Games Mafia Game 102 - Genswap Impact: End Game

[Copy Panda]

omo! but in fake spanish

Spoiler: Night Actions MG102!

 

[Crescent Jinx]

GB you too interested in my legs for some reason.

 

[GB]

leg*

 

[SonOfDaws]

leg*

I feel like that's somehow worse

 

[Brandish μ]

MVP = DaveTownsend. Massive influence on the game.

So... I know we maybe didn't win this "properly", but still GG @Brandish μ! We did put a lot of thought and time into this game and it worked in the end!
I don't even know how Lovers can win in a more legitimate way, those who did have all my respect ahah
Anyway, I hope we kept all the players entertained at the end lol

Realisiing my secondary was hidden, and I was playing on borrowed time, I struggled to gather the motivation to get out of bed, started shirking responsibilities, and could not look at myself in the mirror.

But then I met you.

Haha, thanks MArGi for your guidance and endurance as mafia lover (the tougher role).

 

[Demonspeed]

thank you everyone for playing we will post post-game content and night actions shortlyy

Shortlyy he said...

 

[Farfalla]

Gomen, turned out that the 'bug' Oli had last friday was actually COVID and we all got bedridden here at home.

 

[Farfalla]

Aight, apologies for the delay, I rly needed this 'sweet' time for some sort of recovery [june was a bitch of a month].

Now to the game comments:

First of all, I want to apologize if a lot of you experienced grieving during this game, specially in its start. I've talked about things in general with some people already, but I'd like to provide explanations to all the ones involved now. Once more, sorry as well @Copy Panda for the [usual] rollercoaster of emotions I put you thru ^_^" (I'll pay you some mead in the future).

But yeah, so the reality is that I got too hyped with this concept, for months... I think I was PMing Lambs since feb or mar idk... But all those months ago I focused and spent my time on irrelevant things to the game - aesthetics. Idk, when you deal with things that demand creativity, you won't always feel inspired, so the moment I envisioned something I believed that could provide people with a really nice time, I just got carried away.

Then May started, and suddenly there was a game window, so we didn't have to wait for more months to move forward with our ideas, we could just host it now. I ended up basically dragging Pandu into this, while he was busy with a thesis. We had 2 weeks to finish planning, but due to my work and his commitments, we could really only put our hands on it 2~3 days before the game. Which should be enough time, but we were going back and forth with ideas, while juggling other stuff, and finally in between we both got sick, and we just didn't have the energy to discuss things as throughoutly as we should have. In retrospect, maybe we should have called it off and kept it in August, altho I guess that would also be a buzz kill.

With the concept we had, we wanted to give people the ability of adjusting their roles and teams if they'd want to - that was the core of the experience - so we set on the swap mech. It felt innovative and fresh, not only in a 'tryhard' way, but also 'cause we thought people would really appreciate this kind of manageability in a game. We did consider "the plan" as a possibility, but we were like "would people really do it... when the goal or the idea is to have fun with the trades, the focus should stay on that, right?" and we also had debates about how that's borderline playing against a wincon to an extend (if you envision yourself assuming a position that will cause you to die no matter what, you're failing the alignment you'll acquire in antecipation). When "the plan" did take place in the end, we decided that bringing those points up during the ongoing game would just derail it, so we took other actions in the form of the 'panic mech end'. I have some reservation on how much that action was rly the cause of the outcome some people had, but I do have to apologize for dragging Pandu on that as well and imposing that on the players since it's never cool to go for an abrupt change of plans like that, it's just disruptive no matter what.

About the other part of the mech that was criticized, the hidden scums, with the swap mech, that anon part was necessary. I, personally, imagined I'd have fun guessing my teammates, waiting for a reveal, trying to put things together. But yeah I should have looked at the bigger picture, specially cause 3 nights and days take like a week in real life, so things could easily get tiring... In our conditions though, we just trusted those were unlikely and missed the opportunity to add small rules ("swaps can't be disclosed in the thread") to prevent some bigger shifts, since we wanted to go on with the mech. I think the setup had the means for the scums to navigate thru the game in spite of the mech raising the bar for them (and that's something the mafia, specifically, could somewhat antecipate, judging by their numbers, and eventually finding other roles in game with their 2 detectives).

This post looks very odd and crooked cause besides my bad english I've been tailoring my thoughts here and there during those days, so it ended up being very patched, but I just rly wanted to offer you all my sincere apologies for the thing as a whole. We can discuss the setup as well next, but again I just really wanted to post that much first... It's really a miserable thing to burden your cohost like I did, and also to watch the players utterly struggling with what you came up with - specially the ones that committed to the game and remained engaged in spite of their odds.

Other than that, thank you ALL for hanging in there, managing to turn the game into something enjoyable in the end, and for the real commit to what we had prepared for us - I'm happy to see this was still pleasant at points. Gratz @Brandish μ and @MArGi on the victory! In spite of what, there was a lot of dedication from your sides, so as a host it was satisfying to follow you guys till the finish line. Cheers, peeps.

 

[GrySun]

 

[Copy Panda]

Hello everyone, this post is a little overdue, but this post had to be made before the next game starts. I'd like to start off by thanking everyone for their participation once again! It was a tough game to host, even tougher to play, so I'm glad in the end most of you managed to enjoy yourself. Mostly, I'd like to thank my fantastic co-host, noona! Hosting with her is great, she's both sharp and considerate, willing to think along with me and her fellow players to arrive at sensible conclusions and makes beautiful arts to boot! That's one of the few things concerning this game I'm actually a bit sorry for, after all the effort she put into making the avatars, in the end, the game was not as spicy as it should have been.


Game thoughts
Initially, I had a longer post wherein I reviewed specific player performance. However, I got a bit upset again while reading through earlier hostile posts by certain players concerning the game and how it should be 'broken' and whatnot, almost taking pleasure in the prospect of ruining the experience. The principally warring attitude was a bit odd, but one can't spell 'hostility' without 'host'. So, nonetheless, instead, I'll keep this post considerably shorter and just focus on some gameplay stuff.

For the mechanic to work properly, players needed to absolutely respect the MG premise of 'playing towards your win condition'. This means that players, even if they swapped allegiances (such as a recruited player might) were to respect their current side and do what they could to win accordingly. As noona mentioned, we considered the 'plan' to swap around, but we didn't think players would go through with it. Essentially, had the plan played out like Van proposed with his tables, it would play out to be the most deliberate suicide-pact town could have agreed to. Players that ended up as mafia would have no choice but to be trapped and die. Honestly, I thought this prospect would be enough to resist such plans out of fear of being trapped in a mafia role. When the plan did manifest, noona and I arrived at an impasse. I was quite alright with the prospect of a 'new' mafia having to fight themselves out of a corner, but by the graces of my co-host, the majority of players were essentially spared from signing their own death warrant.

Whether or not this mechanic could have played out differently, I leave it to you. As was mentioned before, the goal of the mechanic was for players to have fun trying to bait others into swapping with them, attempting to avoid swaps by skillfully using blocking roles to build rapport with town players in an attempt to be 'confirmed' and potentially adjust their playstyles as they swapped roles and allegiances. Perhaps some other kind of mechanisms could have been considered to balance this out. Noona mentioned a gag-order kind of clause, which could perhaps work. There are other ways we could have accomplished this, such as limiting swaps or adding a delay to the swap (i.e. start swapping on N2 instead of N1).

We did (naturally) consider that the swapping mechanic is anti-thetical to a foundational principle of MG, that being that your side is more or less 'fixed'. Sure, folks can be recruited, but that's generally a one-time thing (and perhaps a rare occurrence overall), whereas in this game who your team was remained elusive until a few phases in. Nonetheless, we went ahead with it and attempted to somewhat experiment with the way people view and approach this game. Some might say it failed at being a pleasurable experience. We ended up turning off the mechanic to prevent the game from devolving into a waiting game.

Overall, maybe this can be attributed to two main things (aside from the aforementioned reasons). One is the anonymity clause for the mafia. We added this as a layer of protection for members as they might be swapped out. This is also why the mafia themselves could not initiate trades, as they could end up relinquishing the burden of mafia-hood and rat their teammates out. We considered that with anonymity, the mafia perhaps should be able to trade after all, but we also considered this removes all possibility of tactically volunteering your identity. It was quite difficult in the end, though maybe it could have worked if players were more used to the concept overall.

Additionally, there were some troubles managing the possibility of individual PMs; since players are anonymized, it could so happen that the mafia plans to coordinate a vote or kill someone, or perhaps blocks their own teammate. So ultimately we judged anonymity was required, and could perhaps add a layer of mind games early mafia team had to deal with. Perhaps it was too stressful for them, however.

A further note is that the game was in the end quite close, in part because the game was balanced around players being somewhat solo-players in the musical-chair phase of the game. In other words, we wanted individual players to have tools at their disposal to get around while they could not rely on their numbers. Without the premise of swapping and anonymity, the mafia team became that much stronger.

I hope this much self-reflection quells the firey and sarcastic post-game hearts of those who radically disliked the game and the mechanic. The negativity aside, I did think the game beyond this conundrum was fun to spectate and I'd like to believe most who made it to the late game felt similarly. The Lovers had to play very impressively to make it this far; Margi (a relatively new player) managed to trick her own team for the longest time with nerves of steel while Brandi quite elegantly lied himself to the conclusion of the game, making it all the way to the end. Quite good, quite good.

With a little more time, maybe things could have been different? But I regret nothing. I'm glad noona and I hosted and honestly it was an interesting experiment to run, even if it sorta failed in the end. As my spicy co-host mentioned, it was a slightly turbulent period for us both. We were both sick, she from Covid (and just the general stress of being bread-winner and mother) while I experienced hefty post-thesis fever. We came out of it one piece though, I passed my thesis (kuma laude) and noona's fam is healthy again (for the time being, at least. Covid evolving more often than Eevee at this point).

Once again, thank you, players! Thank you for your time and patience, hopefully, you enjoyed the game somewhat. And thank you again noona! She always says that she puts me through a lot, but as a team, we are supposed to cover for each other anyhow I'll take the mead, though.

 

[Marmalade]

omo

 

[Copy Panda]

Post-game announcements
The council did have to discuss a couple of issues over the course of the last few weeks, that I, as the host of this game, now have to submit to the players. A few players will be receiving a penalty from the council for behaving in a non-conform manner.

Bans and Penalties

• Player CrescentJinx will a 3-game ban for, as a townie mason, playing against her win-condition. The exact problem was her knowledge of the identity of the lover, but sheltering the player and, ultimately, causing them to receive an advantage they should not have. Cres moved from Stage 1 to Stage 2, resulting in 3 games ban. Jinx therefore cannot participate in Games 103, 104 and 105.
  
  
• Player Erinyes will receive a 1-game ban for, as a townie mason, playing against her win-condition. The charge is the same as that of Jinx. Erin moved from Stage 0 to Stage 1, resulting in 1 game ban. Erin, therefore, cannot participate in Game 103.
  
  
• Finally, player Brandish receives a warning from the council. It is disallowed to share contents of any kind from the PMs. It is a warning instead of a ban because while the rules state that you cannot share screenshots (real or fake) from the PM, the (accepted) spirit of the rule is that you cannot share anything from the PM that literally reflects on exclusive information. Thus while Brandi did not literally screenshot, the contents of certain posts did contain critical information. We will update the wording of the rules to better reflect this 'spirit'.

Thoughts on Subbing

As a host, I'd like to know: Do you guys like or dislike subs?
Is it preferable over a host-killed when it can be found?
Should a subbed-out player that is sick or experiences familial/personal problems be banned like a toxic player would?
Should it be counted as a bannable offence and added to the Hall of Shame because they can't play at the moment anymore?
Should such a player be banned even if they could not foresee this circumstance?

 

[GrySun]

Hello everyone, this post is a little overdue, but this post had to be made before the next game starts. I'd like to start off by thanking everyone for their participation once again! It was a tough game to host, even tougher to play, so I'm glad in the end most of you managed to enjoy yourself. Mostly, I'd like to thank my fantastic co-host, noona! Hosting with her is great, she's both sharp and considerate, willing to think along with me and her fellow players to arrive at sensible conclusions and makes beautiful arts to boot! That's one of the few things concerning this game I'm actually a bit sorry for, after all the effort she put into making the avatars, in the end, the game was not as spicy as it should have been.


Game thoughts
Initially, I had a longer post wherein I reviewed specific player performance. However, I got a bit upset again while reading through earlier hostile posts by certain players concerning the game and how it should be 'broken' and whatnot, almost taking pleasure in the prospect of ruining the experience. The principally warring attitude was a bit odd, but one can't spell 'hostility' without 'host'. So, nonetheless, instead, I'll keep this post considerably shorter and just focus on some gameplay stuff.

For the mechanic to work properly, players needed to absolutely respect the MG premise of 'playing towards your win condition'. This means that players, even if they swapped allegiances (such as a recruited player might) were to respect their current side and do what they could to win accordingly. As noona mentioned, we considered the 'plan' to swap around, but we didn't think players would go through with it. Essentially, had the plan played out like Van proposed with his tables, it would essentially play out to be the most deliberate suicide-pact town could have agreed to. Players that ended up as mafia would have no choice but to be trapped and die. Honestly, I thought this prospect would be enough to resist such plans out of fear of being trapped in a mafia role. When the plan did manifest, noona and I arrived at an impasse. I was quite alright with the prospect of a 'new' mafia having to fight themselves out of a corner, but by the graces of my co-host, the majority of players were essentially spared from signing their own death warrant.

Whether or not this mechanic could have played out differently, I leave it to you. As was mentioned before, the goal of the mechanic was for players to have fun trying to bait others into swapping with them (as some did), attempting to avoid swaps by skillfully using blocking roles to build rapport with town players in an attempt to be 'confirmed' and potentially adjust their playstyles as they swapped roles and allegiances. Perhaps some other kind of mechanisms could have been considered to balance this out. Noona mentioned a gag-order kind of clause, which could perhaps work. There are other ways we could have accomplished this, such as limiting swaps or adding a delay to the swap (i.e. start swapping on N2 instead of N1).

We did (naturally) consider that the swapping mechanic is anti-thetical to a foundational principle of MG, that being that your side is more or less 'fixed'. Sure, folks can be recruited, but that's generally a one-time thing (and a rare occurrence in general), whereas in this game who your team was remained elusive until a few phases in. Nonetheless, we went ahead with it and attempted to somewhat experiment with the way people view and approach this game. Some might say it failed at being a pleasurable experience. We ended up turning off the mechanic to prevent the game from devolving into a waiting game.

Overall, maybe this can be attributed to two main things (aside from the aforementioned reasons). One is the anonymity clause for the mafia. We added this as a layer of protection for members as they might be swapped out. This is also why the mafia themselves could not initiate trades, as they could end up relinquishing the burden of mafia-hood and rat their teammates out. We considered that with anonymity, the mafia perhaps should be able to trade after all, but we also considered this removes all possibility of tactically volunteering your identity. It was quite difficult in the end, though maybe it could have worked if players were more used to the concept overall.

Additionally, there were some troubles managing the possibility of individual PMs; since players are anonymized, it could so happen that the mafia plans to coordinate a vote or kill someone, or perhaps blocks their own teammate. So ultimately we judged anonymity was required, and could perhaps add a layer of mind games early mafia team had to deal with. Perhaps it was too stressful for them, however.

A further note is that the game was in the end quite close, in part because the game was balanced around players being somewhat solo-players in the musical-chair phase of the game. In other words, we wanted individual players to have tools at their disposal to get around while they could not rely on their numbers. Without the premise of swapping and anonymity, the mafia team became that much stronger.

I hope this much self-reflection quells the firey and sarcastic post-game hearts of those who radically disliked the game and the mechanic. The negativity aside, I did think the game beyond this conundrum was fun to spectate and I'd like to believe most who made it to the late game felt similarly. The Lovers had to play very impressively to make it this far; Margi (a relatively new player) managed to trick her own team for the longest time with nerves of steel while Brandi quite elegantly lied himself to the conclusion of the game, making it all the way to the end. Quite good, quite good.

With a little more time, maybe things could have been different? But I regret nothing. I'm glad noona and I hosted and honestly it was an interesting experiment to run, even if it sorta failed in the end. As my spicy co-host mentioned, it was a slightly turbulent period for us both. We were both sick, she from Covid (and just the general stress of being bread-winner and mother) while I experienced hefty post-thesis fever. We came out of it one piece though, I passed my thesis (kuma laude) and noona's fam is healthy again (for the time being, at least. Covid evolving more often than Eevee at this point). Once again, thank you, players! Thank you for your time and patience, hopefully, you enjoyed the game somewhat. And thank you again noona! She always says that she puts me through a lot, but as a team, we are supposed to cover for each other anyhow I'll take the mead, though.

In hindsight, do you think a Threesome with 1 Lover pair would‘ve worked better than 2 pairs of lovers?

 

[Copy Panda]

In hindsight, do you think a Threesome with 1 Lover pair would‘ve worked better than 2 pairs of lovers?

I think especially without the swapping mechanic that'd be preferable yes, however, with the swapping mechanic it might have been too difficult for the TSC to identify the lovers

 

[Shad]

I hope you don't consider saying panda game as negativity, if it is, just let me know.

Gry was clearly enjoying 'breaking' the game, I completely dissociate from him, let burn him

Send my player review by pm, I'm always looking for feedback to improve.

Subs are fine, Margi did great, it doesn't happen that often, but it good to remind players to not join if they think they won't be able to play.

but one can't spell 'hostility' without 'host'.

lol that funny xD

The masons betrayed town, but I didn't care since the swapping made it impossible for town to lose, them playing king maker, they decided to let lover win, which is not that bad since it added some spice and it not like the town victory would have been deserved.

All in all I think in a normal game this punishment would have been fair, but in this game it a bit too much.

 

[Demonspeed]

I don't see the issue with subs personally. Someone leaving suddenly can change the whole game.

Because of the roles they have had most the time though many instantly think that being a sub means that you are replacing a Mafia. It's not always the case(example the BNHA game).

 

[GrySun]

Gry was clearly enjoying 'breaking' the game, I completely dissociate from him, let burn him

Ofc I had full faith in hosts that my attempts would bounce off a wall and spit me in the face, that‘s called respecting the hosts @Lambu

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 16, 2022, Original Post Date: Jul 16, 2022 ---

The masons betrayed town, but I didn't care since the swapping made it impossible for town to lose, them playing king maker, they decided to let lover win, which is not that bad since it added some spice and it not like the town victory would have been deserved.

All in all I think in a normal game this punishment would have been fair, but in this game it a bit too much.

You don‘t play king maker while you still can win, only when loss is guaranteed and you pick a side, so that‘s not valid.

 

[Shad]

You don‘t play king maker while you still can win, only when loss is guaranteed and you pick a side, so that‘s not valid.

Bad choice of word then, I don't English well (stop lynching me for not using the right words!!! @Farfalla I'm not the traitor!!!).

After the mechanic was disabled D2 it was clear that the plan worked, add to that Erinyes being mafia det and confirming a pair, and being in the mafia pad N1 she provided info on the mafia composition.

My point is, from the perspective of the masons and even some townies the game was very straightforward and it was clear town will win it, mafia/tp had no chance.

Some players didn't like the idea to win like this so decided to give the win away.
I'm not saying they didn't break the rule, I'm saying they were extenuating circumstances.

In a way, they improved the game, if they just revealed the lover, all the bad guys will be in the open and it would have been just a straightforward lynch a scum every day, I have no idea what motivated crescent just my POV / opinion.

I personally didn't feel cheated by the ending, so I didn't think about it and didn't even realize they was rule breaking, that shows how inconsequential this rule breaking was for me as a town.

My witness testimony xD

 

[Farfalla]

Bad choice of word then, I don't English well (stop lynching me for not using the right words!!! @Farfalla I'm not the traitor!!!).

Dw, I'll lynch you for ditching me instead, you don't mess with a scorpio senpai

 

[Erinyes]

First of all, sincere apologies for any wrong decision we might have taken and for any misunderstandings that might have happened. I just wanted to write about our position about this, to defend our case since I had no opportunity to do so, prior, so you know the situation we were in.


Firstly, we never intended nor tried to let lovers win. We clearly stated it in the pad from the get-go we were working for the town's win and it was explicitly mentioned, there was zero compromise from us. However, I believe that the misunderstanding has to do with the reading we all have of the mechanics but that's not the point I'm discussing here, and of "lover" role.

In my understanding of lovers, the role works similarly to mentor/mentee and traitor but is somewhat different, too. The lover is a secondary role and that is what makes it different from the mentor/mentee, the primary role is not negated. Otherwise, lovers would be just another label for mentor/mentee. So, players, a mafia, and a town, are assigned lovers roles besides their original one. Contrary to the traitor case, a lover townie is a townie primarily and is innocent upon detective investigation, he is recruitable, etc. While the traitor works as a mafia. Another aspect is that the traitor wins only and exclusively with the mafia, according to the rules. However, lovers' goal is to win as lovers ideally, but Afaik, nothing in the rules, as they are written, up to now, states that they lose if they stay alive until the end and their team wins. The situation we were in is similar to a mafia team with a lover, when they get to know there is one among them.
We couldn't sacrifice a townie, as the mafia wouldn't have either in a similar situation. Usually, what happens in a mafia team who knows they have a lover, (and such situations had happened in countless games)? They try to keep the mafia lover mate alive, as long as possible. Because they have a mafia role before being a lover. We were in that situation, precisely. The only one thing we offered to lovers was to keep Bran alive as long as necessary so the town can make it number-wise and so we won't lose our mason, as a townie, that's all. That was our goal.

As for the lovers' reveal, we thought it would be damageable to the game, we had no intention to reveal it, and we didn't want to disrespect the hosts by ruining simply the game, I already revealed Evil and was hesitant about it. I believe it's not fair play, for the game and for Bran, and I think that it's like giving cheating codes, it would have left a bad taste, in case of victory, I believe, for everyone. And, it would have probably damaged the town more.
That said, we never hid it. The presence of other lovers was heavily emphasized. We did our best to make it obvious. When someone keeps repeating there are other lovers, besides stubbornness, it's safe to assume they might have some knowledge. I think the only subtlety would have to link the dots with the masons.

That was to clarify. We never intentionally played or even had any inclinations towards being pro-lover. On the contrary, we wanted to make the best use of the primary role, and to figure out the paired lover too. We explicitly stated we had no intention to let them win. Sonofdaws mislynch was a genuine mistake it was not intentional and we apologized for it. Hopefully, everyone gets to understand the situation from our perspective. I believe it was necessary to clarify.

Thanks for your understanding!

Nb - Im not blaming anyone or anything, nor discussing the punishment, just letting you know how things happened from our perspective !