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b-minus1
Jul 24, 2008

She's a maniac, maniac
on the floor
And she's dancing like she's never danced before
Lol wtf

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b-minus1
Jul 24, 2008

She's a maniac, maniac
on the floor
And she's dancing like she's never danced before
So… full claim time?

Tired Moritz
Mar 25, 2012

wish Lowtax would get tired of YOUR POSTS

(n o i c e)
Town sassy kid

1

Tired Moritz fucked around with this message at 03:25 on May 19, 2023

CubicalSucrose
Jan 1, 2013

Phantom my Opera and call me South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut

Tired Moritz posted:

Town sassy kid

1

If any current player saw the original post, please let me know what it said on Discord and I will modkill TMor.

If not, TMor had my explicit permission to edit his post.

b-minus1
Jul 24, 2008

She's a maniac, maniac
on the floor
And she's dancing like she's never danced before
Naughty naughty

b-minus1
Jul 24, 2008

She's a maniac, maniac
on the floor
And she's dancing like she's never danced before

Tired Moritz posted:

Town sassy kid

1

So you are town?

CubicalSucrose
Jan 1, 2013

Phantom my Opera and call me South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut
You were warned of the risks of being sassy. Now I guess there’s some nano-thing going on, lot of electricity in the air. Even though you weren’t anywhere near the gala, you got impacted. Unfortunate.

Tired Moritz - Kimberly Kresby (Joanna & Walter’s [other] kid), TOWN-Aligned Risky Sassy, Sad Kid has been MODKILLED.



quote:

You are "Kimberly Kresby" (one of Walter and Joanna's kids). You claim that bugs don't have ears. You are a Risky Sassy, Sad Kid.

During each game day, you must make AT LEAST ONE [1] but NO MORE THAN TEN [10] posts, regardless of day length. If you do not adhere to this restriction, you will be modkilled during the night. There is nothing you can do to prevent this modkill. You will not receive any warnings.

You are immune to the "sufficient content" rule and may indeed just post a single "1" in a game day and pass your modkill condition.

At night, you may risk an attempt to ##sass a player. [Adding given some uncertainty in a few recent games. To be clear, this would count as a visit barring some other action.] If that player is Claire Wellington, they will be eliminated. If the player you attempt to ##sass is NOT Claire Wellington, you will be eliminated instead.

You are TOWN-aligned.
https://clip.cafe/the-stepford-wives-2004/and-kimberly-arent-just-the-cutest-little-bugs-ear/




The game continues.

votefinder
Jul 6, 2010

scoop scoop
Votecount for Day 4



Not Voting (2): Hyper Crab Tank, Tired Moritz

With 2 alive, it's 2 votes to execute. The current deadline is May 20th, 2023 at 8 p.m. EDT -- that's in about 1 day, 21 hours.

Note that Auto-Hammer is DISABLED. Please don't post after Hammer (unless otherwise indicated).

CubicalSucrose
Jan 1, 2013

Phantom my Opera and call me South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut
Sorry! hosed up VF doing this in a rush on my phone. HCT and Binus are still alive, not whatever it says in that post.

CubicalSucrose
Jan 1, 2013

Phantom my Opera and call me South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut
To be clear here, the decision was made based on moderator discretion. It's my best understanding that no current player should have any extra info.

Hyper Crab Tank
Feb 10, 2014

The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation
... what the gently caress is this. How did half the game just... go up in smoke while I was asleep? Why is Moritz dead? Why the gently caress isn't the game over?

Literally, why are we here? You're obviously the last scum or threatening 3P or whatever it is. I didn't see it coming so well played, I guess, but what the hell am I supposed to do about it? Why are we still here?

b-minus1
Jul 24, 2008

She's a maniac, maniac
on the floor
And she's dancing like she's never danced before
Idk what’s going on

Hyper Crab Tank
Feb 10, 2014

The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation
What do you mean what's going on, you're scum. You have to me. Why isn't the game over? You just shoot me tonight, right?

b-minus1
Jul 24, 2008

She's a maniac, maniac
on the floor
And she's dancing like she's never danced before
I’m not scum

Hyper Crab Tank
Feb 10, 2014

The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation
Well you're something because we're still here. Some anti-town 3P, then. Does it matter? It's not like I can vote my way out of this.

Hyper Crab Tank
Feb 10, 2014

The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation
Sorry I know there was a giant pileup of really hosed up PMs in the night and I would love to theorycraft all about that but it has kind of taken a backseat to the fact that the game somehow has two living players and isn't over.

b-minus1
Jul 24, 2008

She's a maniac, maniac
on the floor
And she's dancing like she's never danced before
The game isnt over because I am unaligned.

I’m Walter. Unaligned. I originally had the ability to betray Walter or Joanna.

If I successfully betrayed mike, Mike would be eliminated and I would become town aligned
If I successfully betrayed Joanna, I would have become scum aligned along with joanna. Only me and Joanna would have known that.

Now that they are both dead, mg only action is to solve the game. If I solve town, I need to name the entire town team. Same with solving for scum. If I’m correct, I fulfill my win condition and the game should end.

Want to claim and then no lunch and hopefully end the game tonight ?

Hyper Crab Tank
Feb 10, 2014

The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation
That... is really weird. But I don't really see how I have any other option.

I'm the host of the game show Balance of Power from the beginning of the movie. I don't even know if I have a name, I'm just called The Host, it's a super tiny role apparently. Cubical had a youtube clip for me but it didn't work, so he had to explain it to me, made it sound like one of those super trashy talk shows where the host asks deeply personal questions about married couples, except a game show. Anyway, the reason I've been asking people their names is because my ability is basically similar to a rolecop, but I can only investigate people who have told me who they are and there's an additional wrinkle (like all the other PMs this is a "Risky" power as well): If they lied to me, I could die. If they were truthful, I get info. So I've been holding off on investigating people and good thing I did because that dog was a goddamn liar.

I actually completely missed this fact on D1 and thought I would just get misleading info if they lied to me about their name, but on re-reading N1 it's, yeah, no, there's a real risk of death involved.

I don't know what kind of name you need to give, I expect "The Host" or "The Host of Balance of Power" should work. Cubical gave me an example using my own role to how it worked and implied that's effectively what a "truthful" answer should look like.

Hyper Crab Tank
Feb 10, 2014

The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation
I need to leave the house for a few hours so ##vote execute no one and I hope to loving god you're not lying to me here.

Hyper Crab Tank
Feb 10, 2014

The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation
Well, if you are, good game I guess, I certainly didn't read you as scum at any point this game.

b-minus1
Jul 24, 2008

She's a maniac, maniac
on the floor
And she's dancing like she's never danced before
##execute no one

CubicalSucrose
Jan 1, 2013

Phantom my Opera and call me South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut
:redhammer:

CubicalSucrose
Jan 1, 2013

Phantom my Opera and call me South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut
You were warned of the risks of making the wrong decision here in Stepford. You hesitated, flip-flopped, and wound up choosing wrong, and now you’re being punished for it.


b-minus1 - Walter Kresby, UN-Aligned Risky Decision Maker has been Eliminated.



quote:

You are "Walter Kresby." Is your arc in the movie actually a good one? Regardless, at least you won the battlebots match. You are an Un-Aligned Risky Decision-Maker. You start out with no win condition and are not considered a threat to town. If you have no win condition, alignment-investigative actions targeting you will fail.

You have two one-shot night abilities (##betray and ##solve) and may only choose one during the game.

If at the start of any night, either Joanna Eberhart OR Mike Wellington are active, you may risk a decision to ##betray one of them (you may only ##betray an active player). [Adding given some uncertainty in a few recent games. To be clear, this would count as a visit barring some other action.]

If you attempt to ##betray Mike and succeed, Mike will be eliminated, you will be TOWN-aligned for the rest of the game, and you will inherit the TOWN win condition.

If you attempt to ##betray Joanna and succeed, you will be SCUM-aligned for the rest of the game, inherit the SCUM win condition, and will then be considered a threat to town. Additionally, Joanna will SECRETLY be converted to SCUM-aligned and inherit the SCUM win condition (BUT NO OTHER CHANGES).

If you succeed with either type of betrayal, you permanently lose your ability to ##solve.

If at the start of any night, both Joanna Eberhart AND Mike Wellington have been eliminated, you may risk a decision to ##solve the game. If you ##solve TOWN, you will need to name exactly the full TOWN-aligned team. If you ##solve SCUM, you will need to name exactly the full SCUM-aligned team. If you are correct, you abscond and win the game for yourself (the rest of the game continues). If you are incorrect, you will be eliminated. Nothing can prevent this mis-solve elimination.

For clarity - If the game ends and you do not have a fulfilled win condition, you lose.



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

Hyper Crab Tank - "Stepford Gateguard", Risky "Renta"-Rolecop has achieved victory!


quote:

You are the "Stepford Gateguard." Are you the only actual employee in Stepford? You are a Risky "Renta"-Rolecop. (Flavor/Photo clarification - your name isn't Kresby, that's someone else. I don't think you actually have a name credited.)

You are NOT able to use the scum team night elimination action.

At night you may risk an attempt to ##role-investigate any player who has responded to at least one of your questions asking about their name during the previous game day. [Adding given some uncertainty in a few recent games. To be clear, this would count as a visit barring some other action.] They don't have to be the only one to have answered that question. They do not have to answer with an actual name. (Mod discretion but intention is to be fairly loose here). Upon success, you will receive a copy of their role name and a brief description of the role.

If your target answered honestly during the game day, you will receive a true result (Mod discretion but the intention is to be favorable to you here). If your target answered dishonestly during the game day, you will receive a false result. If they did both, the true answer prevails.

For example, if you were to successfully ##role-investigate yourself (after asking and truthfully answering), you would receive a result of "Your action was Successful. Renta-Rolecop. - At night you may risk an attempt to ##role-investigate any player who has answered you asking about their name during the prior day." If you asked and falsely answered, you might receive a result of "Your action was Successful. Risky Decapitator. - At night you may risk an attempt to ##decapitate Mike Wellington."

Upon receiving the results of your investigation, you will need to assess whether or not this is a "true" result or a "false" result. If you answer incorrectly, you will be immediately eliminated.

You are SCUM-aligned.


Congratulations on a masterful game!

CubicalSucrose
Jan 1, 2013

Phantom my Opera and call me South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut
Inspiration (skippable)

Coming in mostly-newish to SA Mafia (played like 5 years ago once) with the latest Chess game, I've found that I really enjoy fiddly mechanical games and have a lot less enthusiasm for the run-of-the-mill types.

With the resurgence in popularity, a number of games and ideas have popped up in the discussion threads and discords and such. A couple of the recurring themes have been "everyone gets a vig" and "oops all x."

I can't find it (and I've looked a few times so maybe I just made this up? But I don't think so), but I believe someone had pitched "Oops! All PGOs" as a joke. I thought it would be a really fun design challenge.

Separately, I was getting really interested by the capabilities we have now in Discord to much more easily provide layers-of-information to various groups. I thought it might be cool to have some sort of extra "reveal" for Observers.

Lastly, many OPs explicitly call out "no mod bastardry, no xyz things" or they'll say something about "elaborate fake-claims." And there are often notes about how flavor is unimportant. I've generally been unimpressed by most "elaborate fake-claims" and (up until Disney) hadn't seen a recent mod bastardry game.

So with all those thoughts swirling around, I remembered the Stepford Wives movie, which (as some of you now know) isn't very good, but it does have some layers of revelation, and seemed as good a theme as any.

As the whole premise behind the movie can be uhh…uncomfortable, I put a lot of work in to try and keep that negativity out of it and just use the flavor as a backdrop. It seemed like that went okay.



So what actually happened?

The big idea was "everyone has the exact same PGO role." Beyond that, I decided I would care about balance least, because that all seemed "pretty fair." Since the actual “role” wouldn’t matter so much, I decided that I would manually assign roles to players, to (try) to ensure that folks had a good time regardless of what would transpire during the game.

I wanted flavor to “matter,” and have the ability for someone to generally be able to "flavor-solve" the game. "Good people = town, bad = scum." I also wanted a 3P, so I went with a main character.

I struggled a lot coming up with the PGO "nudge" and went through a couple iterations. I needed to give folks a reason to take night actions, but also didn't want the game to just end N1.

I used the word "Risky" in every role (aside from Vanilla) and used the word "risk" to describe taking every action.

I sold the game as flavor mattering, and so I pushed for most roles to have a very specific mention of other characters in the game. Personally I dislike the D1 "nothing happens" phase and wanted to prod folks along a bit.

I didn't realize that everyone would basically interpret their fake-claims as "normal claims in a regular game and maybe not something to actually reveal immediately." HCTs role was specifically designed to nudge along that way.

Given that literally everyone actually would benefit from other people claiming, I was a bit surprised by HCT getting labeled scummy and no one playing along. Except for OMG! I was really happy to see that fakeclaim actually getting used.

The Vanilla was there for a few reasons - first, if everyone decided to fakeclaim early, vanilla would be looked at suspiciously. Secondly, it allowed for a layered-reveal if (as was the case) they were voted out first. Originally, I showed Maug the vanilla/PGO interaction. Later I realized "oh no what if Shwinn isn't voted out first?" and was prepared to shift on the fly to allow the obs to see the true role of (whoever actually was voted first).

Regarding scumchat. I THOUGHT Discord would have a permissions option for "these people can't see the channel user list." Similar to have they have a permissions option for "these people can't see any messages in the channel." I was going to blank the channel, add the "scum" roles with (basically blank perms), then add in the scum team details, THEN allow Obs to see it.

Unfortunately, I had to just lie to Obs about scum chat perms being awkward (first time mod credit), which didn't feel good. And wasn't helped when "scum" team members kept calling me out about it.

Obs kept talking about how "Scum just immediately win if they all vote out any town, right?" Which was an oversight on my part and I had to scramble a bunch. Got lucky with how I'd designed in the Roger/Jerry votes-don’t-count interaction, and Obs just sat back with their popcorn.


Notes on Roles & Player Assignments:

TOWN-TEAM:
Somber -

quote:

You are "Joanna Eberhart." Spoiler alert for the end of the movie. You are a Risky Decapitator.

At night, you may risk an attempt to ##decapitate a player. If the player you ##decapitate is Mike Wellington, they are eliminated and another SCUM team member will be revealed (unless already eliminated). If the player you attempt to ##decapitate is NOT Mike Wellington but is TOWN-aligned, they will be eliminated. If the player you attempt to ##decapitate is NOT Mike Wellington but is SCUM-aligned, you will be eliminated instead.

You are TOWN-aligned.

Flavor-related vig is basically a bounty hunter. This was a straightforward design. The “other SCUM member revealed” was a nod to Claire being a LOVER of Mike (that component wound up being cut last-minute due to “balance reasons” after obs pointed out how incredibly unfair the setup was). The “another” wording basically calls out Mike as being SCUM. There’s an argument to leave Mike’s alignment ambiguous, but this was a flavor-forward game so I was fine with it.

Why Somber? I hadn’t played with them before, but Obs cited “good scumhunter.” So town made sense, and this was the most violent/hunter-esque town role I had available.

—-----------------------------------------

Wins -

quote:

You are "Bobbie Markowitz." Many know you for your book I Love You, But Please Die. You are a Risky Bodyguard.

At night, you may risk an attempt to ##bodyguard a player. If they were to die for any reasons during that night, you will die instead. If you ##bodyguard a scum-aligned player, you will be eliminated regardless of other night actions.

You are TOWN-aligned.

Maybe my least-favorite design. I tried to pull roles from the movie. Originally I had it so Bobbie could only bg Joanna, and maybe that would’ve been better in terms of encouraging flavor reveals. However, the interesting thing is that if converted to be SCUM-aligned, they can still only bg town, so they’re actively sabotaging their (new, hidden) wincon.

Why wins? Had just been “getting back into modding” with the F11 stuff, decided that a relatively straightforward role would be a good fit.

—-----------------------------------------

Deadmeat -

quote:

You are "Roger Bannister." Stepford is very open-minded. You are a Risky Death Miller.

Any alignment-investigative actions on you will report "SCUM."

If you are eliminated for any reason, you will be reported as being SCUM-aligned and your flip will instead refer to you as a "Risky Involuntary Politician" with a hidden one-shot twilight ability to "##rallysupport" and SECRETLY shift up to one SCUM-target and one TOWN-target votes to you (VF will be adjusted between end of day and flip). --- To be clear, you do NOT actually have this ability, but it is what will be reported if you are eliminated.

At night, you may risk an attempt to ##fightback against a player. If that player is your partner, Jerry Harmon, they will be eliminated. If that player is anyone else, you will be eliminated instead. --- To be clear, you DO actually have this ability, and it will NOT be reported if you are eliminated.

You are TOWN-aligned.

So I haven’t seen a Death Miller before and so unsure what a “proper” role PM looks like. This felt kinda reasonable. Roger just kinda gets got during the movie, but I liked this as a contrast to the Bobbie/Dave interaction. Voting gimmick in the fake-fake-flip is a scum sub-theme.

Why Deadmeat? One of the last fills, got this basically by default.

—-----------------------------------------

TMor -

quote:

You are "Kimberly Kresby." You claim that bugs don't have ears. You are a Risky Sassy, Sad Kid.

During each game day, you must make AT LEAST ONE [1] but NO MORE THAN TEN [10] posts, regardless of day length. If you do not adhere to this restriction, you will be modkilled during the night. There is nothing you can do to prevent this modkill. You will not receive any warnings.

You are immune to the "sufficient content" rule and may indeed just post a single "1" in a game day and pass your modkill condition.

At night, you may risk an attempt to ##sass a player. If that player is Claire Wellington, they will be eliminated. If the player you attempt to ##sass is NOT Claire Wellington, you will be eliminated instead.

You are TOWN-aligned.

Originally, the “Hank” encouragement action was to ##terminate Joanna. Which worked for everyone but Joanna herself (who would have to ##terminate Walter). Then I realized that this breaks completely once Joanna flips. Which would be really bad. And having a game without a Joanna character was one step too far for me from a mod bastardry perspective. Up until the game filled up, I was toying around with “If you ##terminate the last member of Joanna’s immediate family, you win.” But the kids are really bit roles, and again it’s a wincon that could become impossible with the wrong flip order.

Anyway, I thought the “Sassy, sad” comments from Claire were amusing, and then this character is basically done talking. Liked this as a contrast to my modified “every day you need to post content please” lurker rule.

Why TMor? I’ve seen the “TMor lurking” comment across a few different games now, so this felt perfect.

—-----------------------------------------

Shwinn -

quote:

You are "Pete Kresby." You are Vanilla.

You are TOWN-aligned.

In a game with every other role pretty wild, having a red herring Vanilla seemed fun. It also was a great way to do some stepwise-revealing for Obs…but ONLY if Shwinn was eliminated early. Which, turns out, they were. I liked the idea that if everyone wound up revealing their fakeclaims really early, a legit Vanilla claim would throw folks off.

Why Shwinn? Seems like they just post a ton without much regard to anything really. Didn’t think having a vanilla role would be any less interesting / enjoyable for them from a gameplay perspective.

—-----------------------------------------

Binus -

quote:

You are "Walter Kresby." Is your arc in the movie actually a good one? Regardless, at least you won the battlebots match. You are a Self-Aligned Risky Decision-Maker. You start out with no win condition and are not considered a threat to town. If you have no win condition, alignment-investigative actions targeting you will fail.

You have two one-shot night abilities (##betray and ##solve) and may only choose one during the game.

If at the start of any night, either Joanna Eberhart OR Mike Wellington are active, you may risk a decision to ##betray one of them (you may only ##betray an active player).

If you attempt to ##betray Mike and succeed, Mike will be eliminated, you will be TOWN-aligned for the rest of the game, and you will inherit the TOWN win condition.

If you attempt to ##betray Joanna and succeed, you will be SCUM-aligned for the rest of the game, inherit the SCUM win condition, and will then be considered a threat to town. Additionally, Joanna will SECRETLY be converted to SCUM-aligned and inherit the SCUM win condition (BUT NO OTHER CHANGES).

If you succeed with either type of betrayal, you permanently lose your ability to ##solve.

If at the start of any night, both Joanna Eberhart AND Mike Wellington have been eliminated, you may risk a decision to ##solve the game. If you ##solve TOWN, you will need to name exactly the full TOWN-aligned team. If you ##solve SCUM, you will need to name exactly the full SCUM-aligned team. If you are correct, you abscond and win the game for yourself (the rest of the game continues). If you are incorrect, you will be eliminated. Nothing can prevent this mis-solve elimination.

For clarity - If the game ends and you do not have a fulfilled win condition, you lose.

With 11 players, I wanted to have a 3P. Many OPs describe “no alignment changes” or at least “no involuntary alignment changes.” Flavor-forward, I wanted to give Walter a choice. Originally I had the betrayed character eliminated, but switching Joanna felt much better. Setup spec for 11 players, it’s a tough call which betrayal N1 would be better.

Since the game is flavor-forward, I wanted to allow for flavorsolving. Walter is the only 3P, so the two options are the same, but I wanted to make it so it was ambiguous whether there were other 3Ps. Additionally, yes, there is the Bobbie conversion possibility, but since this role itself also describes an involuntary alignment change, I thought that was fair.

Why binus? Given binus’s reputation for reads, giving them the “solve the game” power was obviously correct. Just be good enough and you can win N1.

—-----------------------------------------

SCUM TEAM:

Hal -

quote:

You are "Dave Markowitz." And...how long have you been married? *cue laugh track* (first 20 seconds) You are a Risky Recruiter.

You are NOT able to use the scum team night elimination action.

At night, you may risk an attempt to ##convert a player. If the player you ##convert is Bobbie Markowitz, they will SECRETLY become SCUM-aligned and inherit the SCUM win condition (BUT NO OTHER CHANGES). If the player you attempt to ##convert is anyone else, you will be eliminated instead.

You are SCUM-aligned.

This is the main thing the movie is about. Pretty straightforward. The no-NK clause was a last-minute thing based on Obs calling the initial setup imbalanced. When Hal got eliminated, I was a bit torn on whether or not to leave that in on the flip, since there was no reason for them to use their power with Bobbie already out. In the end, I realized that a NK redirect was a plausible explanation, and kept it as-is. Caused a bit of a stir in thread and may have contributed to some players becoming more convinced about the setup being off, but I sleep better at night knowing I didn’t lie to my players.

Why Hal? Was one of the last few to fill, Hal is a veteran maf player, so giving them an involuntary-alignment-change role seemed pretty reasonable. I semi-jokingly asked them if they wanted to be town or scum upon joining the Discord and providing some feedback on the OP. I’d like to believe I would have adhered to their choice, had they picked one of those two and not “stump.”

—-----------------------------------------

Keats -

quote:

You are "Jerry Harmon." You think your partner would be great in the state senate. You are a Risky Conditional Voter.

You are NOT able to use the scum team night elimination action.

If a player you risk voting for is Roger Bannister, that vote will not count. No mod clarification will be given on this point.

If Roger Bannister has been eliminated, all votes you risk (during the day) count for two votes.

If at the end of a phase (day or night) the outcome you risked voting for was NOT the one that was chosen, you will be eliminated.

You are SCUM-aligned.

“Scum can manipulate votes” is a subtheme. I had been asking about VF details for a while, and one of the reasons I wanted IK powers was to (potentially) edit VF posts. When I found out I shouldn’t be editing any posts ever, I was a little torn, but turns out I never actually did have to correct VF.

So originally here, I meant for the scum team to function like…a normal scum team. And I wanted the “NK discussion” to count as a vote.

Why Keats? Keats who has garnered a little bit of a reputation for role detail shenanigans recently, so I specifically made this both ambiguous (“What are night votes?”) and included a line where I said mod clarification wouldn’t be provided. Originally I just had the “during the day” bit, but I thought that might not be enough to induce the question. Exceeded my expectations.

—-----------------------------------------

HCT -

quote:

You are the "Stepford Gateguard." Are you the only actual employee in Stepford? You are a Risky "Renta"-Rolecop. (Flavor/Photo clarification - your name isn't Kresby, that's someone else. I don't think you actually have a name credited.)

You are NOT able to use the scum team night elimination action.

At night you may risk an attempt to ##role-investigate any player who has responded to at least one of your questions asking about their name during the previous game day. They don't have to be the only one to have answered that question. They do not have to answer with an actual name. (Mod discretion but intention is to be fairly loose here). Upon success, you will receive a copy of their role name and a brief description of the role.

If your target answered honestly during the game day, you will receive a true result (Mod discretion but the intention is to be favorable to you here). If your target answered dishonestly during the game day, you will receive a false result. If they did both, the true answer prevails.

For example, if you were to successfully ##role-investigate yourself (after asking and truthfully answering), you would receive a result of "Your action was Successful.' Renta-Rolecop. - At night you may risk an attempt to ##role-investigate any player who has answered you asking about their name during the prior day." If you asked and falsely answered, you might receive a result of "Your action was Successful. 'Risky Decapitator. - At night you may risk an attempt to ##decapitate Mike Wellington."

Upon receiving the results of your investigation, you will need to assess whether or not this is a "true" result or a "false" result. If you answer incorrectly, you will be immediately eliminated.
,
You are SCUM-aligned.

While I was watching the movie, I thought “A character that directly asks another character’s name?! Jackpot!” Pretty big flavor-win here. Except…this character is not really ever going to get mentioned or guessed. Jon Lovitz’s character? Yeah that’s plausible. “The unnamed guard that is in the movie for like 5 total seconds?” - not happening. Realized this a little late and this actually gave HCT a minor advantage over most folks. Although! Keats was close and so it’s plausible that someone could have figured it out.

I liked that I included Mike’s name directly here and also Joanna’s role, though HCT never acknowledged those details.

Why HCT? When the first wave of obs were reviewing the setup, someone flagged that players might have a bad time “If someone who doesn’t like reading gets the guard role, for example.” I felt pretty confident that HCT would have no problems reading.

—-----------------------------------------

OMG -

quote:

You are "Claire Wellington." You call your exercise program "Clairobics." You are a Risky Godfather.

Alignment-investigative actions will reveal you as "TOWN."

You ARE able to use the scum team night elimination action.

To do so, at night, you may risk an ##elimination of any active player. [Adding given some uncertainty in a few recent games. To be clear, this would count as a visit barring some other action.] If you risk an attempt at a night elimination AND during the same phase you are alignment-investigated, you will also be eliminated (your night elimination action will still resolve normally).

You are SCUM-aligned.

As a Godfather, you have the following fakeclaim available (which will be revealed in your flip in addition to the Risky Godfather details if you are eliminated):

You are "Robo Rover" the robot dog who (unintentionally?) helps crack the case. You are a "Risky Support Dog." At night, you may risk giving a ##support-visit. You will visit a random player active at the start of the night. If that player were to be eliminated and is TOWN-aligned, they will not be eliminated. If that player is SCUM-aligned, instead you are eliminated. You might visit the same player multiple times in a row. You might visit yourself. You will not be informed of which player you visited. You are TOWN-aligned.

Once you’ve gone down the road of “everyone has a fakeclaim,” it’s not all that hard to land in a spot where “Let’s give a fakeclaim for the fakeclaim.” Turns out, this worked perfectly, as it actually got one person and almost got at least two others. One could argue that OMG had a bit of an advantage this game, and they’d probably be right.

I liked the LOVER component with Mike Wellington because of the flavor. Had a LOVER-related elim picture and everything. Oh that’s right, it wasn’t a balance thing that removed it, it was “I actually can’t use this mechanic because that would be unfair to actually kill the person with this role for the other one doing something silly like getting eliminated. So if the flip order goes awry, this looks really really bad or I have to adjust the flip text or something.” (Basically the same issue I had with Dave/Bobbie but magnified because I also had “there’s nothing that can prevent this…” language in there).

Why OMG? Hadn’t played with them before, but when they joined the server I asked which game(s) of Mafia they’d liked the most. Cited a game of Shine, where they made a wild survivor/scum/godfather gambit play near the end of the game. Sounded pretty wild, and so “layers of fakeclaims” seemed like a good fit.

—-----------------------------------------

Everyone’s Actual Role

You are actually “Hank” (from the show “I Can Do Better” that led to Joanna getting fired after you shot at her). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-Ad2a7UD0A for a 3-minute video with useful context.

You are a Risky Self-Aligned Survivor Juggernaut Paranoid Gun Owner With a Fakeclaim / Fake Flip. (Though do you really count as “Paranoid” when your wife said they could do better & chose others over you?)

You win when you are the last player standing.

If anyone visits you during the night, they will be eliminated. This is a passive ability that is multi-use, never runs out, and can’t be blocked or prevented in any way.

In any case where information is to be shared out to other players, it will come directly from your fakeclaim.

As the movie poster in the OP suggests, “the wives of Stepford have a secret.” Any attempt to hint at your actual role will be met with swift mod justice. This is a flavor-heavy game and a lot of effort went into matching your elaborate fakeclaim with the rest of the theme.

You ALSO have an alternate win condition. At night, you may risk an attempt to ##terminate a player. In addition to the player, you must also list the character they are playing. If you are correct and your action succeeds, they will be eliminated. If you are incorrect, you will be eliminated instead. If you successfully ##terminate two players, you abscond and win the game (no flip, the rest of the game goes on).

----------------------
To be clear: Night results, Day results, & Flip results will all reflect the original Joanna role. This is only for you and Obs to see, until the game ends.

If this is too much complexity for you at the moment, please let me know ASAP and I will get a sub, no worries.

—-----------------------------------------

On Keeping Secrets & the Modkill DecisionS:

There was a big challenge in not letting the entire gimmick get out in the open. I think a lot of things kinda like this have been tried in the past, but maybe not quite to this extent. I tried to build in as many implicit threats as I could in order to minimize the actions I would have to take, while not going tooooo overboard.

I learned very quickly that there’s a pretty wide grey zone that players either intentionally or unintentionally were skirting. And there were a number of items where “if I warn a player about X, will that actually hurt the game more than leaving it as-is?”

A few posts that made me feel awkward:
OMG’s “im scu- *muffled sounds of mod violence*”
Somber’s “Did you check the secret second discord for your real role message?”
HCT’s “I know for a fact that my role is an extremely minor character, because Sucrose had to explain it to me since I hadn't seen the movie and the youtube clip he sent me didn't work due to copyright poo poo.”
(followed up immediately with TMor’s “Lmao okay same”) — I thought the game might’ve been over right then D2.
Somber’s “I more or less had confirmation that wins did not visit me that night he said he did.”
Keats’ “I ahve reason to believe Hal was a death miller. Let's not get distracted by this. I'm not going to believe any scum flips if they say "You can't access the nightkill"
Keats re: Somber’s post — “I'm giving you very meaningful eye contact right now”
And then Keats again “If I claim, I will get modkilled”
And he’s right with “Even saying this is actually extremely toeing the line, based on the language in my PM”
HCT was pushing on this a bit, which was maybe a bit unfair to Keats, but the sheer volume of tells here was a lot.
Then a bunch of (reasonable) backtracking, followed by “Let's just ignore whatever it might imply about me, and trust that Hal was a death miller
OMG had posted: “some kind of nk redirect or gun owner antics would seem more likely
(someone who kills their visitors, thats a paranoid gun owner right?)”

I wound up giving Keats a warning, then we discussed in detail what was/wasn’t fair game to share in thread going forward.
At one point I said “Oh someone said PGO earlier in the thread though, right? You can quote them I suppose” followed by “But not in a "hey look at this part of this post hint hint" kind of way”
And then Keats quotes Somber’s post again about “second secret Discord role” and says “Somber, I need you to tell me if this was serious or if it was just a joke.” — At this point I felt like it crossed the line. Can definitely argue I made a wrong/bad call here.

Re: TMor’s modkill.

With three left, binus suggested everyone claim in thread. I tried to get ahead of this by listing out things that players could or could NOT say, to avoid any issues. I didn’t ping players about this, and so TMor didn’t see it before posting “town PGO.” Which is very blatantly not okay. It was caught like immediately, they were able to edit it out, neither binus nor HCT saw it. But…it was definitely over the line, probably more than what Keats got hit for. I did a consult to check for mod consistency/fairness, and the verdict was “Modkill TMor.” This led to me rightfully getting a ton of flak as a mod, as I broke Rule 0.

With two left, I revealed to spoiled obs that I had accounted for a sort of “deadlock” scenario, and decided before the game started that if everyone voted no-elim and then no night elims happened, I would end the game with a shared, perhaps-unsatisifying victory.

Due to some masterful play overall, this was not necessary.

Re: Why Deadmeat didn’t get modkilled.

Deadmeat’s ACTUAL FAKECLAIM was “Death Miller.” So they were allowed to say that, when others would not have been. There were two (purely unintentional) “clues” to the Death Miller being a real thing. First, there is no mention of night elimination action (since that restriction was a late add and I forgot to include it here). Second, the elimination image is labeled “ElimTownRoger-RunningForSenate.” Third (though not actually true), given we’d seen Hal’s flip about secret alignment changes, it was plausible to consider that perhaps Deadmeat had been informed about an alignment change.

—-----------------------------------------

Overall, I would like to give huge thanks to Maugrim and ANarc for being de-facto reviewers.

Incredible appreciation for all the players in the game who wound up being thrown into a not-explicitly-advertised mod-bastardry set-up.

And big shout-outs to the Observers, who went through a journey learning more and more about the set-up over time, yet didn’t complain too loudly about it.

Finally, thank you to Clo & Iggy for remaining unspoiled throughout the game.

This was my “one big idea” and given the Rule 0 issues at the end, I will be holding off on running my second Concoction indefinitely.

- CubicalSucrose

b-minus1
Jul 24, 2008

She's a maniac, maniac
on the floor
And she's dancing like she's never danced before
Bummer. Congrats hct

Hal Incandenza
Feb 12, 2004

Good job HCT!

Thanks for the game Cubical. From my point of view nothing that egregious happened and if you did come up with another concoction I’d definitely want to play. I do see why people could be frustrated but I think it was a neat idea that was fitting with the theme.

Deadmeat5150
Nov 21, 2005

OLD MAN YELLS AT CLAN
Oops All PGOs! was a weird game. I enjoyed it.

Sandwolf
Jan 23, 2007

i'll be harpo


Thanks for the game Cube, I’m genuinely surprised we had as much engagement as we did with all survivors.

Somberbrero
Feb 14, 2009

ꜱʜʀɪᴍᴘ?
You can tell there was a lot of thought and work put into this game, thank you for running it Sucrose!

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Ignatius M. Meen
May 26, 2011

Hello yes I heard there was a lovely trainwreck here and...

This was an excellent art project Mafia game and considering the scale of the wild business here the problems felt I think would be hard to avoid. I'd love to join the next one.

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