Succinct Mafia - Game over

[Luther Lansfeld]

Fun note: I got IMed from -three- different people convinced that Alex was not town because he's acting like a psycho. <_< I didn't really keep up with the topic since... oh, a little bit after my last post, so I had no idea really.

I was hoping succinct Mafia would be a little less time-demanding but I apparently I overestimate people. <_<

[Lady Door]

<3 Laggy.

This game was indeed fun to watch.

I also think games need to have a succinct rule to which long posts are the extreme exception rather than the norm. I thought about signing up for this one, but then I remembered that two language classes plus English major trying to write something short and non-rambly = LOL NO. >_>

(And yes, Andrew was right, I really was flailing and going "OMG WTF" at him when I was reading Day 3/4's proceedings. XD)

[Laggy]

I also think games need to have a succinct rule to which long posts are the extreme exception rather than the norm.

This. Very much this. I think experimenting there was a success in making better pacing of the game if nothing else.

[Mad Fnorder]

I read this game in big chunks, and it was interesting to watch Alex's "THIS ISN'T HAPPENING" scenario come to pass. Seemed really wacky at the end.

[Yakumo]

Fun note: I got IMed from -three- different people convinced that Alex was not town because he's acting like a psycho. <_<

This.  Very much this.  I was virtually convinced myself that Alex was the third party after Ciato said there weren't any more scum because he was so dead set on grouping people as possible scum and basically looked like he was trying to get the useful roles eliminated.  Especially when Rat brought up the third party possibility and he basically threw it out the window with no reason but a vaguely described thought that a third party would be more unbalanced in 11 people than three scum(at least that's how I read it.).  I still don't understand that argument.  Would you care to elaborate a bit further?  You were obviously annoyed while the game was going on, so maybe there's something you just didn't feel like going over that you wouldn't mind throwing out there now?

[Dark Holy Elf]

I was totally convinced Alex was Third Party. I couldn't figure out why he was so violently opposed to the idea of Third Party existing otherwise. <_< Though I suppose it could just be an attempt to get everyone to dismiss him as a lynch candidate towards the end, which was needed for town victory. If you meant all that, man, that's some pretty serious logic blindness. Three nokills? Seriously? Nice scumhunting though, regardless.

Succinct mafia > normal mafia. For reals. I might actually play it more than once every six months.

Largely ninja'd by Yak.

[Excal]

Alright, I'm of two minds about this game.

The first is I'm amused by it.  I mean, Day 1 was standard Mafia, Day 2 was the hilarity of watching people try and figure out who I copped, and watching pretty much everyone discount Tom and Rat, who had it right.  But when Day 3 hit, it was just a whole lot of trainwrecky goodness.  I mean, watching everyone flounder about trying to figure out who the third scum was was just laughably bad.    Especially when Alex said he was sure I investigated him or Ciato.  I mean, I can kinda see where he got the idea I might have gone after him, though even Cid had better proof for his claim (Sorry, Cid.  I didn't investigate you, I can just read your alignment like a book), but it's his claim that I investigated Ciato that really blew me out of the water.  I mean, the same Ciato where the only real mention I make of her on Day 1 is that I'm pretty certain she's scum?  The one who would have read Town to me thanks to her power, which had been revealed by that point?  I'm still not sure where he got that one from.  But, regardless, just the fact that there was a 50% chance of winning on Day 3, and then it was almost certain we'd win on Day 5, highlighted by the ridiculous, absurd, and pathetic fate meted out to poor Rat on Day 4.  This game was just insane and fun to watch.

The other emotion I have is one of supreme frustration, and a bit of anger.  And yeah, I'm gonna get a bit egotistical myself going into this bit, but I think I'm due.

Now, let's get into the background and justification before I get into the real rant.

First off,  in the last few months, I tend to be in one of two modes for Mafia.  I'm either stumbling about, trying to figure out what's up, or I've had an epiphany and know at least 75% of the non-towns.  The post-epiphany state is always, ALWAYS, followed by being night killed.  I'm not sure why this is, but it is, and it's really bloody frustrating.  I usually don't mention this though, because I don't usually get my thoughts and realisations out before I die, and it'd just look like saying I knew it all after the fact, which is really just classless.  But this time, this time I not only had the epiphany on Day 1, but I also have a record posted in the topic before I died.  Take notes, because it'll be the foundation of my being an arrogant little prick soon enough.

So, I mentioned the first post of Page 4 before.  Let's link to it now, shall we?

http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=1900.msg31505#msg31505

There you'll see Delta, Rat, Ciato, Kilga, and Bard all get talked about.  Delta gets written off as mostly town, Rat, I was breadcrumbing him for all the good it did in the end.  The other three?  The two scum and Kilga.  Also note, I call Kilga on the exact same thing he said only Cid noted (and I was in the scuffle about that right after he said it to, if it weren't for the fact Bard already had a vote on him, it was you I was gonna vote for, Kilga), AND I vote for Bard before it's popular for a different reason than Alex, and I stay constant for the rest of the day while Alex flip flops over to the pretty clearly Town El Cid.  Or, at least, pretty clearly town if you're any damn good at reading people like any Mafia God ought to be able to.

I'm also gonna pull out a conversation I had with Cyril, since he was pestering me for thoughts while I was trying to write that post.  This is all time stamped, starting with the AM hours on Wenesday.

Cyril Shinsei (0:59:30): What does your gut tell you right now, in any case? I'm curious.
Excaliburned (1:00:09): It doesn't.
Excaliburned (1:00:56): El Cid and Alex feel legit, Rat probably would too, but to a lesser extent, if I didn't have that cop reading, but that's it.
Excaliburned (1:01:16): Delta...  feels too idiotic to be faking, but there's a nagging voice that says he may be trying to pull a fast one.
Excaliburned (1:01:29): And...  one of Kilga/Bard/Ciato is scum.
Excaliburned (1:01:35): Maybe more.
Cyril Shinsei (1:01:55): *nod*
Excaliburned (1:02:56): And Strago is completely off my radar.  That's bad, but unavoidable.  One other person is as well...  right, Tom.  Ah well, gotta focus somewhere, and those two can wait.
Cyril Shinsei (1:03:16): ...wha
Cyril Shinsei (1:03:18): Strago isn't even playing...
Excaliburned (1:03:31): Sopko.  >_>
Cyril Shinsei (1:03:35): >_>;;;;
Excaliburned (1:03:42): Similar names, man.
Cyril Shinsei (1:03:47): Sure, sure
Excaliburned (1:03:54): And my mind is trying to coalesce other stuff at present.
Cyril Shinsei (1:03:57): You have a night investigation target in mind yet, or is that definitely waiting till deadline?
Excaliburned (1:04:15): Waiting for now.  I want to see how things shake out and how the flip goes.

Excaliburned (3:11:32): At least Kilga's bad logic makes a certain kind of sense.
Excaliburned (3:12:22): I mean, all the scum are concentrated amongst four people, except it's really five if you count me, because of this highly sketchy litmus test I devised.
Excaliburned (3:12:44): I mean, if you accept his premise, then it is a good deductive argument.
Excaliburned (3:12:49): And he's holding to it.
Excaliburned (3:12:59): It's all bunk of course, but the sense is there.

Cyril Shinsei (10:32:39): there is a lot of discussion going on right now on the Cid train.
Excaliburned (10:33:07): I noticed.  And am trying to rethink whether I might have been wrong about him.  But don't think I am.
Cyril Shinsei (10:34:11): In what regard?
Excaliburned (10:36:07): El Cid?  Dunno exactly what it is.  But he's just tossing off townie vibes.

Excaliburned (12:17:50): And it's a 4-3 vote now.
Excaliburned (12:18:13): Also, investigate Ciato
Cyril Shinsei (12:18:44): It's actually 4-3...
Cyril Shinsei (12:18:56): Soppy, Rat, Tom and Kilga on El Cid, while Bard has you, Alex, and Ciato.

Cyril Shinsei (17:36:51): Congrats
Cyril Shinsei (17:37:05): Once again, you find yourself the beloved target of a Night 1 nightkill
Excaliburned (17:39:05): Did they figure out I was the cop?
Cyril Shinsei (17:39:24): The person who did deduced you were, yes. Surprisingly not from your breadcrumb.
Excaliburned (17:39:45): Ooo, how did he figure it out?
Cyril Shinsei (17:39:52): In fact she suspected it from your general behavior and had a feeling you would investigate her!
Cyril Shinsei (17:39:54): *HINT HINT*
Excaliburned (17:40:07): So the result was non town then
Cyril Shinsei (17:40:14): The result was indeed
Cyril Shinsei (17:40:20): Ironically
Cyril Shinsei (17:40:28): You were an insane cop
Excaliburned (17:40:31): I assume any doccing is already tragically misplaced.
Excaliburned (17:40:35): ...
Cyril Shinsei (17:40:37): Doc went on her.
Excaliburned (17:40:47): Why do our docs always target scum?
Cyril Shinsei (17:40:58): Oh, wait, sorry, the result is town, because she gave up godfather protection killing you
Cyril Shinsei (17:41:06): Which means you'd get scum normally, so you'd get town!
Cyril Shinsei (17:41:12): Not that this matters, anymore
Cyril Shinsei (17:41:18): Rat just IMed me screaming
Excaliburned (17:41:22): Ah well, if she came up town, I was going to decide I was either sane or insane, figure I had caught the other scum, and roleclaim.
Cyril Shinsei (17:41:27): "NOW EVERYONE WILL THINK EXCAL BREADCRUMBED ME AS SCUM"
Excaliburned (17:41:34): Because I did.
Cyril Shinsei (17:41:37): Yep.
Excaliburned (17:41:54): Pity.  If Ciato hadn't of killed me, I'd have broken the game open.

So, yeah.  I had Ciato, and either Kilga or Soppy (Soppy wasn't looking good to me, at all) would have been my target for night 2, and that answer would have led me to Kilga.

So, props to Ciato.  She played a very vital part in Kilga winning.  She killed me.  Props to Kilga, while you were dropping tells, only two people noticed, one forgot, the other got killed.  And, more importantly, the way you BSed as hard as you could on Day 5, and the way you just forced the choice on Tom on Day 3 (which was beautifully done and I'm surprised no one noticed) and then rammed Rat's death through before anyone could begin to think about his guilt.  Yeah, you got lucky, but you fucking earned that victory, so I'm pretty ok with that.

Hell, while I'm pissed that town lost, it's not like I'm that upset.  After all, as far as I'm concerned, I also won.  I called all three non-towns on Day 1, I earned the only scum kill in the game and was head and shoulders above any other candidate for it.

Nah, that's not what I'm pissed about.  What I'm mostly angry about is having to sit on the sidelines, watching not just town flounder about like a chicken with its head cut off and slowly killing itself.  Nah, the really grating thing was watching Alex and his monstrous ego leading town into a three day clusterfuck of epic proportions.

I mean, you've got his This game should be over speech and his I'm 2 for 2 proclaimation at the start of day 3.  And then later on you've got the bastard making it sound like the only reason town nailed scum is because of him.  This is especially grand as it comes among all kinds of rants that the game is three kinds of fucked up.  Watching him shut down Rat everytime the guy figures out a bit of the setup, and reading the rants about how fucking impossible it'll be to find a third party despite the fact that he almost did it on Day 3, and probably would have if he had just got over himself and his knowledge of the Holy Writ of How Mafia MUST Be and noticed the hustle Kilga played on him.  Hell, he did do it on Day 5.  Except that, y'know, we got it from the mouth of a Mafia God that it's impossible to do, so Day 5 actually never happened at all.  Yeah.

See, I was talking with Rat recently, and I said to him what I thought, that a Town loss would be due to Alex screwing up.  And he told me that wasn't fair, and that the cause was a lot more complex than that.  Now, I've given that a bit of thought, and I still think I'm right.  See, let's take a look at Alex.  When we started, he WAS all that and a bag of chips.  After all, none of the rest of us knew how to play.  And he's very good when he's in his element.  He's logical, reasoned, and makes devastating arguments.  And people tend to listen to him, maybe because he makes good points, maybe because he's acknowledged as being good at the game.  But people also don't seem to realise his flaws.  And those are fucking huge.  The fact is, his ego is bigger than he is, and he isn't the best mafia player here anymore.  Even bigger, he's only worth anything when he's in his happy place.  The moment he's outside of that, he's a threat as he shuts down every possibility but the one his Holy Writ says has to be, and heaven help you if you dare to disagree, because he'll turn that silver tongue of his to shutting down any chance of discovering just what the hell is going on.  And he'll try and railroad things towards how he thinks they should be, winning the game be damned.

But hey, maybe I'm being a little harsh.  I mean, despite his little tantrum in day 5, he was still 2 for 2.  Wait...  no, 2 for 3.  But hey, it's not like there's anyone who did better, right?

[Sierra]

Arglefuck. Would've mocked you for third-party theories if I'd had the time, Kilga. >.< Was with family all today.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I don't always agree with Alex's methods either, but at least he catches scum before he dies instead of after. <_< Honestly, little is more annoying than the whining of a sore loser, and that's what most of that post comes off as.

Just relax, man. It's just a game.

[Excal]

When he does.  The main issue here is the fact that he seems to think he's the only one who can play the game, and that it has to be played his way.  He's not the only one who can, and he's honestly blinding himself with his own beliefs.

[Sierra]

Look at it this way, Excal: maybe take scum NKing you night one as a sign that you're too good at the game to stay alive? >.>

For my part, I think I failed it up as a townie only slightly less than I usually do. Despite the day one debacle, at least I was right about Ciato. I'm usually not right at all, barring it being part of some crazy gambit a la Alex in Clue.

[Ranmilia]

Man, I wasn't going to post anything here, just quietly congratulate Kilga and go on my way.  But that is really just unwarranted from Excal there.

Tell me exactly how we, me or town as a whole, could have played the game better and won this.  Tell me exactly what logic I am missing that would let us reliably find a third party like this in a way better than the one I used.  Tell me what strategy we could have employed for the last few days that would have worked out better than knocking off Rat, Sopko and Tom, the top three suspects as generally agreed upon by not just me but the entire living town.  All I'm seeing here that possibly fits that is "You should have read Kilga and known something was up with him more than Rat or Sopko or Tom!" and I'm not sure how that can be applied as anything but a lucky read.

I'm not the best player here and my methods aren't the only ones.  However, my methods work, I'm constantly improving them, and I've yet to see a different and better set be clearly articulated by anyone, despite my constantly asking for it.  You say I'm blinding myself, I say "To what?  Show me, I want to learn and improve."  And there's never an answer.

At the beginning of this game the mood was "Oh, awesome, Alex's improving his style, he didn't stick to lynching Delta and Cid."  Now at the end of the game I'm being told we should have lynched Delta after all.  So what, we just give up and policy lynch all stupid townies at the beginning of the game, because maybe there will be a no-kill third party that will screw with everyone's heads even if we lynch the scum team in a perfect shutout?

I don't think I screwed up this game at all, I think I played it the best I possibly could individually, and I think most of town did the same.  We came very, very close to winning.  Much closer than we would have under any other circumstances I can imagine, aside from randomly lynching Kilga instead of Tom.  What if we hadn't lynched the scum, what if we'd mislynched on Excal's insane cop investigation, etc etc.

Our performance still didn't lead us to an actual win, and that frustrates me immensely.  Seeing people say "Oh this game was great!" is even more frustrating; I'm sure it was fun to watch, but it was not fun to play towards the end because I know town showed a great deal of skill and still wound up losing.  The setup was such that either skill did not make any difference in who won, or town needed even more skill than we displayed to win, which I think is honestly pretty unreasonable.  We, not just I, played damn well by any standards.  I'm pretty happy with that.  

tldr - How exactly were we supposed to come closer to catching a third party like this in a reliable fashion?  I say it's impossible, if you say it's not, tell me how.

Editing in a Mafia game topic - It's just like the Jester problem.  In any game, no matter how blatantly scummy someone acts, you can always second guess yourself with "But they could be a jester!  Don't lynch them!"  What can you do about this other than decide jesters aren't probable in a game and ignore the possibility of their existence?

[Bardiche]

For a social game, we sure are being rather keen on worsening social ties. C'mon, people, what's going on here?

[Carthrat]

I liked this game. Kinda. But it was frustrating to me for a different reason, namely that what insights I did have actually kicked me in the face when I revealed them. (That I actually got them right is probably the reason I liked the game. And, well. Arguing is fun! Even if I was on the wrong end a lot.)

Excal investigated me and was insane? Yes! I mention this (am forced to do so!) and people all turn to stare angrily at me? Yes!
Third Party? Yes! I mention this and it gives Kilga an easy out to get Alex lynched? Yes! Although I knew this, there was no rational way to conclude which of Alex and Kilga it was (only that, after the fact, it seemed more likely that Kilga would recklessly use his anonyvote than Alex. But what the hey.) Hence why I wanted to lynch them both. It didn't take. Ah well.

The problem with Alex this game was that he was unwilling to consider possibilities that deviated from a standard game, the sheer DISBELIEF of an insane cop was probably the most annoying to me, for obvious reasons. Perhaps this is born out of ego, I don't know, but it lead him to both come off as very arrogant. I don't know if that actually raised Delta's heckles or not and I can't say if it actually lead straight to defeat- I don't think so. I don't think Alex can really be blamed for the entire game, because so many dumb things happened that could've gone differently. And, well. 2 for 2.

I've got to say that I agree Kilga would've been very difficult to find- even if you realise there's a third party (I can figure out everything but scum!), it's impossible to tell who it actually is because *any of them* could have an incentive to play as townie as possible. I had a conversation with Laggy about this, he said that if a third party is so hard to find, why can't scum just play as if they were like that? After all, only one needs to be alive at the end to win.

I can only answer that scum have the ability to increase their odds of winning by working together (but if they don't pull it off, it makes them look worse), and that they have to work harder to pretend they don't know what they know. If you boil Mafia down to raw theory, then it is a statistical crapshoot and not really much fun- it's the human element that mixes it up. A third party isn't as hindered by, well, psychology as the scum.

As for the setup in general? I think scum were the biggest losers from the start, actually. Two investigative roles and a doctor on the town side versus a crippled roleblocker and godfather, with an un-NKable third party thrown into the mix? It makes for some sad criminals, since even if Bard and Ciato had been more on the ball...

[Ranmilia]

Very much so.  I can't see a way for the third party to lose in this setup barring town lynching them completely at random.

My attitude about things like that stems from practicality, and I don't see how it was a problem or bad in any way.  Sure - there could be an insane cop and a third party.  I was in fact quite convinced Kilga was right at the end.  But so what?  How can you alter your play to deal with the possibility of a non-standard game, one that includes entire factions that you have absolutely no information about?  Not even the certainty, just the possibility? 

You can't, at least not without taking shots in the dark that cripple your chances if you're wrong and everything is standard after all.  The best you can do is go for the most likely scenario.  Seeing as how this was a small game, moderated by someone I thought had a good head for theory and vetted by someone else I thought had a good head for theory, and with its own special condition (succintness), I thought it was incredibly unlikely that there would be such gamebreaking nonstandard roles.  The most I could do was to play to the most likely situation, which for me was that Kilga needed rope and I needed to do whatever it took to get him rope'd.  Be he scum or be he third party or whatever. 

And hey - I was right about that, too.

The difference in finding scum and finding third parties is that they have different win conditions.  You know scum's win condition - kill all town before they lynch you.  You know they have to play toward that goal, or they will statistically lose to random lynches from the majority.  (no, scum CANNOT ignore each other and play completely as if they are not scum, and if they can your setup's broken.)  You know what you need to do to them - lynch them for sure, or possibly vig kill them barring things that make them immune to such.  That's what the game's all about, it forms the entire basis for playing Mafia rather than Hatbotting lynches. 
 
Third parties?  You don't know what their win condition is.  You don't know what is beneficial to them or harmful to them.  You don't know what type of play might be beneficial to them.  You don't know what you should do to them (politician, jester, etc).  On the other hand, the third party knows everything about their own role, as well as how town and scum will play, AND knows that a third party exists. 

[Bardiche]

How would you handle third parties, then, Alex? Barring the one from Smash Bros Mafia, in a regular Mafia setting, what'd you change to make 3rd Parties have less of a chance?

[Carthrat]

Run it as an open setup. Then at least you know they exist and what to watch out for.

Addendum: Third parties aren't born equal and are hard to balance by definition. I wouldn't mind seeing some discussion on what, exactly, is appropriate- I know SK's feature predominantly in open setups around mafiascum, and do seem to get caught frequently. Any thoughts?

[Laggy]

I'm weighing in for a moment and saying that Kilga's role, in this game, was about as blatantly anti-town and pro-scum as you could get without actually being scum. Scum accelerates his victory, and both town and scum detriment it by being around. He might as well HAVE been disconnected scum for all purposes and the game would not have changed at all (in fact, it would make him better!). There's no third-party vagueness here that you're saying makes it so utterly impossible, in the end the case on him was for scummy behavior as it would have been anyway. So I'm not seeing the psychology-aspect which makes him impossible to find, no more so than a lone scum.

The only crux was the lack of NKing throwing a wrench into the mix, but that was clarified when I stated scum could no-kill (and frankly I'm surprised I had to clarify such a thing, everyone seemed to take it as granted as far as a possibility goes anyway).

[AndrewRogue]

Basically, as long as the Third Party is forced into a distinctive, effective alignment (usually anti-town), I tend to think they are okay. Third parties with odd tricks (Politicians, etc) are hard to track because they can play picture perfect as townies, just doing some other things. Third parties that have to sink town (and scum, really) seem like the fair ones because, for all that they have the bonus of being alone, they also have to beat both factions.

Ninja Edit: I'm inclined to agree with Laggy here. Admittedly, I didn't follow the early game closely, but towards the end game... well. Near as I can tell, you all DID have him pegged. He was a perfectly viable candidate. I saw a couple statements along the lines of "Well, Kilga, I barely notice him" which... tends to feel like a tell to me. So, I suppose this is what is making the problem so hard for me to buy. The ultimate game loss here was not a factor of Kilga being unfindable (again, he was being pegged as scum!), it was the failure to follow through with a plan that killed a good chunk of town.

[VySaika]

I'm boggling at the amount of "I was sure Alex must have been the Third Party!" thoughts here. I was very certain it was Kilga as soon as he started pressing the Third Party point. He was basically trying to sell the idea that Alex was what he himself really was, and I picked up on that pretty quickly. Also Alex never seemed like anything but Town here, for me(past Day 1 where everyone is up in the air, of course). 

On another note, I do very very much like the Succinct Rule and motion that it be in effect for all following Mafia games here. Made the game very entertaining, and easy, to read and keep up with.

[Twilkitri]

A survivor that needs to have people killed off until there's only a small amount regardless of what affiliation they are isn't a survivor, it's an serial killer with a lax win condition. Survivor role is already bizarrely frowned upon here, misrepresenting other roles as them is not helping the situation.

A 'normal' survivor town and survivor would have won when Ciato was killed. To be fair there is no rule saying that every rolename has to match up to the 'normal' use of the name. But the least you could do is come up with something different instead of overloading a commonly used term. To be further fair I can't personally come up with a one-word description of the role (mostly because it doesn't seem to have any sort of aim: it wants to have most people killed off but not necessarily everyone = uhhhh...) but I have no imagination anyway so...

[Cmdr_King]

I dunno, I'm not so convinced the succinct thing actually accomplished much.  While things were indeed pretty easy to follow, everyone kicked "LURKER KILL MAIM DEVOUR YE MUST POST" into ludicrous overdrive and more than one player looked pretty stressed due to it.

Then again, Mafia in general always looks needlessly stressful and cutthroat.  I mean, it's a social game, half the players having such a Spike attitude about it (and if you know the term, you know who you are) is just... silly.

The trainwreck factor was pretty high though, entertaining to read.

[VySaika]

Also agreeing with Twil here. A "survivor" should have won the game(alongside Town) when Ciato was lynched, as Town has no reason to lynch more people when the Scum died and the nightkills stopped. Kilga wasn't a survivor, he was a serial killer with Super Anon Hammer instead of the standard Night Kill.

Yeah, this is semantics and just a Naming Arguement, but it's still something that I think needs to be said(or emphasized, as Twil said it first.)

[Bardiche]

Am I the only one that found the Succinct rule to be mildly annoying because you couldn't properly respond to everyone? >> When you have to defend yourself, it sucks if you have to be concise. Or want to attack someone, of course.

[Kilgamayan]

I must be the only person here that doesn't like reading games they're not a part of. You guys are going to shame me into doing it at this rate. D: