Mars Attacks!! The Mafia Game
- Thread starter Takhisis
- Start date
Zack
99% hot gas
My AAR:
Wait, I didn't play.
Wait, I didn't play.
Kennigit
proud 2 boxer
Joker roles also are much better if they have a goal to die after a specific time in a large game. Which is irritating, but theres no reason for a joker to be one of the first kills.
That just seems to me like a "LULZ JOKER! WHY SO SRS?", dies early, then players go "oh, time to play the real game". The joker just looks like scum at the start and essentially merely "Delays" the game a tad bit. It's like starting off with 1 extra mafia kill/1 less character.
If the joker has a goal to say, be attacked at night twice and then die, or to survive until day 6 and THEN get lynched, it actually has effect on the game. A joker looking scummy ~day 5 with throw off the innocents and waste their abilities/lynch (on the joker). That's one way to strengthen a weak mafia faction by messing with the innocent's heads.
Similarly, a (pro-town) joker trying to get killed in the night can help the town balance wise by acting like a useful innocent. A joker going "lol look at me, I am scummy" from the very start doesn't accomplish anything in the game design. Unless it's solely for the lulz, but I take my mafia to be srs bsns.
That just seems to me like a "LULZ JOKER! WHY SO SRS?", dies early, then players go "oh, time to play the real game". The joker just looks like scum at the start and essentially merely "Delays" the game a tad bit. It's like starting off with 1 extra mafia kill/1 less character.
If the joker has a goal to say, be attacked at night twice and then die, or to survive until day 6 and THEN get lynched, it actually has effect on the game. A joker looking scummy ~day 5 with throw off the innocents and waste their abilities/lynch (on the joker). That's one way to strengthen a weak mafia faction by messing with the innocent's heads.
Similarly, a (pro-town) joker trying to get killed in the night can help the town balance wise by acting like a useful innocent. A joker going "lol look at me, I am scummy" from the very start doesn't accomplish anything in the game design. Unless it's solely for the lulz, but I take my mafia to be srs bsns.
classical_hero
In whom I trust
My AAR. My original lover never showed up so he got replaced, but before I had a chance to contact him, I died.
He only caught on the Day before last, because he tried to 'pick you up' I said that scans only worked by day (he got the hint), scanned you next day, I sent the PM for the occasion, and then he never sent the orders to try a hit on anyone.I sat around, apparently immune to Martian attack all the time, waiting for Landlubber to never pick me up. I even told him who I was!
Zack never got to use Anakin in either game (my bad, twice) and my Slim Whitman record was never used
Read this, lol!
dcmort93
The Stig
I definitely agree that sprig had way too much power. I'm much more partial to not allowing private communication except for between the mafia and a small mason group, but no one else. If there is unlimited PC, then sprig or anyone else can just pm everyone and ask for their roles, innocents have nothing to hide if they are confirmed by more than one person and will gladly share their roles, mafia/cult will then have no cover roles and are essentially screwed
The answer really would have been nominal cover roles for the Martians at least, I could agree to and sympathize with you guys for that. Not really abilities or anything but just knowing your minor or whatever character from the movie wasn't another player and you could claim "Joe Smith" (and then of course be left to your own devices for playing well, with votes and abilities and so on)
Limiting private communication is ultimately not a good solution for a variety of other games and it doesn't solve other problems like inactivity, but in this one maybe could have worked. I would agree the "one major and overly powerful townie character from the book/story/movie at the center of everyone" is a tough role for everyone and they've historically worked out pretty horribly in various games too, so GMs probably could avoid that without any major detriment to any games.
Though it did happen to work with sprig doing very well and an Innocent win in this one, and you Martians really seem to have made a huge number of mistakes so it's hard to speculate how things could have gone differently especially with different players in different roles.
Limiting private communication is ultimately not a good solution for a variety of other games and it doesn't solve other problems like inactivity, but in this one maybe could have worked. I would agree the "one major and overly powerful townie character from the book/story/movie at the center of everyone" is a tough role for everyone and they've historically worked out pretty horribly in various games too, so GMs probably could avoid that without any major detriment to any games.
Though it did happen to work with sprig doing very well and an Innocent win in this one, and you Martians really seem to have made a huge number of mistakes so it's hard to speculate how things could have gone differently especially with different players in different roles.
Sprig
めんどくさい
Well, I felt that 6+1/30 was a nice majority for forming votes, and not all the movie roles were taken. There was more than enough for people to try to feint around and invent if they'd been active.
IF you look at my QT you will see there was 4 distinct roles that were not claimed.
Love
Deity
I had to take a long-shot guess on who to pick. I guessed wrong.
This really isn't true, I'd have to say in the Martians' defense. Or, insofar as there's always room, always, for anyone to "feint around" that was still possible, but there was nothing like the chance in most other recent games where a scum could claim an actual role/character and have other people legimitately believe he's that character. You'd have to assume the Martians knew all the roles of all the Innocents, and *then* were able to choose unpicked roles. Having 4 out of like 25 roles unclaimed does very little- now, sure a couple mistakes like claiming the character of an already dead Innocent could have been avoided.
But even if the Martians did nothing like that wrong, and just tried to claim minor characters from the movie, there was still way too high a chance they'd overlap with another random Innocent, and die from that. They had no chance of good cover roles unless they got really creative (and the Innocents got stupid, in all likelihood) If there were just some random "Innocent civilians" in the game and fewer roles from the movies directly in the game they might have had some chance, but as it stands not really on the cover roles.
Now, I again wouldn't say the Martians were underpowered with their huge numbers and number of kills (it is ironic that like the two recent games here with 6, 7 member Mafia teams led to some of the most resounding Innocent Victories). But the cover roles were nonexistant in all fairness.
(Of course, this could have been realized by the Martians and planned for, addressed by trying to prevent the Innocents from organizing and mass role reveal in the first place, or there's always the chance of just claiming the same role as an Innocent and trying to get the Innocent lynched first just to buy time/waste a day. So I would again agree the Martians weren't underpowered or couldn't do anything about it - but they had nothing close to easy cover roles from the average Mafia game.)
Love
Deity
We tried to stop you guys from organizing as we knew it was sprig leading you. But any try killing him resulted in random other kill or protection.
Right, well again I wasn't around at the start either, but you could still have taken out a few people around sprig it seems. However you had a chance to sow confusion in other ways - and having a couple inactive Martians probably hurt you, like losing the lynch on dcmort.
But like I said, I agree you didn't have cover roles that made the old "massive role reveal" easy, like it had for mafia factions in several other games. I wouldn't say things weren't balanced though because of the strength of the Martians otherwise, just that particular thing I'd have to realistically say that no, you didn't have much of a chance of finding a real, solid character to claim as a cover role.
But like I said, I agree you didn't have cover roles that made the old "massive role reveal" easy, like it had for mafia factions in several other games. I wouldn't say things weren't balanced though because of the strength of the Martians otherwise, just that particular thing I'd have to realistically say that no, you didn't have much of a chance of finding a real, solid character to claim as a cover role.
Love
Deity
Well we were very strong, and then suddenly we couldn't kill anymore because of the noise.
