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Red Dwarf Mafia: The Smeggening [Game Thread - Concluded]

I wasn't on the guest list? :mad:

Well, know, we thought you were scum, although I was highly considering inviting you just for the hell of it anyway, especially after I figured out you weren't scum.

Looking at all the night results- I still don't know what happened with half of them, although I now see that Pouter targeting Double A on the final night was what caused him to attack Internet Flea instead of Takhisis, and I find that hilarious.

On another note, Visor, you forgot to post landlubbers' role.
 
Jarrema, don't be hard on yourself. You did a damn good job. Your performance in this is gonna stick with me for the rest of my mafia days.

Also I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the luck virus is what killed flea.
 
One more thing I meant to say: it was really cool having all the GitP people over here. The game wouldn't have been half as good without you. :goodjob:
-snip-

And Al was suspiciously good as a first-time player. :p

:goodjob:

It was awesome playing here (at least, for me). I wish I had posted more.
And I totally misread my role and caused my own death... /facepalm -.-

I'm curious about what the two viruses did.

I thought my role PM and the narrations were great!
 
You're welcome to try your hand here again, Mr. Xym. Also, what did the newcomers -from GitP, I presume?- read my game? Everyone always complains that I play like scum when town and like town when scum.
 
Making good cover roles is hard. Giving you an ability that:

- doesn't draw suspicion (you're a doctor? but there's already a town doctor...)
- you can plausibly fake/get away with claiming (no one will believe your tracker claim if you can't back it up with results)
- doesn't look like a cover role

is challenging. Especially since cover roles that are too good potentially make town abilities seem frustratingly useless.

A lot of scum-sided abilities can be claimed as town-sided abilities. Mine being the prime example.

For my team:

My cover needs to be something that seemingly justifies my abillity. Holly would have been fine I think, thanks to the Supervision Field. Holly wasn't in our list though, so I went with Irene

Sprig had untrackable, so all he needed was vanilla townie cover.

Cuth is hard, but vanilla should also work for him. Or Jack of All Trades. Either way gives us an incentive to avoid being tracked.

Luiz's cover just needs to justify being a roleblocker. Town-sided roleblockers are common enough. Merlyn Monroe works fine out of the list we got
 
For my team:

My cover needs to be something that seemingly justifies my abillity. Holly would have been fine I think, thanks to the Supervision Field. Holly wasn't in our list though, so I went with Irene

I think that Visor should have given you at least one of the main characters as a cover, but Lister, Rimmer, Kryten, Holly, the Cat, and, I guess if they count as a main characters, Kochanski and Hollister, were not only all town, most of them were power roles.
 
Or have a main character be the main role but corrupted by some eeevul faction before the start of the game.
 
Nah, people claim that you act like scum regardless.
Nonunirregardless of that, let's allow the jerb-takin' foreigners their say…
 
Who, if anyone did you target

Winston and I could both gain multiple powers at once, but we could only use one at a time, including the ability steal. I hit Jarrema Night 1 and got nothing, bladescape Night 2 and got a protect, BSmith Night 3 and got a roleblock, Zack Night 4 and got a smell scry, Murska Night 5 and got another protect, and Double A night 6 and got nothing.
Sorry to my team for messing it up last night. It was a pleasure working with you guys, but my mind was not in the right place at all.

You weren't the only one. I've been pretty out of it for the last week or so.
 
‘Smell scry’?
 
Warning - part one of a long rambling wall of text:

Spoiler :
First of all I'll start with saying thanks for making this a fun game to host. Seeing people having fun and enjoying their time in the game makes it all worthwhile.

On the theme: I have Snerk to thank for the initial idea of Red Dwarf, so cheers to that. I did an initial character list and came up with around thirty 'viable' characters. A lot of them were sort of fillery like Todhunter and I had duplicates of a few monsters. I wasn't up to host for some time so I shelved the game and decided I'd look at it later when it came around time for hosting. When I got called up I booted the spreadsheet up and did some wiki checking in order to scrounge up a few more characters (Yvonne, Grim Reaper, etc) but there is a lack of characters to be had in Red Dwarf which is a bit of a limiter when it comes to game design. Perhaps I should have made a smaller game. Still, the theme offers plenty of interesting characters, monsters and items which I felt was a good starting base.

I did decide to keep the game themed after some initial fiddling, I thought about having Rimmer as bad or the cat/rimmer as bad or lister/kryten as bad or some mixture or just randing a character list but in the end I decided I wanted the boys from the Dwarf to all be town, and just heavily discourage claiming so that the game wasn't broken immediately. The Town ended being mostly the red dwarf crew, a couple of neutral sort of characters - legion, grim reaper and a generally very minor character cast.

Setup: My initial design for the game was a team of polyhawks/emohawks who would fiddle with powers and gain some of their own depending on who they targeted. I ended up incorporating that somewhat the monster team who gained powers based on who they targeted and would affect their targets somewhat. Double A could not be doctor protected if targeted by Winston, if IF targeted Zack he would lose his ability and randomly target someone and disrupt their action. They would gain powers similar to those they targeted if not exact in most cases. So I thought that was pretty nifty. Both sides had a godfather to zacks scans - i was debating whether or not to give them immunity to Xyms hide as well. The 'wolf' team the Revenge Seekers were based upon having individually strong powers. They had strong killing powers, an ability thief killer and strongman/ninja, as well as a role cop and a roleblocker. The 'mafia' team was based around manipulation of other players and becoming stronger over time gaining an array of powers with the emohawk and polymorph. The randomiser was just for fun really. :D

Viruses: The sexual magnetism virus would make all members of the opposite sex target the player who used it. Xym used it night two, and all female characters targeted him even if they did not submit an action (which is where remake's night action went even though he didn't submit one). The charisma virus would give him an extra vote to be placed wherever he wanted (not reflected in the tally). The luck virus would indeed be a 1 shot protection. Players using the viruses could not perform another action.

King Morgans role: This role is the one that went through the most changes. You can see in the spreadsheet as unknowing cultist, in the show Hilde is a hologram that has contracted a holovirus that gives her hex vision and turns her insane. It also chews her up pretty fast and she dies after being reawoken. Rimmer gets the hex vision and goes insane and thats basically the story of Quarantine. Now my initial designs had her on both wolf teams at various points, then I had her as a serial killer, then I had her as a cultist, then I had her as a yakuza death cult thingy, then I had her a townie who would change alignments midway through (though the player would get hints revealing this), then I had her finally as a town role who unknown to herself (as she thinks being resurrected that the hex virus is gone, but the memory of herself that was brought back was one of the hex virus) would infect whoever targeted her first. That ended up being Winston - and I've already gone through that. I also considered having it bounce around but I decided once was enough.


I'll do the inquisitor and some other things later today, and finally a commentary on roles/players and important game events.
 
Winston and I could both gain multiple powers at once, but we could only use one at a time, including the ability steal. I hit Jarrema Night 1 and got nothing, bladescape Night 2 and got a protect, BSmith Night 3 and got a roleblock, Zack Night 4 and got a smell scry, Murska Night 5 and got another protect, and Double A night 6 and got nothing.

You weren't the only one. I've been pretty out of it for the last week or so.

How did you get a roleblock from BSmith?
 
Will look at later

Maybe label which quicktopic is which? Though scum qts will be in their role pm

Done.

Was a lot of fun. Last night was a pretty massive misstep but other than that I think we did pretty well. And now I know something about Red Dwarf.

Then my job is done. :D

On the question of balance, it's inevitably a crapshoot in games like this. I'd always take 'fun' over 'balanced' given the choice, and this was undoubtedly a fun game for most of the players. What I will say, though, is that it certainly felt like the odds were stacked against us. Having slightly better cover roles would have improved the experience, imo, especially from the perspective of those scum who knew little or nothing about RD. I'm also pretty baffled by the Inquisitor role, which seems to me to have been almost inevitably pro-town, and insanely overpowered for that.

That said, Jarrema played it well, and deserved his win. And all of the town network guys get credit for narrowing things down effectively, and for figuring me out in time to save another day. I also thought Takhisis did well clearing himself at the end - he really didn't look at all like scum there. And I have to give props to Al Sipsclar, who I thought gave an impressive performance for his first game.
Agreed. In games like this its always a high variance thing. I would also always take fun over balanced and generally try to do that in every game I host.

I also agree on you guys having better cover roles - though I think giving you a name is enough - because you can come up with your own role or power if necessary - though I'll concede I definitely should have given you better cover roles. It was more of an afterthought than anything else.
@ Winston - I think the balance was fine. If anything, eight scum is a lot for a game this size. Without AA/Jarrema killing, there's no way town wins.


He was never a doctor and no one ever said he was. His claim was always fixer.

I thought the balance was reasonable, and I think 8 scum is okay with the powers town has and potential for crossfire + inquisitor shenanigans.

So Pouter Pigeon, you were responsible for my remake result?
Yes.

If I had told you the truth, would you have allied with me?



I always thought "Fixer" was just a flavor of doctor, because I couldn't think of anything else it could be.

So apparently what it was was largely centered around reversing the polymorphs?

Yep, centered around 'fixing' the polymorph and emohawk. Until they both got sabotaged in one night LOL.

I think balance was mostly fine. The one exception is that we should all have had high-quality cover roles from the start, especially since most of us were unfamiliar with the Red Dwarf franchise. Jarrema was powerful, but he was necissary to balance the large number of scum-sided power roles. He could have won with us, yes, but I've never seen survivalists side with the mafia

I also find it funny that on CFC, Cop is now seen as a largely scum-sided role, after several games where it was used that way.

Yes, high quality cover roles was something I should have done. It didn't seem to matter too much from how the game went but I should have given you guys official sort of PMs.

Oh, nonsense. Your performance was easily the best in the game as far as I'm concerned. You kept enough suspicion on yourself to avoid getting nightkilled, which is a success in its own right, but we definitely couldn't have beaten the monsters without you.

Jarrema was indeed an unexpected asset.

I'm not really concerned about balance; it's about the playing experience. Even if it had reduced our chances of victory significantly, I'd have taken one fewer monsters in exchange for some effective cover roles for the remaining three, giving us more leeway to play on the front foot, instead of being forced into a reactive stance.

Most of the game was played without claiming and the networking was vastly reduced - I don't think it is that much of an issue.

Making good cover roles is hard. Giving you an ability that:

- doesn't draw suspicion (you're a doctor? but there's already a town doctor...)
- you can plausibly fake/get away with claiming (no one will believe your tracker claim if you can't back it up with results)
- doesn't look like a cover role

is challenging. Especially since cover roles that are too good potentially make town abilities seem frustratingly useless.

Agreed 100%. I had (IMO) extremely good cover roles for the scum in Ciretako - almost too good.

Its a hard thing to work with.

Well, know, we thought you were scum, although I was highly considering inviting you just for the hell of it anyway, especially after I figured out you weren't scum.

Looking at all the night results- I still don't know what happened with half of them, although I now see that Pouter targeting Double A on the final night was what caused him to attack Internet Flea instead of Takhisis, and I find that hilarious.

On another note, Visor, you forgot to post landlubbers' role.

Added. Ask away if you want to know.

How did you get a roleblock from BSmith?

What the hell was he going to do with a heal? Repair the damage he's done? :lol:
 
A shoutout to Double A's vig kills and Internet Flea's snake message for the best PMs this game.

I think I deleted yours IF - I'd love for you post it again.
 
This is the message I sent to BSmith that prompted the odd post #232:

Zack said:
BSmith1068 said:
So.... Did anything happen to you last night? You were the lucky one that I targeted.

BSmith
Nope, nothing happened to me. I would ask what was supposed to happen, but you can't respond to this. Maybe we could use some sort of code in the thread. Try to integrate the phrases into a post in the thread, depending on the answer.

Do you know what your action is supposed to do? (say "wonderful" for yes, "wondrous" for no, nothing for prefer not to answer)

Does the effect of the action change based on the person it hits? <i.e. mafia/town, power role/vanilla, etc.> (say "terrific" for yes, "terrible" for no, nothing for prefer not to answer)

Is it a negative or positive effect? (say "thrilling" for positive, "thoughtful" for negative, "thunderous" for not really either, nothing for prefer not to answer)

Is it something you target suspicious people with, or those you think are town? (say "forgetful" for suspicious, "forthcoming" for town, "forthright" for not really either, nothing for prefer not to answer)

If you don't want to risk using the code and looking weird, I guess you could just say you'll PM the person back during the Night, or use the phrase "the problem is" in a post.

Anyways, since this is my one PM this phase, and you seem town, I might as well reveal something. I can smell people to determine if they're good, bad, or neutral (I asked Visor what this means, and he said it was sort of similar to the alignment scan in None Shall Pass 2). I smelled Kennigit, and he smelled bad, which I guess is the equivalent of scanning someone as having evil alignment in a NOTW - not necessarily damning, but something to consider. Problem is, I don't see any reason to suspect Kennigit from the thread, and I don't want to claim yet, but I can't talk to him in private about it. So keep that in mind, I guess, that Kennigit might be a bad guy.
 
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