Talisman Mafia

[DaveShack]

I thought that revealing the whole role PM for lynched dark hand gave a little too much information. Or maybe even a lot too much.

About the nightkill immunity -- it only mattered the one time, and there was no reason to claim it. It did help confirm tailless as innocent though.

The early lynch descriptions featuring unusual strength fooled me into thinking the ox talisman was related to the kills. We might have twigged to Shendu a day earlier without that.

 

[Takhisis]

Most GMs don't understand the importance of cover Role PMs.

 

[Kennigit]

I would like to see the mafia quicktopic. Still haven't seen it :/.

dying alone, friendless, talismanless was no way to go for the strong hak foo.

 

[Visorslash]

http://www.quicktopic.com/47/H/EH4v4yfT4UNJ

Mafia QT.

Cannot believe you guys lynched Verarde. That was hilarious.

 

[Kennigit]

oh also 3 really fast things before I read various other things:

1)

The early lynch descriptions featuring unusual strength fooled me into thinking the ox talisman was related to the kills.

I tried to hype that up. Honestly I just tried to throw around some ideas and hope 1 sticked, because if the town ever did "everyone reveal your talisman and what it does and your role" I, and all the mafia (to my knowledge), would be stuck. After bsmith didn't have a talisman I was hopeful that maybe the abilities weren't going to be entirely talisman based. Or that things like the pig (which I knew would be vigilante) or dragon--the darker talismans as you referred to in private daveshack--would be little use or one-time use to the town, enough to confuse them and maybe not have everyone go "kk everyone reveal now".

2) my night kills were rng'd entirely. Night 2 I wanted to avoid jarrema, as I thought it likely he would be protected/wanted my teammates to steal from him, and thankfully rng didn't pull him up.

I probably would have "cheated" the RNG if the first roll was for jarrema.

3) as far as reaching out to teammates goes, I didn't do much except say like "Every vote matters" a bunch, hoping that shendu would pick up on that (since his vote did not count until he got rat). Also I know I used the phrase "dirty rat" sometimes, hoping mafia would pick up on that. I believe I only did that in private though, as in the thread I wanted to hype up every other talisman besides the rat/any relating to how night kills were actually done (things like tiger, horse, dog, etc).

 

[Optical]

Nice setup!

I kind of agree that the mafia should've got cover roles, but otherwise, very interesting game. Kudos

 

[choxorn]

oh also 3 really fast things before I read various other things:

1)

I tried to hype that up. Honestly I just tried to throw around some ideas and hope 1 sticked, because if the town ever did "everyone reveal your talisman and what it does and your role" I, and all the mafia (to my knowledge), would be stuck. After bsmith didn't have a talisman I was hopeful that maybe the abilities weren't going to be entirely talisman based. Or that things like the pig (which I knew would be vigilante) or dragon--the darker talismans as you referred to in private daveshack--would be little use or one-time use to the town, enough to confuse them and maybe not have everyone go "kk everyone reveal now".

2) my night kills were rng'd entirely. Night 2 I wanted to avoid jarrema, as I thought it likely he would be protected/wanted my teammates to steal from him, and thankfully rng didn't pull him up.

I probably would have "cheated" the RNG if the first roll was for jarrema.

3) as far as reaching out to teammates goes, I didn't do much except say like "Every vote matters" a bunch, hoping that shendu would pick up on that (since his vote did not count until he got rat). Also I know I used the phrase "dirty rat" sometimes, hoping mafia would pick up on that. I believe I only did that in private though, as in the thread I wanted to hype up every other talisman besides the rat/any relating to how night kills were actually done (things like tiger, horse, dog, etc).

Evidently, the innocents became suspicious of you before we did.

 

[Kennigit]

Re: game design

My main major dislike (much more than other nit picks) is that the full mafia role PM shouldn't have been posted on death. Others:

(a) on the rat talisman/shendu getting dead people's talismans

Spoiler :

Eh, I'm not too huge of a fan of shendu just getting other talismans (I didnt know this until seeing his role PM). I am a bit disheartened to find out the rat talisman could not be stolen. With all the townies having good hearty abilities, the mafia could have at least had that bone to pick.

Like the henchman non hak foo mafia was fundamentally built around being able to steal talismans, but couldn't steal the one they specifically wanted? I know shendu would have gotten the rat when tailless died I guess, but it would have been voted away. The townies would have been "huh, why does the rat have to be voted for today? oh, I guess shendu wants it. Better vote it to most townielike person we know!" Shendu wouldn't have been able to keep the rat unless it was the endgame, incredible incompetence by the townies, or being able to steal it

edit- nevermind; I guess the shendu getting dead talisman is after he gets the rat. Which even makes it less likely; shendu needed to be able to steal the rat in my opinion to secure it

(B) cover roles/room to work and the idea of "overpowering" the town

Spoiler :

I'm actually don't really disagree about cover roles--or more specifically being given cover roles. I think people would pay attention a lot more to abilities than role. It doesn't help that the town filled up almost all the good characters of the show, and there aren't really any neutrals to claim (or rather, the game certainly doesn't have neutrals), but it could be worked around. Townies often are going to be afraid/inactive to reveal their entire role, so as long as the mafia can work with something doesn't matter too much.

With such an ability based game though, I would have imagined townies would care more about abilities than characters; so, the mafia needed to try to work about abilities. If you can make a solid claim about an ability, some people may be more hesitant to draw out the specific role (like the case with jarrema, where I don't think anyone questioned him about what character he was but only what his talisman did). Hesitant enough that when people decide to get all the characters as opposed to abilities in check, it may be day 5 and the mafia could be in a spot for victory.

Now also I got the impression the GM hoped the mafia can try to overpower the townies by sheer force, even if a bit exposed by the numerous scans--both the snake and the sheep gave scans. But this game the townies had far too many 100% survivables (having a revive, an immunity, and general olaf's one time immunity). When the mafia can't even steal the rat talisman (shendu's main objective), how are they supposed to overpower the town who continually upgrades their abilities and directly counter what little the mafia can do. The town can survive the mafia's attacks so easily with combinations of roleblock/doctor/immunities, and had protection against the theft (tiger, rat)?

(c) the "unanswerable question: what does your talisman do?" and townie abilities

Spoiler :

So I know I got lynched for my gameplay (being far too active in finding talisman abilities/suggestive) but some things I got critiqued about turned out to be true. I got harped on for making statements indicative of how talismans may not give direct abilities, but even the OP (rooster giving upgrades) said that at least 1 talisman was that way. Other talismans turned out to be similar, but the crucial distinction that every ability was talisman based.

Here's the unanswerable question ("what does your talisman do") as it starts popping up in the game thread, from earthling's lynch (chosen as it was directed at me):

I'd really recommend no matter what happens today that if either DaveShack or Kennigit can't literally prove they are one of the main innocent characters (ie. Jackie, Uncle, Jade) they should be lynch suspects soon. What especially gets to me is the part about being confused - not only should almost all Section 13 have at least their own talisman again but many of us characters have specific information about what the talisman(s) do (reasonably matching the show) so from both, the whole "need to get more information from people in private" and "how can these abilities really work" looks bad.

I don't know how any of the mafia could answer that well when every ability turned out to be directly tied to a talisman-- you can't claim a role well and you can't claim an ability. I was way too "confused"/suggestive of ideas so I understand I got caught too early--I could have skimmed by the first few days with low activity-- but what can the mafia claim once the question gets asked?

I really hoped that "how can these abilities work" would turn out to be more confusing/murky so that the mafia had room to work. Earthling had a simple direct roleblock talisman, but other talismans weren't as simple to make my posts all that bad. Not all the abilities were really matching the show (the rooster gave an ability only to upgrade other abilities, the ox or "strength" and rabbit with "speed" were vote related) so there was some room to work around that. Even earthling's own talisman (combustion) didn't relate to combustion at all, so there was space for mafia to plant the seeds of ignorance that townies need to have to lose. But the crux of the problem boils down to how there were 0 abilities that were not directly tied to the talismans, and there were no fake/useless talismans around. The town basically had perfect info and no chance to get confused once a day or so passes.

When even the mafia metagame related abilities (vote switching, tiebreaking, ability upgrading, etc) were directly related to talismans, when the eventual question of "what's your talisman do" gets asked the mafia don't have an answer; no vanillas or neutrals to hide in, and not even having the metagame mafia abilities to claim.

I had thrown around ideas that people like viper may be able to steal inherently, and hoped things like the ox (strength) or dog would give benefits to townies vs night kills (like -20% modifier or something after seeing BSmith had a percentage based ability). I hoped the townies that had the dragon/pig may not have been too able to use them-- say that the whoever had the pig was "one time vigilante. Your normal ability is [generic abilitiy, like the vote switch] (or nonexistant)." I was too ambitious to throw those ideas out there and so of course I got pinned as scum, but since that hopeful assumption was false at the end of the day there was nothing, in my eyes, to stop the townies from making a 1-to-1 check list of every talisman and its associated ability and immediately have the game won.

Due to (b) and (c), it seems to me that to win the mafia's best bet would have been lay super duper low (even at that, the town had vig and plenty of scans). And that's not particularly fun. I had fun trying to find my team and trying to get something to land with the townies, even if that was my downfall due to excess.

part (c) is probably worded poorly, but tl; dr: with 100% of the abilities being tied to 100% real, identifiable talismans (no fake ones, no abilities outside talismans, no vanillas, no neutrals), what's the mafia to do when asked "what's your talisman do?"

edit- want to clarify I think it's generally fine and was a good game, just some details with the town being too strong (the 3 survivables). (c) and (b) are really conflicting ways to fix it--either the individual talismans should have been a bit weaker imo such that the dark hand could simply overpower if played right, or abilities should have been distributed differently such that the entire talisman system was weaker (i.e. abilities could exist that weren't tied to a talisman). Also I shouldn't post at 3:15 am.

 

[Tee Kay]

I knew who Shendu was on Day 2

 

[Verarde]

Cannot believe you guys lynched Verarde. That was hilarious.

I'm still finding it difficult to believe myself. Happy that we won, but still pretty ticked.

 

[Mergle]

yay! That was great fun.

 

[choxorn]

Not every ability was talisman-related- the mafia kill ability wasn't talisman-related, and a couple of the ones were talisman-related that didn't come from one, like Olaf's or BSmith's, but yeah, what Kennigit said.

 

[Optical]

I'm still finding it difficult to believe myself. Happy that we won, but still pretty ticked.

Yeah, that was a mistake on our part.

 

[Jarrema]

What ability would I have if I get talisman of speed?
I am reffering to a sentence in my role PM: "Levitation + Speed = Flight!"

 

[Kennigit]

I do want to say this was my favorite game set up (in terms of underlying principles/theme) in recent times.

These are the types of things I like to play.

 

[Earthling]

Good job town, especially tailless for pulling through with the right call for the right reasons on the last lynch.

Big thanks to Turquoiside, I also thought this was a really fun game. The setting, roles, and writeups were great.

I'll share my couple thoughts on balance, but overall I thought the game was very close to balanced.

Spoiler :

On a couple individual points, I agree that revealing the Role PMs wasn't needed and fixing up how the Rat talisman worked make sense. As far as giving out cover roles, say giving a couple mafia roles like Paco and Farmer McDonald and finding two other characters for the townies, that would have been reasonable. I'd stress it wouldn't have made a difference in how any of the mafia died this time though. And if the mafia as existed here had "full" cover roles with cover abilities or scan resistance or such they would have been far overpowered. Token cover roles would only have prevented the broken situation of the town forcing a mass roleclaim in the first couple of days; that wasn't likely to happen anyway and didn't though setting up those cover roles can be done out of caution.

What the game was, in my opinion, was snowball-y. Whichever team got ahead early in the game was nearly sure to win. The game wasn't easy on the mafia, but they would still win this game setup about 4 times out of 10. Abilities were rather powerful and numbers were skewed; what really won the game for the town was eliminating two mafia early which put the townies far ahead. I think people are underestimating how quickly the mafia could have won with their multiple abilities, possibly even 2 nightkills, and a 4 person team, if things had gone the other way. Say all the mafia were still alive by Day 3 or 4 - which really means supposing they just avoided about two lynches and no lucky vigs, and with 4 mafia still alive versus only 6 or 7 townies at that point they would pretty much have secured the win.

I'm okay with small games being swingy, it makes for a lot of excitement and rewards activity, and escapes the drudgery of all vanillas. All that considered I'd still say this was most balanced game I've played in for a long time too. We need more games like this.

 

[choxorn]

Hell, if we'd even remembered to send in stealing orders on Nights 1 and 3, it might have been different, and yes, we screwed up in the beginning and yes we were just unlucky with the vig of landlubber.

We still should have at least had rudimentary cover roles, and our entire role PM's shouldn't have been revealed on death. That would have brought the game into a pretty equal balance and given us something to fall back on, particularly in the endgame when Visor and I just got totally screwed by having nothing to reasonably claim.

 

[Turquoiside]

On roles, although Kennigit has essentially covered most of it:

Even when I was creating the game, I saw the issue of there simply not being enough hero characters available from the show itself. I had to resort to using background characters like Mrs. Hartman and episodic ones like Farmer MacDonald and Lo Pei because I ran out of main characters. But, with the exception Lo Pei (Protector of the Rat) and Drew (Townie w/o a Talisman), I never considered this to be a problem because the majority of the roles were just names. The other 10 roles in this game could really be matched with any Talisman. With the exception of Lo Pei/Shendu and the Rat, all Talismans behaved the same no matter the owner. Roles overall, were just flavoring and it seems many of the Town picked up on this and instead focused on the Talismans.

When the Mafia were accused then, their character should never have been an important question. And, since DaveShack, TK, and Jarrema never needed to reveal that information I'm still not sure it was. Shendu's, and even the other two teammates', key defense was the Monkey Talisman. (Shendu began the game with it, and it's ability made his behavior identical to a vanilla townie for the night, i.e. The Sheep, Snake, and Enhanced Pig were useless against him. If his teammates came under fire, he could choose beforehand to give it to one of them while exposing himself to abilities) If they were pressed to reveal their ability, I expected them to falsify its function. Choxorn recognized this, but made that move much too late to save him from the lynch. Visorslash was perhaps the only person in the game who could pull of this move after choxorn tried it - he wasn't even in the game yet - but I guess he decided it was too risky.
The Team couldn't successfully use something generic for their claim, but if the ability was reasonable in relation to Shapeshifting I think they would easily blend in with the other Talismans. For repeated ones, a tracking claim would have made sense, and the original one I had in mind was one that switched the target of one person's abilities to someone else. I think that if a solid claim was made fast enough, this game might still be in play.


Role Reveals:
I revealed ALL unique roles + abilities, but no Talisman ones. This is why Bsmith got one Day Two and all the Mafia had one. The rest of the townies were Vanilla, so the only information from them was their Talisman (if they still held it). Posting their PMs would be pointless. The purpose of the reveal was to highlight the fact that the Rat Talisman must be given to someone the Town trusts and is willing to protect. Although landlubber's PM showed that Hak Foo was not yet a part of the team, the only other real information from it was that someone isn't innocent because they voted for Hak Foo.


These had to happen for Shendu to gain the Rat Talisman:
1. Taillesskangaru had to be killed, since it couldn't steal it from him.
2. The Talisman had to be voted to another townie whom it COULD be stolen from
3. The owner Tiger Talisman had to be dead, roleblocked, or unowned
4. The Mafia had to steal that from the Townie it was voted to, though they would get it automatically if the target didn't have any other extra talismans.

If all of these happened I would have revealed during the next Day Phase that the Mafia had acquired the Rat Talisman, meaning there would be no more votes on talismans and all free ones would go to the Mafia. If the Mafia happened to be voted the talisman and the talisman was protected, I would have sent a false roleblock PM to the user.
The reasons for these limitations was that making the Rat Talisman an easy steal has the very real potential to unbalance the game. Talismans like the Rabbit and Ox are extremely powerful if they both fall in to the hands of the Mafia, dangerously so if the Mafia also acquire the Rooster. Once the Rat is in the hands of the Mafia, their talisman count is going to grow each phase. If this happens early enough while at the same time both Shendu and Valmont survive, it's game over for the Town.


Thefts:
The flow of Talismans in this game was severely interrupted by Drew's very early exit. Thefts in this game were nearly a third of what they normally would be, and this was a nice boost to town numbers. Without Drew to shore down the number of immortals, Mafia steals became that much more important; and as I'll cover in the next section missing a few of the steals was a huge blow to their chances of winning

Next: Night Action Log

 

[NinjaCow64]

Hell, if we'd even remembered to send in stealing orders on Nights 1 and 3, it might have been different, and yes, we screwed up in the beginning and yes we were just unlucky with the vig of landlubber.

No you weren't.



I'm just that freaking awesome.

 

[NinjaCow64]

Double Post for the hell of it:

In this game my strategy was attack every night I was allowed. Reason? Vigilantes are as powerful in Mafia as a second townie lynch. If I get rid of suspects early then it would be easier to find scum. I think I did a decent job getting one Mafioso and not killing many townies. Yeah.