Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community - View Single Post - CP Mafia 3 - Super Smash Mafia - GAME OVER

Mazrim · 11-13-2014, 03:32 PM

Alright, here is my overly long postmortem spiel. First of all, I need to give a huge thanks to Krystal for allowing me to use an existing setup she created with some modifications of my own. Her balancing and previous advice were essential for this game to be successful. Many of the most chaotic things in the game are the result of her work. In the future, I will be using my own setups from scratch (more time consuming) but I've learned plenty from the 3 CP Mafia games to do so.

One of my favorite things from Krystal's game were the outside third parties who interacted only through one-way PMs with users. CaptainCrunch and Crazy Bacon Legs were my immediate picks to do this for this game because of their contrasting but interesting posting styles. I knew they could both write some awesome stuff. The names of the Eternals and Guardians was their idea. BigC was brought into this game because of his amazing work in Krystal's game under the same guise. The third parties introduced a big randomness factor into the game which had the ability to break the game wide open depending on what happened

I only told them the basic rules, which were to recruit more people than the other side, and that they could send three messages per day that offered either a gift or a threat. The items given out from them had a decreasing chance of working as they sent out more messages each day, and then I would run an additional balance check that would further reduce the chance the item would work the powerful it was. If the third message of the day threatened with a post restriction over offering a vig kill, it was way more likely to succeed! I used random.org to determine the success of these abilities.

Basically, if you were frustrated that your ability was a flop, blame RNG or getting too powerful an item. Even a first message with a standard item could fail if random.org wasn't nice.

The funniest thing to come out of the third parties was Drury talking like a pirate for a day. Everyone should be liking this post because it was so well done: http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showpos...postcount=4199

I thought it was hilarious how careful Hockeyguy was being with one of his invites. I believe we ended up exchanging over 20 PMs with him going over every little detail about his potential copy ability. We never got to find out if the lynchproof he copied from GGG would have worked, though!

Some would say the mafia had too much power, but I feel like it was appropriate considering the numbers they had on their side, plus the addition of third party randomness. If anything, formulate was luckiest as he had all sorts of ways to kill and do something else at the same time. Some of the town abilities were new ones based off existing roles used frequently, so it would be hard to define them in firm terms for everyone. Hopefully they made sense.

There is always something I don't really expect in a game, and this time it was how much the metagaming rule and the paraphrasing PM rule was stretched. Drury was the biggest offender on this end. I did not make it clear what level of outside influence could be used in game, so I did not stop it after it had already been started. For the next game though, everyone will need to focus less on login time/thread viewing, when PMs are sent, and only the smallest of paraphrasing of PMs will be allowed. It really started to push away the game from the actual strategy involved with hunting mafia. This also encompasses the amount of "Mazrim said/Mazrim says/I asked Mazrim" posts that were made this time. I will clarify the rules for everyone, but I should not be used as a shield to protect yourself from scrutiny.

When it came to figuring out roles, there was alot of people making some broad assumptions on how the roles worked. I tried to warn everyone at the start that this was made intentionally difficult. Things like giving the Cop to the serial killer, and giving the mafia a tracker and a watcher was part of this. There was a blanket assumption that Hockeyguy was town because of his ability. It's important to not too caught up on convention or on one source for confirmation of what you believe. It's better to use the evidence in the game to sort out the facts from fiction, because some of it was there for the taking at times. Is a player saying things that actively hurt the town? They could be mafia, no matter how town their ability was.

I made a few mistakes, myself...some were minor, some were not. The biggest mistake was allowing GGG to live even though the mafia successfully blocked the save. I realized it after reading the posts about that specific thing, had a little internal freakout, then asked the mafia what they would like to do. Killing him instantly could make easy targets of some based on the questions being asked, so they smartly decided to wait it out until the next night.

Aeneas had blocked mrkajz44's cardflip, but I had missed that in resolving roles for that night. Therefore, instead of only the mafia finding out who he was, everyone did! Aeneas didn't really mind in the end, but I felt really bad about that one. In the same vein, I also miswrote mrkajz44's ability name as a commonly used Deflector, when that only confused everyone about it. There were a couple other minor goofs that I successfully edited out as soon as I reread my post and I doubt anyone saw, like votecounts being wrong or saying something in flavour that might accidentally point to mafia names.

Some of you were probably wondering why we bothered to play through Day 10. Technically I could have ended the game right there, but there was a chance the Guardians or Eternals tried to invite someone and they would potentially receive a power that could change the course of the day. This didn't end up happening though, so it felt like an empty day in terms of progress. Extra votes, while seemingly pointless early on, made all the difference in the end!

Finally...Puxlut, thanks for posting all those hilarious and/or strange pictures during the game. It was good light-hearted fun and made me laugh, even if you did post Rosalina instead of Peach.

Thanks again to everyone who played! I will post night actions and town/mafia/SK role PMs tonight. Eternals/Guardians messages will come later as I'll have to sort through the 750 PMs from this game alone in my inbox to find them all.

11-13-2014, 03:32 PM	#5382
Mazrim CP Gamemaster Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: The Gary Exp:	Alright, here is my overly long postmortem spiel. First of all, I need to give a huge thanks to Krystal for allowing me to use an existing setup she created with some modifications of my own. Her balancing and previous advice were essential for this game to be successful. Many of the most chaotic things in the game are the result of her work. In the future, I will be using my own setups from scratch (more time consuming) but I've learned plenty from the 3 CP Mafia games to do so. One of my favorite things from Krystal's game were the outside third parties who interacted only through one-way PMs with users. CaptainCrunch and Crazy Bacon Legs were my immediate picks to do this for this game because of their contrasting but interesting posting styles. I knew they could both write some awesome stuff. The names of the Eternals and Guardians was their idea. BigC was brought into this game because of his amazing work in Krystal's game under the same guise. The third parties introduced a big randomness factor into the game which had the ability to break the game wide open depending on what happened I only told them the basic rules, which were to recruit more people than the other side, and that they could send three messages per day that offered either a gift or a threat. The items given out from them had a decreasing chance of working as they sent out more messages each day, and then I would run an additional balance check that would further reduce the chance the item would work the powerful it was. If the third message of the day threatened with a post restriction over offering a vig kill, it was way more likely to succeed! I used random.org to determine the success of these abilities. Basically, if you were frustrated that your ability was a flop, blame RNG or getting too powerful an item. Even a first message with a standard item could fail if random.org wasn't nice. The funniest thing to come out of the third parties was Drury talking like a pirate for a day. Everyone should be liking this post because it was so well done: http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showpos...postcount=4199 I thought it was hilarious how careful Hockeyguy was being with one of his invites. I believe we ended up exchanging over 20 PMs with him going over every little detail about his potential copy ability. We never got to find out if the lynchproof he copied from GGG would have worked, though! Some would say the mafia had too much power, but I feel like it was appropriate considering the numbers they had on their side, plus the addition of third party randomness. If anything, formulate was luckiest as he had all sorts of ways to kill and do something else at the same time. Some of the town abilities were new ones based off existing roles used frequently, so it would be hard to define them in firm terms for everyone. Hopefully they made sense. There is always something I don't really expect in a game, and this time it was how much the metagaming rule and the paraphrasing PM rule was stretched. Drury was the biggest offender on this end. I did not make it clear what level of outside influence could be used in game, so I did not stop it after it had already been started. For the next game though, everyone will need to focus less on login time/thread viewing, when PMs are sent, and only the smallest of paraphrasing of PMs will be allowed. It really started to push away the game from the actual strategy involved with hunting mafia. This also encompasses the amount of "Mazrim said/Mazrim says/I asked Mazrim" posts that were made this time. I will clarify the rules for everyone, but I should not be used as a shield to protect yourself from scrutiny. When it came to figuring out roles, there was alot of people making some broad assumptions on how the roles worked. I tried to warn everyone at the start that this was made intentionally difficult. Things like giving the Cop to the serial killer, and giving the mafia a tracker and a watcher was part of this. There was a blanket assumption that Hockeyguy was town because of his ability. It's important to not too caught up on convention or on one source for confirmation of what you believe. It's better to use the evidence in the game to sort out the facts from fiction, because some of it was there for the taking at times. Is a player saying things that actively hurt the town? They could be mafia, no matter how town their ability was. I made a few mistakes, myself...some were minor, some were not. The biggest mistake was allowing GGG to live even though the mafia successfully blocked the save. I realized it after reading the posts about that specific thing, had a little internal freakout, then asked the mafia what they would like to do. Killing him instantly could make easy targets of some based on the questions being asked, so they smartly decided to wait it out until the next night. Aeneas had blocked mrkajz44's cardflip, but I had missed that in resolving roles for that night. Therefore, instead of only the mafia finding out who he was, everyone did! Aeneas didn't really mind in the end, but I felt really bad about that one. In the same vein, I also miswrote mrkajz44's ability name as a commonly used Deflector, when that only confused everyone about it. There were a couple other minor goofs that I successfully edited out as soon as I reread my post and I doubt anyone saw, like votecounts being wrong or saying something in flavour that might accidentally point to mafia names. Some of you were probably wondering why we bothered to play through Day 10. Technically I could have ended the game right there, but there was a chance the Guardians or Eternals tried to invite someone and they would potentially receive a power that could change the course of the day. This didn't end up happening though, so it felt like an empty day in terms of progress. Extra votes, while seemingly pointless early on, made all the difference in the end! Finally...Puxlut, thanks for posting all those hilarious and/or strange pictures during the game. It was good light-hearted fun and made me laugh, even if you did post Rosalina instead of Peach. Thanks again to everyone who played! I will post night actions and town/mafia/SK role PMs tonight. Eternals/Guardians messages will come later as I'll have to sort through the 750 PMs from this game alone in my inbox to find them all.