Elcenia Mafia Post Mortem

[Alicorn]

WELL, THAT COULD HAVE GONE SLIGHTLY BETTER.

Here is the story of Elcenia Mafia.

Cast of Characters, Winning Players Bolded:

Player | Character | Safeclaim

Aestrix | Sarid | Cheris, Emryl
Alphabeta | Keo
anthusiasm | Aziel
BlueSkySprite | Kanaat
DanielH | Rhysel
futurevision | Ilen
jalapeno_dude | vi'Yan Rylaatin III
kappa | Talyn
michaelblume | Hallai
modrony | Leekath
MTC | Rithka
Paradox | Ahin
pistachi0n | Oris | Bryn
PlainDealingVillain | Demon | Revenn
Shoal | Akar | Amaia
Tamien | Azef | Ryll
tau | Kaylo
Tulip | Mekath | Khi
wolffreak567 | Mallyn

This time there was a real mafia, and BOY were they ever on their game. CONGRATULATIONS. The mafia leader was Rylaatin, High Priest, although had he not survived to the end of the game there was an orderly line of succession by character sex and age in proper Ryganaavlan tradition (Azef, Akar, "Cheris", Mekath, Oris). The leader's privilege was to assign (or keep for himself) the night kill each night. Other powers in the mafia were the namecop (Azef) who could determine True Names; the Paranoid Gun Owner (Mekath) who would automatically kill anyone trying to target her at night; and Oris, a light functioning as a day-only doctor (who had to declare targets in advance, but could then protect from lynching). The mafia wished to KILL ALL INFIDELS. They had two complications: one, as a light, Oris was already an infidel, and had to die at some point before the last other infidel, though not otherwise highly prioritized; and two, THERE WAS A TRAITOR IN THEIR MIDST. We were not expecting them to find the traitor on day one; we were planning a long game where Sarid was motivated to stay undercover to fulfill her win condition of being alive and a Town win. Whoops.

On the Town side were a buncha powers!

Keo had a choice of two, but only one saw use - Keo was a total cop. Investigating one person per night yielded that target's True Name, affiliation, and everything they themselves were told about how their powers functioned. Keo could also have chosen instead to open a private communication channel with one other person, but did not establish contact with anyone before dying. Kanaat had no powers, except a mutual situation with Keo where whichever survived the other's death lost the game and left play; Kanaat also started with Keo's identity and confirmation of Town-ness.

Rhysel gave minor kamai powers with limited uses to other players; although only one was distributed there was a list of four possible things (watcher power, extra vote, doctor, and lifespan detection. (The last would be primarily useful for identifying, say, dragons. Dragons could each tank one kill. It would also have made Leekath and Talyn stand out like sore thumbs with their preposterous lifespans.) Aziel had an "Iron Man"-like power which she did not wind up deploying; had she done so, votes against her that day would have (been announced as) not counted and targeting her would have failed the following night. Talyn had a vigilante nightkill, and a declared-in-advance dayblock that blocked votes but also, where applicable, other day actions like Oris's lightcraft. Leekath was a tracker, Ahin was a doctor with the ability to stockpile designated-target potions if desired for later use in any quantity. Kaylo was a reverse-engineer: if he'd determined how any player's powers worked, he could use them for himself, but if he was close-but-slightly wrong, this might have made him explode.

Ilen and Hallai were paired, but could not communicate. Hallai began with Ilen's identity and confirmed Town-ness; Ilen got Hallai's identity, but not confirmation of Town-ness, and was told that if Hallai died this would be too sad to permit any actions, such as voting, for three days. Mallyn and Rithka were paired; they had no powers except for Rithka's dragonity, but knew each other's identities and town status and got a private communication channel.

And also there was a demon. It began inhabiting Revenn (you didn't think I'd do something as pathetically obvious as tell the first demon host their safeclaim was "Rysha", did you?). On even-numbered nights, it chose and jumped to a new host; the old host died and the new one got a change of wincon (that the demon be the last one standing). Dead demon hosts who did not receive opsec-breaking spoilers were allowed to continue to talk to and advise the new demon.

SO HERE'S THE STORY. Order of operations: 0 - Ahin; 1 - Tamien, Keo; 2 - Rhysel; 3 - all nightkills and the demon jump; 4 - Leekath; 5 - Kaylo submits his guesses.

Day One you lynched no one, but Sarid was found out and damage control had to be applied. At night, Ahin brewed but stockpiled a potion aimed at kappa (Talyn). Azef investigated kappa. Keo investigated Aestrix (Sarid). Rhysel infused Alphabeta (Keo), who received a watcher power with a (random, secret) lifeforce limit of 4 uses before further use would kill. Rylaatin kept the kill for himself and stabbed DanielH (Rhysel). Talyn killed no one, but dayblocked Alphabeta. Leekath tracked kappa but heard nothing because only the day power, not the night power, was used. Oris announced an intention to protect Rylaatin.

Day Two you lynched tau, who tanked the kill, being a dragon (Kaylo). At night, Ahin dosed BlueSkySprite (Kanaat). Azef investigated BlueSkySprite. Keo read kappa (Talyn), and used the kamai watcher power to supervise wolffreak (Mallyn). Rylaatin finished tau off, Talyn killed wolffreak but didn't use a dayblock, and the demon jumped from PlainDealingVillain to MTC (Rithka). Leekath tracked Tamien to BlueSkySprite's place. Oris reaffirmed her commitment to preventing Rylaatin from being lynched.

Day Three you lynched michaelblume (Hallai), who tanked it, being a dragon. At night, Ahin dosed MTC (Rithka, DEMON). Azef investigated anthusiasm. Keo read modrony and didn't use the watcher power. Talyn didn't kill or dayblock anyone; Tulip (Mekath), assigned the mafia kill, stabbed Alphabeta, who tanked it, being a dragon (Keo). Leekath listened to Shoal, who went nowhere. Oris decided to protect Tamien the following day.

Day Four you lynched futurevision (Ilen), who tanked it, being a dragon. Seriously, guys, what gives, we didn't put THAT many dragons in the game but you kept hitting them. At night, Ahin dosed anthusiasm. Azef investigated Paradox (Ahin). Keo watched modrony (Leekath) and attempted to talk to kappa (Talyn) but didn't say anything before receiving news that Tulip had finished the job. Talyn killed pistachi0n (Oris) but didn't dayblock; the demon moved into modrony. Modrony listened to jalapeno_dude, who didn't go anywhere. Oris was too dead to protect anyone, but it's okay, it's what she would have wanted.

Day Five you lynched futurevision (Ilen) AGAIN, and this time it stuck. At night, Ahin used the stockpiled potion for kappa (Talyn), and dosed modrony (Leekath, DEMON). Azef investigated modrony, but only got name, not the fun fact that modrony was a demon. jalapeno_dude (Rylaatin) stabbed kappa (Talyn), who simultaneously was attacking Tulip (Mekath); this meant that Talyn, dosed only once, was killed from two angles and died anyway, but Mekath died too. modrony listened to Tulip and was protected by the other potion dose, never knowing that there had been danger, and tracked Tulip to kappa's place.

Day Six it came down to THE COIN and you lynched Paradox (Ahin). At night, the mafia stabbed anthusiasm (Aziel), who for flavor reasons was not described as dying per se but did leave the game. And the demon moved into Shoal.

Day Seven was a three way tie settled by THE COIN, and Tamien (Azef) died. At night, jalapeno_dude (Rylaatin) stabbed Shoal (Akar, DEMON). And thus did mafia win, except for Shoal, who lost according to their replaced win condition.

WE HAVE LEARNED VALUABLE DESIGN LESSONS.

[jalapeno_dude]

I already posted my post-mortem thoughts, but I'll add a few things (in addition to encouraging everyone to go check out our private threads! You might particularly enjoy "Day 1 Spam" and "Saving Aestrix").

1. Now that the game is over and I can't be accused of having biases I want to emphasize that Modrony was entirely correct that in retrospect the listposts were a terrible idea. A large portion of our advantage in this game was being able to go from Tamien telling us a name to knowing exactly what powers people had. That accusation I made against Paradox on Day 6 based on going through their listpost? I had done the same thing a few days before in our private threads, concluding that Paradox was definitely Ahin. In other words: we found out who the light was through no real fault of their own! That should never happen!
2. Similarly, I hope this game will put an end to a Day 1 lynch based on RNG. I have less well-developed arguments against it but it seems clear to me that it's a bad idea.
3. Having a private forum was great, but we realized that it had a huge security flaw (the number of posts you get from searching for all of a mafia member's posts is different than their postcount). This shouldn't be a problem in the future (Alicorn prevented posts in the secret forum from showing up in postcount), but it would have unambiguously identified all of us.

[Alicorn]

To be fair, the listposts would also have made Kaylo omnipotent if he'd lived long enough.

[DanielH]

There are further problems with the secret forum that nobody else noticed. I told Alicorn about it in the IRC channel. Since security through obscurity doesn’t work, I would like to explain it here. I will scrub it from the published logs and not explain it here if she asks, though.

[Alicorn]

Go ahead and share. I want to give everybody a breather before trying to assemble another game; this one wasn't as good as the first and I know some people are burned out on Mafia. So there's time to think of solutions.

[jalapeno_dude]

this one wasn't as good as the first

:(

(But I do understand why you're saying that...)

[DanielH]

Every post on the site is assigned a post number. You can link to thtt post as viewtopic.php?p=NUMBERfpNUMBER. As far as I can tell, these numbers are assigned consecutively. This can be used to find the approximate activity level of the secret board.

I noticed this as cryptofairy. I don’t know if I would have looked at it this game or not. I could see it going either way.

[Shoal]

do you think anything could have been discerned about our identities from that? some of us were invisible mode

[modrony]

On first day rng lynch:
What is the alternative then?
No lynch?
Wild mass accusation? Tell me that mafia wouldn't manipulate that to do what they want.
Sure, it might land on someone town doesn't want to lynch. Most of those can claim.
We have had bad luck with it, but I don't think the practice should be abandoned if we can't point to a reason why it's bad.

[jalapeno_dude]

I am strongly in favor of starting the game with a Night rather than a Day (which is how I've always played IRL). It at least gives everyone something with actual stakes to talk about. That gives the Mafia a higher chance of winning, but that can be compensated for by just slightly decreasing the ratio of Mafia members to townsfolk. (Killing a "fake person" like the two games here have started with does not work, because everyone knows that the Mafia didn't actually kill them so no information is gained.) At least this way the person who gets singled out can immediately get rewarded by knowing what everyone else's role is instead of having to suffer for an entire in-game day.

If that's not an option, then I guess I am advocating either wild mass accusation (which, again, is how it'd work IRL, and the *whole point* is that it can be manipulated by the mafia so everyone needs to think meta enough to detect manipulation going on) or no lynch. I can only imagine that it's REALLY SUPER UNFUN for the person who gets picked. I would be willing to take a slight decrease in Town's chance of winning if I needed to in exchange for improving everyone's experience.