignment cleared up. And nice shot on madge. W

All my scum reads I was very unsure on and so I began looking at players I had a null read and Madge flagged the most. Really it was that Miller claim that I thought scum Madge would definitely make.

[boomfrog]

@Seven, Adum and Cemetables, thank you so much for the work you put into the game. The flavor was incredibly detailed and rich, the fakeouts were heart-wrenching, and the mechanical design was very well done. I like how you made the roles both less powerful than most standard roles and also more interesting.

That said, here's the middle of the compliment sandwich. I think you guys are open to feedback and constructive criticism, so my apologies if this is presumptuous. I think the way wam and Bop got caught was unfun. The game would have been a better experience if town had to decide if they were scum on the merits of their actions, tone and tells. I know this sort of thing can't be always avoided but I think there are reasons that it happened twice in one game. Part of it is that it is harder to generate a good fake claim in a game where the mod has put more personal touches on a game, and this game was personalized to a wonderful degree. But that made it almost impossible for any player to mimic the mods style of role design. But I think the following advice applies to all games.

Imo, scum should always be given a full fake claim. They should receive an entire role PM with every detail that would be included in a real role PM. And the fake claims should be such that if everyone full claimed D1 there would be no hint at all to which claims were fake. This prevents scum from being outed in an "unfun" way.

Personally the way I like to ensure the second part is to literally design a town role for each player. Then randomly role for which town roles are fake, then design scum roles that have those fake claims. I can tweak the scum roles power based on how the towns power level was affected by which roles are missing. But this isn't a prescription, there's other ways to achieve the two principles I laid out.

I hope that advice is useful, and I really hope you run another game when you are recharged after this one. It was a blast.

[madge]

I think part of the way Bop got caught was the very free attitude about answering hypothetical questions, which also affected me and wam. Like, if hypotheticals weren't answered than Bop wouldn't have slipped up. And me and Wam had to spend a lot of time coming up with hypothetical questions about which fake names worked best with our fake claims, etc. It meant to an extent we could only scheme when Adumb was online.

I keep going back to hating how the flavour mattered so much - I had to work out if Maotelus was more or less likely to be a miller JOAT than Edna or whatever - because I think it's a missed opportunity. If the flavour had been something else, then me and Wam would have had an easier time of it. Like, I know enough about the lore of The Simpsons or The Wizard Of Oz (film) that I could be confident about the repercussions of different claims.

I think Boomfrog raises a great point, of having full fakeclaims. It means that scum still have the ability to come up with something completely different if they're backed in a corner, but they have a claim they can work towards. As scum I come up with my likely fakeclaim D1 and play to it all game.

I gotta say the little town Madge in my brain was a bit concerned about the massclaim of alignments, it seems to me like there wasn't a reason for town not to claim? I assumed there was someone out there who could do something nefarious with the information (even if it's just "you win when only shepherd aligned people are alive"). You might say it's no different than a lie-detector-paranoia-induced "I am town" soundoff but it's very different because, as demonstrated by wam, scum didn't know the "correct" answer the same way that scum knows that "I am town" is the correct answer in the former case.

I think the fact we ended up in the venn diagram with "people aren't familiar with the flavour" and "people don't have a reliable way to fake claim" is what caused the problem.

I would love to see this game played with a full complement of players who love the flavour. I can tell they'd have a wonderful time!

[boomfrog]

I want to reiterate, I had a LOT of fun this game.

[AdumbroDeus]

@Seven, Adum and Cemetables, thank you so much for the work you put into the game. The flavor was incredibly detailed and rich, the fakeouts were heart-wrenching, and the mechanical design was very well done. I like how you made the roles both less powerful than most standard roles and also more interesting.

That said, here's the middle of the compliment sandwich. I think you guys are open to feedback and constructive criticism, so my apologies if this is presumptuous. I think the way wam and Bop got caught was unfun. The game would have been a better experience if town had to decide if they were scum on the merits of their actions, tone and tells. I know this sort of thing can't be always avoided but I think there are reasons that it happened twice in one game. Part of it is that it is harder to generate a good fake claim in a game where the mod has put more personal touches on a game, and this game was personalized to a wonderful degree. But that made it almost impossible for any player to mimic the mods style of role design. But I think the following advice applies to all games.

Imo, scum should always be given a full fake claim. They should receive an entire role PM with every detail that would be included in a real role PM. And the fake claims should be such that if everyone full claimed D1 there would be no hint at all to which claims were fake. This prevents scum from being outed in an "unfun" way.

Personally the way I like to ensure the second part is to literally design a town role for each player. Then randomly role for which town roles are fake, then design scum roles that have those fake claims. I can tweak the scum roles power based on how the towns power level was affected by which roles are missing. But this isn't a prescription, there's other ways to achieve the two principles I laid out.

I hope that advice is useful, and I really hope you run another game when you are recharged after this one. It was a blast.

Firstly, to clarify the flavor implementation and how I handle hypotheticals, that was all me. So I bear all responsibility for this.

Secondly, me and Seven agree that this was a problem already.

So, philosophically the actually roles were designed to be something that could conceivably be town with the only real repetition being the JOAT (which Madge immediately joked how many I'd use so I was comfortable with it).

I purposefully made a choice to give options so people could choose what suited their situation, but maybe writing full fake role PMs just would've worked better here.

But ya, me and Seven have been discussing how we could fix these issues.

I think part of the way Bop got caught was the very free attitude about answering hypothetical questions, which also affected me and wam. Like, if hypotheticals weren't answered than Bop wouldn't have slipped up. And me and Wam had to spend a lot of time coming up with hypothetical questions about which fake names worked best with our fake claims, etc. It meant to an extent we could only scheme when Adumb was online.

I keep going back to hating how the flavour mattered so much - I had to work out if Maotelus was more or less likely to be a miller JOAT than Edna or whatever - because I think it's a missed opportunity. If the flavour had been something else, then me and Wam would have had an easier time of it. Like, I know enough about the lore of The Simpsons or The Wizard Of Oz (film) that I could be confident about the repercussions of different claims.

I think Boomfrog raises a great point, of having full fakeclaims. It means that scum still have the ability to come up with something completely different if they're backed in a corner, but they have a claim they can work towards. As scum I come up with my likely fakeclaim D1 and play to it all game.

I gotta say the little town Madge in my brain was a bit concerned about the massclaim of alignments, it seems to me like there wasn't a reason for town not to claim? I assumed there was someone out there who could do something nefarious with the information (even if it's just "you win when only shepherd aligned people are alive"). You might say it's no different than a lie-detector-paranoia-induced "I am town" soundoff but it's very different because, as demonstrated by wam, scum didn't know the "correct" answer the same way that scum knows that "I am town" is the correct answer in the former case.

I think the fact we ended up in the venn diagram with "people aren't familiar with the flavour" and "people don't have a reliable way to fake claim" is what caused the problem.

I would love to see this game played with a full complement of players who love the flavour. I can tell they'd have a wonderful time!

Ya, I get it with the flavor mattering and the hypotheticals. The former, I just didn't realize how many people were flavor blind. The latter, I was hoping people would just get used to asking the kinds of specific questions. I do think that the Bop thing was a product of just not being used to the forum culture because I think a chance based role would raise eyebrows from almost everyone here.

I'm gonna say, I'm hoping to get this game put private (did message the admin about it) make some modifications, and rerun it on another forum at some point.

I do think full fake role PMs would've been a better answer, yes.


I appreciate the kind words! And I am sorry for the issues.

[Seven]

So Adum and Sabrar when are the two of you going to debate on the Gojoe matter

[Seven]

Imo, scum should always be given a full fake claim. They should receive an entire role PM with every detail that would be included in a real role PM. And the fake claims should be such that if everyone full claimed D1 there would be no hint at all to which claims were fake. This prevents scum from being outed in an "unfun" way.

Personally the way I like to ensure the second part is to literally design a town role for each player. Then randomly role for which town roles are fake, then design scum roles that have those fake claims. I can tweak the scum roles power based on how the towns power level was affected by which roles are missing. But this isn't a prescription, there's other ways to achieve the two principles I laid out.

That’s actually how I generally go about my closed games with flavor. I think Adum’s decision to provide scum with several options was wise for this particular setup, however, to allow scum greater flexibility in their claims. As mentioned, though I think it would be apt to have the Game + Calamity/Shepard alignment mentioned with them. Like mini role PMs. That being said, I do think Wam being caught was more due to he and Madge being very busy. I suspect they would have come up with a better claim for Wam had they had more time to think about it.

The way Bop was caught shouldn’t have happened. In the future, the no RNG rule should be more explicit. Additionally, had I known about Bob’s planned claim beforehand, I would have suggested we inform them of the rule, as I believe that would have been an acceptable intervention. But I didn’t see it in time unfortunately.

[EGW]

So Adum and Sabrar when are the two of you going to debate on the Gojoe matter

What Gojoe Matter

[moody7277]

There was something Sabrar was going to post in GoJoe first and then in the thread, but Adum was going to make Sab paraphrase it.

[AdumbroDeus]

Ya, I was specifically worried about gojoe turning into a venue for alternative posts. I know that wasn't sab's intent, but that's what I saw as the consequence.

[EGW]

I will try to make a shout out posts soon. Have been too addicted to FF14.

[Sabrar]

As long as people are never pressured to make Gojoe posts so that they can be held accountable later (similar to why cryptography is banned), I see no issue for a player quoting in-thread a post he made there earlier as it can never be verified whether it was a true post or not. So essentially I think we are on the same side here, Adum is just more worried of the consequences while I don't think that it will lead to Gojoe being misused.