Welcome to Smashboards, the world's largest Super Smash Brothers community! Over 250,000 Smash Bros. fans from around the world have come to discuss these great games in over 19 million posts!
You are currently viewing our boards as a visitor. Click here to sign up right now and start on your path in the Smash community!
It appears that you are using ad block :'(
Hey, we get it. However this website is run by and for the community... and it needs ads in order to keep running.
Please disable your adblock on Smashboards, or go premium to hide all advertisements and this notice. Alternatively, this ad may have just failed to load. Woops!
You should have asked something like What's your favorite Indy Role? or even something like When creating set-ups, how do you think about creating indies?
Which hack, FF6 or Super Overswarm World? If it's the latter, no you won't. Only one person has other than myself, and it was my little brother while getting advice from me.
Just got this in earlier today, and really I'm just happy to have that much. To avoid situations like this in the future, I'm going to go ahead and say that I'm going to turn you down for an interview unless you have ready access to either AIM or Skype. I'm on both almost everyday, so I can make either work.
Removed my post since having it up twice made it hard to scroll
Because I hate Hydras. I regularly will look back through someone’s post history, and it makes it incredibly difficult to do when it’s a hydra. Even if they post in the same account the entire time you’re constantly wondering who is posting, and when they don’t, they get a mod vote. Gotta have ORDER. Plus, I have setups I’ve designed where post count is important. Deadpool, Zen’s role in a game you are familiar with, required him to be one of the top posters at the end of the Day phase. If a hydra in that game had posted out of hydra, the post count would have been altered. Kept the giving mod votes for that reason primarily. Hydra hatred is secondary.
Also I do most of my mafia at work while doing other things, and sometimes I’m super busy and sometimes I’m not. If I’m super busy, I don’t worry much about votecounts because my job is more important. >_>
In your games, as soon as one scum falls the rest of the team usually crumbles or needs a lot of luck to pull off a win… Could you explain your philosophy with regards to game design?
Scum should win 80% of their games. I just made that stat up. But the principle is the same. In a game with all VTs and a good ratio of scum to town, and scum have a NKill, scum should win the majority of the time. Yes, there are “scum tells”, but in the end you’re just guessing. Anything scum can do, town can do. Any “noob scum tells” a noob scum can make can be noob town mistakes. You know how many scum players seen as town in town’s eyes it takes to win? One. The ability to discuss with others and know they are of your alignment is a HUGE boon. That’s in VT games.
My scum teams are designed to be powerful, fun, but fragile. If a scum team players recklessly or creates a plan that hinges on all of them, they will probably lose. If you look through all my games, the scum that wins does so not because of their night actions, but because they had a plan involving the players in the day phase. As night action based as my games seem to be from a town perspective, it’s significantly more day-based for scum if they want to win.
Have you ever designed a scum team around bussing? If not, would you?
I ran a scum team with a ROLE that was designed around bussing, but haven’t run it out here. It was another mafia game I haven’t run here…. I probably won’t run that exact setup out here, but I’d like to keep some of the stuff hidden in case I use it again.
Have you ever designed an open set up? If yes, do you plan on running it? If no, why not?
I’ve designed a few. Some are good, some are meh. I hated Incredibly Depressing Mafia, which was basically an open setup. It was stated there were no power roles in that game. I did it because people in the BBR said “oh man so many power roles lol wat” and then I showed them why. People like power roles. People replace out and lose interest in games without them.
Why do you use role names like Mafia Sorceress? How is a little indy supposed to convince Town there was a yak if the mafia doesn't flip mafia yak? .
Balance reasons, mostly. Generally when you see names like that, it’s on purpose. If the sorceress flipped as “mafia yakuza”, that role would have been way WAY less powerful. Everyone would have said “oh, okay, someone isn’t scum anymore” and that would have been that. If the teammate had known her role to be “Mafia Yakuza”, then HE would have known that the role would be transferred. Remember, Nabe’s role in that game didn’t know anything other than “Mafia Sorceress”; what he learned he was told. The sorceress could have just said “oh, I can do X” and leave out the whole yak part, thus leaving his teammate (who he had to kill to win) in the dark.
Can I pm you my 10 requests for OS All Stars mafia?
I don’t ALWAYS break games. Recently I saved a game from being broken even! But I enjoy breaking games because it’s part of the game itself. Use what you can to win.
Nope. He was unaware of the hidden blackout stuff. There are definite improvements to Detective that could be made from an online standpoint; shorter deadlines definitely. Like, 24 hours. Zen’s plan wouldn’t have broken anything, but it would have been really, really slow going. Which can be good for town.
Your set ups are definitly some of the more unique ones on Dgames. So what standards are you following to always make sure that your set ups are balanced?
Two ways to do it.
1) Spiderwebbing.
2) Counterweight
Counterweight is easy. You simply take a concept (“I want town to have the ability to have a surefire way of knowing someone is mafia”) and apply the negative to the other side.
So you give town a one-shot cop, a tracker, and a guy who can determine what abilities someone has, whatever. Then, to balance it for scum, you make a miller, or a prankster (someone who must visit someone every night), or someone with really evil abilities, or a godfather, or a ninja (cannot be tracked), or a VT mafia, or a redirector, whatever, as long as it counteracts the original. The only clarification to this is that both sides must be limited in some way. A cop needs to be one-shot, a tracker every other day, the godfather must also be hated, etc., something that gives them a weakness that has nothing to do with the prime concept (“I want town to have the ability to have a surefire way of knowing someone is mafia”).
A lot of people take counterweight balancing like “Oh, they have a cop so mafia has a godfather”, which isn’t balance at all. That kind of “balance” is swingy in a bad way. If the godfather dies D1, mafia is screwed because you announced a cop. If the cop investigates the mafia godfather, claims an inno, gets NKilled, and then it gets to lylo and town has to wonder “is this guy a godfather”, that’s not balanced either. What IS balanced is to have a combination of things that are counterweights to one another but are weakened, but fit the same idea. The best cop I’ve made so far is still probably Gau; he could only investigate if he didn’t vote, there was a miller that game, Setzer’s ability highlights his “not voting” if he chooses to go that route, and Kefka was a vote manipulator that could prevent him from using his ability by forcing him to vote.
So, in short, counterweight balancing is done by having roles on opposite sides of the spectrum that are both limited in some way, and they’re both affecting the same primary concept. If you want town to have the ability to kill, you want mafia to have the ability to protect or survive. But to prevent swingy stuff from happening the moment one bad thing happens, you’d limit town’s ability to kill, either by choices or amount (generally choices), and you’d limit mafia’s ability to protect or survive based on choices or amount (generally choices). If you had a vig that could only kill someone if they hammered, having a town executioner would be a good counterweight. Likewise, a mafia protective role that could protect a mafia member from being killed would also work.
Spider webbing is more intricate. It involves having “key” roles with “minor” roles, and balancing amongst them. Rather than having two roles on the opposite end of the spectrum and balancing that way multiple times, you would instead have “key” roles at a certain point on a scale and then other roles at varying degrees behind them on the same scale. The “scale” is generally determined by your initial “key roles”. This can sometimes be considered a “theme” for a game, but it is rarely that simple to define.
Let’s look at this example: http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=12761128&postcount=2704
(open in a new window while reading this :B)
Scum roles: 4 (potentially 5)
Town roles: 10 (potentially 11)
Doesn’t look balanced at first glance, but looking a little bit deeper it’s actually well balanced.
Scum team A: 2 roles
Scum team B: 2 roles
Town roles: 10
Town/Scum role: 1
First step complete! You have a basic “numbers” balance going on. Scum has an advantage this game as a whole, but divided they have a harder time to win; this means that town starts off in a good position to catch scum and as the game winds down it naturally turns into a more balanced setup in terms of “scum vs. town”. This can be hard to pull off, so generally you want the “X scum to Y town” ratio set up pretty plainly rather than have multiple factions. If you’re having a straight up game with a certain amount of players, be careful not to say “well, I’ll have 3 mafia and I can support 14 players so we’ll have 11 town and 3 mafia” and then say it is balanced. Look at town and mafia after the numbers, then remove players or add an indie.
I personally find it easier to balance by creating mafia first and then moving back to mafia at the end, so we’ll do that here first too. Indies are always last, no matter how much you love them.
Harley & Joker are scum team A, and they’re meant to do DIRECT damage. Their night actions are pretty scummy. There’s an action, then there’s a reaction immediately after. Very little changes how people think, as it is all pretty straight forward.
Harley – Forged note (gets to notify a player that a player of your choosing attempting to kill them, and it failed, or simply call them dumb)
Evil gift – a very obvious scum ability in that everyone who gets it will say “This is scum. Scum has given me this present.” So, not too many people will open it, and will instead give it to someone else. But when it IS opened, they’re all vote blocked. This can be a crazy advantage for scum.
Executioner – can’t vote unless it’s a hammer
Joker – Pick a card can block a vote, kill a player, give a false mafia reading (or town o_o), or turn a player into a time bomb. Again, an obvious mafia ploy. Joker can also send a message from an “anonymous player”.
All in all, joker and Harley can cause some direct damage with pick a card and evil gift, and their misdirection with their abilities can really bog town down.
How can you balance this, given how weak it is?
Superman can’t be affected by any of the abilities, Blackbolt can make it REALLY obvious who is sending things like “pick a card” if you do it every night (with some WIFOM), The Tick can cause himself to be the first NKill. All of which can have minor effects on those two scum, but not much.
The major thread for the joker ends with Batman! Who woulda thunk it. He can track both joker and Harley, and can use smoke bombs to prevent ALL night actions. Since joker’s “pick a card” is an obvious scum ploy, the “kill a player” won’t be picked until last, so slowing him down is huge.
The major counter to Harley is a double-edged sword for town. Wolverine, the vigilante, can only kill someone who was voting for him or whoever threw the hammer. If Harley is playing a good town game or claims town executioner, wolverine is forced to make a judgement call. Does he kill Harley, or does he not? If he does, good for town. If he doesn’t, the vig is EXTREMELY limited. A vig that can only kill whoever hammered doesn’t have the benefit of choosing his victim, and that means Wolverine has to act at least a little scummy to get some votes on him... but not enough to kill him. A very intricate dance Wolverine and Harley have. Except X1 ****ed it up by voting. >:[
In all of my setups you can do one or the other. It’s always scum player or scum team that is attached lightly to multiple roles and then majorly to one role.
That’s just part of the balance for that game that was taken into account, but seeing how abilities mesh even when they don’t seem like they would should give you an idea how I approach it. The joker’s ticking time bomb of pick a card is slowed down ever so slightly by multiple roles, and it really is his only ability, and harley’s incredibly weak role is strengthened if played properly because it effectively ruins town’s vig. There’s more to all of this and it gets pretty in-depth, but you get the idea.
Counterweight is easy. Make roles that take the opposite direction to a goal (killing, voting, watching, whatever) and then limit them in ways that require clever usage.
Spider webbing is hard. Make “key” roles or abilities and then have them be affected in a very minor way (or a very small amount of time) by multiple roles, and a slightly larger, more direct effect coming from another role. Do this from multiple directions if possible, and make sure that it goes both ways; town can weaken town and mafia can weaken mafia. This prevents most “swingy behavior” in a game. It takes a lot of luck to really destroy a game that has been balanced in this fashion. Batman didn’t even use his abilities in that game, and the game still went fine.
Why can't you just scum hunt normally when you're town?
I used to, when I played elsewhere. I did some here too, if you look back at some of my previous games you could see it. I ran into two problems everywhere I played.
1) Egotistical buttheads
2) Noobs
You have to deal with both to some degree no matter where you play, but the common tendency for mediocre players here is to have them think they know what they’re doing, and then when they’re wrong they’ll try to defend themselves by saying “well there was X, why would I do Y?” and focusing on a strict logical scale which really has no place in mafia. Noobs will generally just pick a direction and go with it, effectively making it harder to lynch anyone.
Given that I could convince people to do just about anything if I had a good lead, I found that I died fairly early. When I didn’t try to convince people to do what I wanted, I generally survived. This normally would just be mafia; it’s kind of a “duh” statement to say that mafia would NKill a town getting information out in the open. Only issue here is that people would rarely listen to someone’s reads post death, and if they did they wouldn’t think anymore… they’d just do what that person said.
If I said “I think Rockin might be scum because of Y, X, and Z” and was night killed that Night, the only two conclusions that would ever come up is someone completely ignoring my read on Rockin or people immediately ending the day on Rockin.
There’s no information gathering. Everyone here plays the short game and thinks they’ll get scum on D1 or D2 when that should rarely, if ever, be the case. Optimal mafia play will generally have you get most of the mafia back-to-back, and it won’t be from one person but from an entire group. You can’t be a one-man show when you’re town unless you’re bulletproof, and even then you’re still effectively guessing no matter how good you are. Trying to run the show on your own rather than follow someone else’s cases just gets you killed.
I found it better to lay the groundwork for other people to do the job. I also found I rarely get killed when I’m doing so because scum will think I’m going after Player A when really I’m going after Player B; I’m just using Player A as bait to get scum’s reactions.
So long story short, I got sick of dying N1-N3 and started just manipulating town to get reads on people rather than playing twenty questions with people and dealing with ******s. By the time I die in mafia now I generally have left a long enough trail to where everyone else can make a case or follow a lead. Doing otherwise just makes me facepalm. I remember in Mario Kart mafia I used a hypothetical example and someone said “his hypothetical example can’t be true for town, I didn’t have that information” and everyone solemnly agreed that it was an obvious scum slip. I facepalmed at the stupidity and just said “whatever” and told them they could go ahead and lynch me on D1 and spent the rest of the day getting info out of people and clearing Rockin, who knew exactly who I was based on the information I had. After Rockin was cleared, town made sure to go ahead and waste a day lynching him too. This is why I don’t trust people to do things on their own. Things like that. So instead, I just manipulate situations so that other people will do the pushing for me and by the time end game comes around there’s more than enough info to peg scum.
Which alignment do you enjoy playing as the most and why?
Scum, because it’s fun to manipulate people. You can do it in all sorts of ways depending on your teammates. I’ve lynched a teammate Day 1 twice as scum, and both times it worked out fairly well. You can do crazy stuff as scum because you don’t have to guess people’s alignments and don’t have to deal with other people saying “my guess is better than your guess because of my ego”.
Okay, so assuming you just answered mafia to the last question, which do you enjoy more: hosting unique set ups or playing as scum?
Depends. If I’ve got good teammates I can rely on, playing as scum is more fun. I really enjoy setting up for my death on D1 and then actually getting it on the day I wanted. Everyone’s celebrating like ewoks that they killed the Overswarm scum and patting themselves on the back because “they can read me so well” and my scummates are giggling like school girls because the entire point was to make me look like scum so they can be the finishers.
Setups ARE really fun though. If I could host nonstop games on DGames I would. Part of the fun is running setups that your peers have made, but I’ve thought about the possibility of running nonstop mafia games somewhere. I have SO MANY SETUPS saved.
If you could only pick one theme out of FF, heroes/villians, and time travel to base a mafia game around for the rest of your life, which one would you pick and why?
Probably FF. There’s a ton of setups to be had. I have two FF setups not used yet, one of them is a semi-open setup. It would involve summons and monsters, and everyone gets to pick a list of them that they’d like and then everyone is given a role from the list they’ve chosen. So you pick what roles you might get, restrictions and all, and mafia will be told a few that aren’t chosen (for safe claims). That could be done repeatedly ad infinitum. So FF.
Any favorite books/tv shows/movies/anime/video games/music that you feel is worth sharing with us?[/B]
I really like the first season of Heroes. It’s a shame they didn’t make any seasons after that.. I used to enjoy reading quite a bit but being an English major most books were ruined for me. My favorite book is definitey East of Eden by Steinbeck though. Awesome story.
Most of the music I listen to on a daily basis is just random individual songs I’ve liked in the past. Occasionally I’ll listen to a whole album that I listened to in High School (like Nimrod by Green Day or something) simply because I listened to it in high school and it is familiar. I can find a few bands I like from time to time (Guster is a good one), but I get tired of “bands” in general and instead just take one or two songs from them and listen to them on occasion…. So “normal” music is avoided for the most part. I have been enjoying Maximum The Hormone recently though. They’re like System of A Down on meth. More meth. But still, “normal people music” is a once in a while thing. When I do listen to music, I mostly listen to music on OCRemix, or orchestrated video game music. There’s a playlist here I made: http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Final+Fantasy/53526830
I don’t watch much anime. I thought Cowboy BeBop was alright when I watched it with my girlfriend. Hated Trigun, could only get through a few episodes. I’ve got a giant collection of movies so I couldn’t even begin to describe all the different ones I’ve watched, but K-PAX is my favorite movie. Bicentennial man is another good one, but not as good as K-PAX.
Phew, where do I begin?
For one, because I’m the man with the plan, and going up against someone who has a plan with this playerlist:
1. adumbrodeus
2. BeatStick
3. Cdubs1987
4. frozenflame751
5. Glyph Ranmaru
6. Gordito giraffelasergun
7. Luxor
8. Nabe
9. Nicholas1024
10. Overswarm
11. Rajam
12. Raziek
13. Red Ryu
14. Vult Redux
15. X1-12 Fire!
16. Zεη
Is suicide. You’ve got adumb, CDubs, FF, You, X1-12, and Zen all in the same room as town. That’s not counting me and Nabe who were scum. So you’ve got 6 people who are inevitably going to try to take the center stage and pull in different directions. You know what people like this always miss? The people that fly under the radar or do one big town thing. They’ll be too busy looking to lynch scum than to gather information and good scum can hide in with the inactives and the low posters: Luxor, Beatstick, Ranmaru, GLG, Red Ryu, Razie, Rajam, and to a lesser extent Vult Redux are all small posters. They don’t post that often and generally avoid the spotlight.
But apart from just players own playstyles tripping over themselves…
Remember why we killed Vult Redux N1?
OS said:
You witheld information from town while appearing as if you had a solid grasp on the game. You didn't have many strong connections and thus couldn't be traced back to us, showed yourself to be competent, and had bouts of inactivity. That's a recipe for disaster.
You nearly always want to post some semblance of a read or two, if not all of them. Laying everything out can be bad, but you should always post something that can be considered if you die. It helps town figure things out on your flip.
Players like Zen lead town in all sorts of directions and are super aggressive about it. It’s super, super easy to take someone that’s going three directions at once, two of them bad for town and one good for town, and direct them to the bad ones. All you have to do is ask a question to the right person. It’s untraceable. Players like Vult who stop and gather information and don’t push for lynches so much as push for information? Those are dangerous players for scum because they can bring up truth instead of opinions.
So, we eliminated those players. Then the ego train was left to its own devices, and anything you did that supported what they did was auto-town because you agreed with them. Beatstick literally posted “derp” when joining a wagon on you and no one ever said anything about it. No “why”, no “support this”. Just “see, beatstick agrees with me”. People thinking about who is right rather than what is right. Everyone was way, way too emotional.
Look at this:
zen said:
Also why Nich should be the play, read through his posts:
-He lacks any town motivation.
-All of his "reads" are only semi-persued.
-The only case he has made was on Raz. Such an easy case to make...
-He should have been more on glg for his all his bs but instead he is playing more to the flow rather than building much of his own (other than Raz which had been gone over plenty already).
-He avoids commenting on what's going on in the general mix, pops up here and to stay active.
That was passable for the game. Scum could hide however they wanted because town was based on emotion, not logic, and refused to believe that someone else could help them. Furthermore, town did a lot of derp things when it came to revealing information. Town revealed always too little or too much. You revealed that you were both a coroner and a census taker on D1 when you could have just said “I’m a coroner”. Others stayed completely quiet on their reads, then died, and town got nothing from it.
Here’s some advice I gave X1 that I think is pertinent to everyone, even me!
OS said:
You seem to come from the point of "the ends justify the means" and that isn't ever the case in mafia. You get bad reads and good reads both for the wrong reasons, and after the lynch doesn't work out and one of the people you read as scum that was scum survives, you come back to it later and say "SEE?! I TOLD YOU!!!!" and forget that you also told them a lot of other things that were wrong... but more importantly, forget that it's your responsibility to get town to listen to you.
Gauge the players around you and post accordingly. Don't post and expect them to just believe you. A 33% success rate in initial reads is good in mafia. A 33% success rate of getting town to listen to you is not. You should be able to support your reads with more than "intuition" or an appeal to authority. There are very few players that can get away with an appeal to authority. I can get away with it with some players, and with others I get a violent reaction. So, I rarely use it.
Intuition is just a vague name for picking up on small clues; you should be able to post those clues or ask questions to turn your clues into cases.
Work on getting town to listen to you rather than simply expecting them to, and your play will improve tenfold.
Also, learn to stoooooop posting. I wasted an entire day with you. By design. It wasn't an accident. I literally said "I'm going to butt heads with X1 to waste the entire Day so town doesn't get any reads" and then did so. Easily. Then I brushed it off and scum went back to controlling town, this time with a shorter day.
If something is stupid, just say it's stupid and ignore it. Don't worry about vindication or proving to others that you're right. If multiple town members are harassing you about something stupid, sure, go ahead and answer their questions. If one guy is saying "*******!" right before you putt, don't spend all day chasing him. He's trolling you and no one else is paying attention to him. You're playing into his hands.
You were one of the easier players in this game to manipulate. I could manipulate Nich easily too because I know his playstyle so well, but I had to do so passively. I had to talk to other people about Nich to make Nich decide for himself that he wanted to do what I wanted him to do. That's difficult and fragile. With you, I was able to actively manipulate and receive no punishment from town; I knew you wouldn't be able to convince them and knew you'd react a certain way to my antagonizing you.
Don't let people push you around. That doesn't mean go on the offensive the moment someone pushes you. That means don't let them get to you and don't let them control the flow of your game. You control it, and no one else. Make sure it is to your advantage.
To give you a nice little soundbyte for it:
Town played off of emotion, not logic. Town had too many chiefs, not enough people willing to play indian. Town played in a style where the ends justified the means; everyone was willing to get someone else killed if it meant they killed scum.
What would your all-star team of town/scum players be?
For scum, some combination of Circus, Nabe, Vanderzant, and Sworddancer. I think those four players (not counting me :B) are probably the best combination of being able to hold their own as well as sacrifice their position in the game for the greater good of the team. All three of them can deal with things as they go, can work with a plan, and can work with a team. While individually they might not be the best scum player, when you put them in a realistic setting as part of a team I don’t think there are too many on DGames that can hold a candle to them. They aren’t perfect by any means, but I think they’re a good shot at the most well-balanced scum team out there.
Town’s harder. Assuming a list of ten?
Evil Eye, Tom if he’s active, Vanderzant, Frozen Flame, Dastrn, Swiss if he’s active, Pierre The Scarecrow if he’s active, Sworddancer (especially if he’s got a role that gives him some solid information [watcher, tracker, cop, whatever]), Nich, then either T-block or Raziek probably. T-block is probably a better choice with a more active town, while Raziek better for a less active town. I feel T-block can make a strong impact with less posts, but they’ll both make the same impact overall I’d imagine. Cello_Marl would be good if in a weak town, but he’d just be a detriment with this group.
What more could I have done in Time Travelers to win MVP?
Nothing much. MVP isn’t so much “the best player in the game” but the player that makes things happen for their alignment. When scum says “HEY DON’T KILL MY PARTNER, KILL ME INSTEAD! I AM SCUM!”, you don’t really get points for saying “Hey, those two are scum!”. It’d be like naming an MVP for a college soccer team after they just owned a bunch of preschoolers.
Suppose you got an indy role, how would you play it? (Extra points if it wasn't bulletproof.)
Depends on the players and abilities and number of players. Regardless, I’d play it for the end game. As an indie you should either die early or die in lylo. The people that play indie roles and try to hide generally get themselves killed midgame because they didn’t prepare for end game.
The novelist that turns it into a philosophy novel. I’d probably win in most cases just because I have more experience arguing emotionally and I use funny pictures, assuming neither of us had truly damning evidence. But I wouldn’t get in a case battle in Lylo because that’s anti-town. Unless EE was wrong and I could prove it, but then it wouldn’t be a case battle so much as a case disproval. Even if I was mafia I’d avoid it though, EE’s solid. If there was actual, ya know, evidence for both sides, I think EE would pull through with a victory; from what I’ve seen he’s better at listing evidence and arguing with concrete points in time while my specialty lies more in the abstract. TL;DR, I can twist words while he can Phoenix Wright.
My most hated games. Getting lynched because I said “Okay, hypothetical situation:” and then clearing someone in that process and watching them get lynched? Stupid. DBZ was even more stupid. Mod-confirmed scum on D1 is freaking stupid. Especially when it’s a result of me finding a way to break the game and the mod saying “You didn’t break the game, the rules just didn’t cover it adequately”, which is exactly what breaking the game is. Then fixing the game after we’ve already put steps into place to use that. That’s irritating. I was proud of myself for not getting lynched and then getting everyone to target me N1 though. But still, irritating.
Everyone should be careful when making special rules and roles for their game, and not punish people for finding things out.
Best scum play is probably a tie between TMNT mafia and Fire Emblem mafia. Community was a good example of a plan, but Sworddancer did all the heavy lifting. I just pointed and he was like “Yes, I will do all of that flawlessly” while I juggled neon signs. FE you know all about, it was a lot of fun since I tried to do a repeat of Community mafia (I think it is the most optimal scum strategy) and FF took our Nabe away… meaning I had to completely reroute my play from being the scummy guy that gets lynched and turns attention away from scummates into the town hero. That was a lot of fun. It was a little easier than it should have been due to a confirmed town fake claim from the mod though; I had to make it work, but still. :B
TMNT because it was my first mafia game on this site, meaning no meta whatsoever, and my mafia partners were Chill and KevinM. Coming into it Chill was completely inactive (like, no activity whatsoever) and KevinM was a town choice for being mafia simply because he was always mafia. So we bussed Chill D1 for town cred and then KevinM was killed by the anti-vig later. I then had to go it alone with no meta on anyone and try to get everyone to believe me. Multiple people wanted me dead on many occasions, and I literally killed them one at a time and said “wasn’t me”. It worked, too! I even got Gheb: http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=10137714&postcount=630
It ended with a modkill on KirbyYoshi for being inactive for several, several days, which was kind of lame… but at the same time he was inactive for over two weeks. The game was mine at the end with one more lynch and town was split down the middle. Was tense.
Any comments on my recent play? Tips to improve? Also, I'm curious, since you've never actually seen me as scum (and I've rarely if ever BEEN scum), what's your plan to read me?
Same way I read you as a power role. Are you acting funny? You’re scum or a PR. Done. As for tips to improve, just keep playing and play with the mindset of “I can be wrong”. If you want a challenge, occasionally I’ll use a randomizer and write a list of playstyles (aggressive, lurking, tunneling, questioning, scummy, noob town, etc.) and have the randomizer choose how I’ll play that game. It’s fun to see if you can do it and still play well.
What's your favorite open setup for under 10 players? Over 10 players?
Setups I’ve played or already thought about, because I don’t want to sit and make a zillion more setups just to answer this question:
For under 10: Vote manipulators. Everyone can manipulate someone else’s vote if they choose to by saying “you can only vote for this player”. Multiple attempts allow them to vote for any of the players given to them. Mafia can NKill. No mod confirmation save for a modkill on someone if they vote for someone that they can’t vote for. Can’t tell someone they can only vote for themselves. Lynch is whoever has the most votes at the end of the day if no consensus is reached. Everyone may choose to not vote if they so desire.
For over 10 players: Mages and Priests. Everyone in the game has 3 health points to start off with. During the Night phase, each player can deal 1 point of damage to whoever they want. If that person goes negative at the end of the Night, they die. They can also add one extra health point to a player with no maximum, giving them more health. This occurs every night. Mafia can NKill, ignoring health. Lynches ignore health. As the game goes on people’s health goes dangerously high or dangerously low and people use it for reads as well as in-game reads. A complete townie read becomes a suspicious read when they have 9 health and there are only 8 players left in the game. Scum has to be careful not to let town get to an ending position where town can mislynch in lylo, but then deal damage to scum to kill them. Rare, but possibility.
Favorite role to receive as town? Mafia? Indy? Why?
I like cop roles because I generally know to investigate “linking” roles rather than the roles people will already be looking at. I don’t think I’ve ever been cop without getting a guilty result by Day 2. That said I don’t think cop roles should ever be in the game without legitimate limitations (that doesn’t mean godfathers). As mafia I would really enjoy the unlynchable ability, but never got it. My favorite mafia ability has been the bus driver from TMNT though. That’s fun. For Indy, I dunno. Most other people’s indies are lame and I can’t ever get my indies. “Congratulations, you’re an indie! You’re automatically an SK with nothing else or an Abductor with nothing else! 50% chance of being bulletproof though!”…. not exactly mind blowing. Why can’t I get a vote manipulating bulletproof bus driving know-it-all role?
What players do you think have the most interesting or effective playstyles? Not really asking which ones you think are strategically the best, but what ones you simply find interesting in a generally positive way.
I enjoy watching Vanderzant play. He’s a solid player and gets people to listen to him, but at the same time doesn’t make himself a threat. It’s really weird and I’m not exactly sure how he does it.
What's exciting and interesting in your life right now? Give us a peek at what sorta stuff consumes your average day.
I play a lot of video games. I knew a lot of good games were coming out this holiday season so I went ahead and made a poster of a bunch of games I hadn’t played in a long time (or hadn’t played yet) that I wanted to play. Helped keep my purchases down so I could save dollars. I do a lot of gaming marathons too. No streaming or anything like that. Just me on a couch. I beat Demon Souls in 30 hours in one sitting the first time I played it. I was able to beat all the original Megaman games (1-10) in one sitting as well. It’s a lot of fun. I just take a vacation day and glue myself to the couch. I found it’s easier to do that than it is to try to take an hour or two every day.
I also make a lot of Bead Art! http://imgur.com/a/J5nhg#13 http://overswarm.imgur.com/bead_art is an album with most of the stuff I’ve made so far. I sell it to people and ship it out to ‘em. If anyone wants one there or has one they want that isn’t, send me a PM and I’ll give you an estimate. The most expensive ones there are $25. Some tiny ones are much less (like $1 to $5). I do it to decorate my room with cool video game sprites, it works out really well. Selling them just spreads the joy and pays for my beading habit, so it’s cool.
Other than that, it’s all just work and girlfriend. I’ve saved up enough money to where I don’t have to worry about debt for a long, long time so I have no stress. I have a good job that pays well and good friends around, so life is pretty streamlined for me.
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you go?
I like where I am! I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. Northern Kentucky is pretty awesome. If I didn’t have to worry about money or anything like that it’d be cool to live near a beach or visit a foreign country for a while, but unless someone reading this is a millionaire and wants to give me a million dollars so I can document the awesome journey of the man who doesn’t have to worry about money anymore, I doubt that’ll happen any time soon.
Do you spend time on SWF anywhere other than Dgames? Where?
Not really anymore. I used to; I cared about Brawl and doing well, but it’s just not worth it anymore. I made more selling bead art than everyone but first place at SiiS 6 and I already proved to myself I could do it. Plus, Meta Knight. Just not worth it anymore. There are other games, like Starcraft 2, that I could obsess over.
What setup do you like the most out of all the closed setups you've seen here at SWF? Which one did you like the least or have the most issues with? (Doesn't have to be a game you played in, can't be any of your own games)
I had the most issues with DBZ mafia because the rules changed halfway through. -_-;;
The setup I’ve liked the most so far? I’m not sure. I really enjoyed Fire Emblem, but that was more for the players. Majora’s Mask was good, but plain. TMNT Mafia was one of the most unique setups here, it was a lot of fun. Hard to find a unique setup I like that I’ve played, and I don’t focus much on games I haven’t. I guess TMNT would be the #1, although I enjoy FE more.
Which closed setup here at SWF do you think was the most balanced? Why? (again, not including your own games)
Rockin’s “Mafia Royal Sleepover” was pretty balanced if I recall correctly, although I don’t like HOW it was balanced. It was basically a game of VTs and 3 scum given the roles there, with the possibility of huge swingy play. “Follow the cop” was there too. I don’t follow games I don’t run much, and games I’ve been in from what I’ve seen have had some balance flaws one way or another, so I don’t really know if I have an answer for this.
What kind of PRs (either town or anti-town) do you feel are too overpowered or are too swingy and thus shouldn't be used?
Cop is stupid. Limit cop heavily or make it one shot or something. I dislike cops on their own. I also heavily dislike mafia roles that kill whoever hammers them, for obvious reasons.
Will we ever hydra again, and if we do will we ever live past day 1 when we're both actually playing?
I’d be down to hydra again. I enjoy playing as ForeverZero. People treat me differently. I’ve thought about making an account in the future to just play a game under the radar, but meh. The time I could play the newbie card is long gone.
If you could just magically become absolutely insanely good, like world class, at any sport or video game, what would it be, assuming you weren't allowed to make any money off of it? Basically what would you wanna be sick at just for the sake of being skilled, not for ulterior motives like making money or whatever.
Anything related to music if that could be considered a “sport”… but it can’t. So, I guess martial arts. It’d keep me healthy, balanced, I’d get to wear pajamas all the time, and could defend myself. That’s on top of being able to make movies and whatnot, which can’t really apply due to how the question was phrased.
when you create or think of a game, which attribute you care about the most: some really cool role to revolve things around, flavor, some mechanic, general setup balance, other thing?
I generally pick a flavor first, because it’s the most important for getting people to sign up. Any flavor will do as long as it is awesome and it has a wide variety of options. From that point on, I generally think of a basic game theme or a mafia group and balance from there.
From games you've already run, which are your favourites, in order?
FF6, Villains and Super Heroes tie, Chrono Trigger Mafia, Super Mario RPG mafia, Final Fantasy 4 Mafia, Time Travelers Mafia, and Incredibly Depressing Mafia. I think that’s all the ones I’ve run so far.
Seems you're against vanilla roles... do you think giving those eventual vanillas some sort of power role, even if it is something pretty worthless, is a "good" solution, or some sort of solution that can "help" in the future for new games?
I do it all the time! VTs are bad not because they’re not useful; it’s because they’re boring for the player. You’re punishing the player that got VT while rewarding the player who got vig because now the vig can make all these awesome plays while the VT just has to be one voice among many. I give VTs a chance to shine by giving them some sort of restriction that they can get around, or an ability that’s one-shot that can be used at the right moment, etc., etc., anything that makes what would be a VT special.
Which do you think are "broken" roles? over-used and under-used roles? cool and not-so-cool roles? roles that are used in a wrong way? (I mean from a setup creation point-of-view)
Cops are broken. Watchers and Trackers are over-used and strong, bus drivers and jesters are under-used. Indie roles are incredibly uncreative here. When the most interesting indies you see are things like “indy lovers”, it’s just a bad selection. Roleblockers are often used in the wrong way. People will give town PRs and then give mafia roleblocking abilities and it just makes me facepalm, because people do it in the mindset of “this will stop mafia from letting town use an ability” and mafia uses it as a “let’s see if we can find player X” every time. I’d like to see roleblockers revamped a bit. Have the mafia roleblock multiple players instead of one, or “for every mafia member you roleblock, you can roleblock two town players”. Let roleblockers block both a vote and an ability. Something special.
Which sort of roles may fit well for indies, other than the classical serial killer? not necesarily asking for a specific role, but instead what characteristics or traits should indies have given a certain setup. What is their slot expected to achieve in the game, and how do you balance them?
I try not to balance around indies too much. Indies work because they aren’t balanced. If a setup is balanced including the indie, the indie loses. So you have a serial killer or an abductor and the setup is “balanced”? That means you accounted for all those kills and abductions, meaning if the indie dies early on town should win. It also means the indie loses because they have to get rid of a TON of people who likely have power roles of their own, and it takes exactly one watcher, tracker, or whatever to take them out. Oh, and by the way, the indie is forced into a lylo situation of 3 people in most cases, giving a 33% chance of them losing on a random vote alone. Scary.
An indies slot in the game is expected to be the “spice”. It gives mafia a way to look town, and it gives town a way to make progress and look town. At the same time, it causes chaos for both factions and makes both factions worry about more than just threat assessment.
The best indies involve manipulating scum and town and do so by simply having more information. Kefka is probably my favorite version of this; although he’s fairly direct with it, he can screw things up royally. Make everyone one vote to lynch? Force someone to vote for a certain player? All cool things that are far more interesting than “now this person is dead or gone”.
Want to make a cool indie? Make them play like a puppet master to win. Give them more information than anyone else and the ability to use that information, but put them against insurmountable odds. It’s a lot of fun to watch.
Play a game where you post a ton then play a game where you hardly post anything at all. Not the differences in how people react to you and how your posts are taken. Find out what works best for you and realize that both sides have weaknesses, and so will your middle ground when you find it. This will help you move on enough to where you can be an “advanced” player. The only distinguishing line between an intermediate player and an advanced player is the ability to determine how they’ll play and do so with a purpose specific for those circumstances.
For those who are advanced players, I’d suggest learning the principles behind the Reid technique. Eliminate any suspects that seem improbable (NOT impossible), develop a list of possible suspects or leads, and then from that list determine what kinds of questions would push their buttons. Then do a behavior analysis by asking them safe questions they have no reason to avoid along with a few that should make them react in certain ways. Attempt to predict how they’ll react. If play X states that player Y is a town read and you ask a question that implies player Y is mafia and he defends him vehemently, but then doesn’t do the same for player Z in the same situation, there’s information to be had! Once you’ve got the behavior down, move on to interrogation; control the flow of dialogue, have a direct confrontation and then back off and try to give him the opportunity to shift blame. Choose the target you want them to shift the blame TO, and then determine what that would mean. Don’t ask questions in which he can just say “Nope, wasn’t me”, because that gets you nothing. Make him give a reason. Once they give you reasons as to how they didn’t do it or why it wouldn’t make sense, play off that. Instead of being accusatory, be more understanding; make them think you’re on their side and you bought it without implicitly stating so. He’ll try to move on elsewhere. During this point, get him to agree to something concrete; he’ll be eager to do so. Give him options to choose from and he’ll almost always choose one of the options you gave him. Make sure both options are incriminating in some form, either by making him double back on reads he had publicly stated prior, or make sure he confirms certain Night Actions you know not to be possible. This is how you get a “confession” in mafia.
I don’t know.
I actually do not know. At all. I just randomly ordered $100 worth of beads and started making ****. Then my girlfriend started doing it too. Now my room is covered and I’m selling them. It’s a cool experience to pick a random hobby and then make it work financially. It costs me $0 to bead, since I just sell some stuff and then the previous beads are paid for. I’m like -$10 right now, so one or two more sales would pass that up and I already have a few commissions. So I got to decorate my room with cool stuff for free!
It really goes to show you that STARTING is the best way to get something done.
If that wasn't clear, make a GAY joke about Rockin. And even if it was clear and you already did, make another one.
Rockin walks into a gay bar. This time he found it was a pleasant experience.
Quick! You have James Bond captive and it is mandatory that you kill him in a drawn out and humiliating manner. How do you accomplish this and what do you say in your evil monologue?
Humiliating? All the death scenarios I’ve planned for James Bond have been painful.
If I can’t cut off his eyelids and fill him in a room of ants and honey…
I’d probably put him in a room with cameras streaming it live to the internet. Then he’d be stuck in a chair with several cannons pointed at him sticking out of the walls. Various trivia questions would be brought up about his life as well as pop culture. Occasionally there would be a bull**** opinion question. Whenever he answered wrong, a My Little Pony action figure would be shot from the cannon and hit him. The cannon shot would be randomized. Occasionally a ball of melted chocolate would be thrown at him as well. Once in a blue moon a kitten would be thrown at him. A 7.3 second mp3 of the jeopardy theme would be on loop nonstop, only kind of audible, and horribly cut so that it was abrupt. Whenever he got a question right, a group of men in suggestive studded leather outfits would come in and do a dance around the chair, lick him clean of the chocolate, pat him on the head, then leave.
There are a few people that are obsessed with me in one way or another on here. Nich, Adumbrodeus, and Gheb all seem to have some sort of fascination with me. Nich to make sure I don’t pull a fast one on him, Adumbrodeus constantly feels the need to be an intellectual equal and will make broad, sweeping generalizations even if they can’t be right if I suggest that it’d be foolish to not make those broad, sweeping generalizations, and Gheb can’t seem to fathom me making a right decision. :B
What's one player you do NOT want to have to manipulate as scum?
KevinM. He’s always inactive and more or less useless; he doesn’t know the meta of any of the newer players and is too confident in himself when he hasn’t read up. Causes trouble.
If you found $5 in your pocket what would you spend it on?
Above average. I’m one of the best there is at making people do what I want them to do, my biggest issue is finding what I want them to do. That’s why scum is so much easier than town.
Can you think of a reason I wasn.'t lynched as your scummate in FE mafia?
Not really. For a while, yeah, because you hid with everyone else. But then you weren’t hiding anymore and lots of people were looking at you and you just…. Didn’t die. Over and over again. It was weird.
How often do you do the, get yourself lynched to paint a road for reads on D1 idea?
I get myself lynched in just about every game I play, haha. I don’t mind it at all, and it’s a good strategy depending on your role. D1 I hardly ever go for though.
Detective is fun. Team puzzle games are fun. If people were willing to spend money on an entry fee I’d run another puzzle war game. Those are a ton of fun.
You have a habit of posting very little, but what you do post can be jarring and specific enough to make people raise their eyebrows at you. Instead of posting specific reads, ask questions that gain information. Less people will think you’re scum that way.
As a player, constantly get the mod to prod him. It’s really not the mod’s job to prod people the moment they are inactive, that’s up to the players to request a prod. As a mod, constantly prod him or make sure his role has a posting restriction that requires him to post once per day.
I do all sorts of things. I just pick something and say “I’m going to get good at that”. Then I do. I made a complete Super Mario World ROM hack of 7 levels, mostly involving puzzle levels and a few trick jump levels and have been working on an FF6 ROM hack (although that’s on the backburner at the moment, as I reached my stopping point of the kefka fight at Narshe). I’d like to make my own RPG someday, but I do not have the programming skills to do so. I learn all sorts of songs on various instruments. I learned to do bead art. I randomly went to Wal-Mart at 4 a.m. to buy sculpting materials and have since started learning how to sculpt small figures; I made a Bob-omb and a Companion Cube to start. I do all sorts of stuff, I basically collect hobbies.
Currently I am a “Coordinator of Instructional Technology”, but I just had an interview for a Training Developer position, so I might get that job and have that title instead. I do a little bit of everything in my current position and basically make sure things run smoothly when I’m assigned to a project, and do my best to make training videos and documentation for different technology used for online courses.
Kevin Conroy created batman; that voice IS who batman is. When someone images batman, it’s that guy’s voice.
Michael Keaton is the best so far at being Batman and Bruce Wayne as one entity. He was awkward as Batman and determined, but not omnipotent, as Batman. He acted like any crazy person in a batsuit would if they were intelligent and decided to fight crime. It felt realistic in a very odd sense in how awkward a lot of his scenes could be.
George Clooney was the best Bruce Wayne bar none, but he was never batman. Christian Bale is the best batman bar none, but has never been Bruce Wayne. Whenever you see the new batman movies, Christian Bale is always Batman. Always. Talking to Morgan Freeman while wearing a suit? He’s batman. You’re painfully aware that he’s putting up a facade of being Bruce Wayne. While this is acceptable, it’s never been how the character was supposed to be portrayed; Bruce Wayne and Batman are two characters portrayed by the same actor.
Val Kilmer was never Batman and nothing you say can convince me otherwise.
Rank these Joker performances and say a bit about why maybe: Mark Hamill, Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson, also maybe some miscellaneous others you know of.
Mark Hamill did the same thing Conroy did. He took the concept of Batman and flipped it on its head, creating the Joker. He is the antithesis of Batman in every way. I honestly think he’d do a fine Joker in live action.
Jack Nicholson did a convincing job of being a crazy violent man in a purple suit and, because of this, actually did a really good job. His performance as “the joker” sucked, but his actual BEING the joker was awesome. If you watch the movie expecting to see the real “Joker”, you say “really, that’s it?” but if you watch it assuming he’s portraying a real life character you say “Wow, that guy is insane. Seeing him would freak me out.” Jack Nicholson took the Joker concept, extracted the crazy, and made his character based off of that.
Heath Ledger took a very interesting way of looking at the Joker. While Nicholson took the idea of the Joker’s craziness and went with that, Heath took the idea of the Joker’s purpose. For those unaware, the entire concept behind Heath’s portrayal of the character came from The Killing Joke, in which the Joker tries to drive James Gordon insane to prove that even the best can fall. It also describes the Joker’s creation (chemical waste). Sound familiar? It should. Everyone just has “one bad day”, and poof, everything changes. Batman chooses to use his bad day to confront evils while the Joker uses his to deny the structure of reality itself. They’re mirror images. Heath did a good job of portraying that purpose. The entire movie, Heath makes the Joker seem incredibly intelligent and unreliable at the same time. Less crazy, but with a purpose.
All three were good, but for different reasons.
They’re good, the best done so far. The real issue I’ve seen with his movies is that he adds a little too much intensity and not enough build up. There’s no real “suspense” in his movies; only twists.
Oh, the guy who trained Batman was actually the main villain? What a twist! Oh, the good guy Harvey Dent was actually going to be Two Face the bad guy? What a twist!
I understand how it can be hard to build suspense when everyone already knows the characters, but it’s almost always painfully obvious what is going to happen. You see the Joker crash a party, and you see Batman leave the room to go change. Nolan doesn’t give you the option of thinking “maybe someone important will die from the Joker’s hand”. You’re just sitting there watching screenplay knowing that Batman will appear and the Joker will get away. He might kill someone random, but no one important. Even when there is supposed to be suspense, it’s manufactured suspense. He chooses who in the story you’re supposed to root for and what options you have to choose from. During the oil drum scene it’s supposed to be all shocking as for who he saves, but it isn’t because it’s limited to those two characters and you know exactly what’s going to happen to one of them before the movie starts. But all in all, good movies and well done.
What do you expect from a good Batman adaptation? What about the Joker, in particular?
For Batman, it’s pretty simple. You need to have two sides of the same coin; the playboy who wants to stop crime and the crime fighting bat that wants to live a normal life with his woman. It’s never “crime fighting bat that wants to stop crime”. That’s too heavy for Batman and it makes him generic. His strength as a character comes from not wanting to be there in the first place.
For Joker, you need to have him be a mirror of whatever is showing up in Batman’s character and it needs to be flipped upside down. It sounds like it’s more simple than it really is, because the Joker has to be able to stand as an independent character while being the opposite of Batman. Think of it this way: The Joker is the opposite of Batman, but Batman has to discover the Joker. The Joker can’t discover Batman, he can’t “react” to Batman. The Batman has to react to Joker, and because of this the Joker has to have his own independent personality while not breaking the “opposite of Batman” mold. Try introducing a character and presenting it as the opposite of something that hasn’t showed up yet; it’s difficult.
Drugs are ****ing stupid. The only drugs I’d ever take are ones that make it to where I don’t have to sleep. This is including just about everything except for antibiotics and pain-relieving drugs (i.e., morphine for surgery pain). Taking drugs is like eating fast food. If you don’t have to do it, don’t do it.
If you could re-host one game that you've made before, what would it be?
In an ideal world, Super Heroes Mafia. I’d like to see the Hep Alien thing happen again, but we all know it can’t ever be as awesome as it was then. The fact that Hep flipped and people didn’t realize they were the same player was insaaaaane. Was such an awesome game. But realistically, FF6 mafia again. I’d make a few tweaks, and randomize what characters were mafia but keep the roles the same. That’d be a pretty *****in’ open setup, not gonna lie. Someone else could always run it too, but everyone always has their own setups XD
Same as the last question but change re-host to play and made into played?
I think I’d enjoy playing a variant of TMNT mafia again, but I’d want to have a town role this time. Scum again would be cool, but town would be a lot of fun in that setup. I really enjoy the idea of town having a princess, but otherwise being way in the lead.
If you could host a 12 man game, who would you like to have play it?
It’s all about flow. You can have a thirty person mafia game if you do it right. If you have about 14 players in your game or more and you have a straight vanilla townie, you’ve failed as a mod. Plain and simple. You’re asking a player to dedicate large chunks of their time to finding out who is scum from a list of X number of other people who probably have abilities and giving them no indication of whether or not there are other VTs, AND giving them an impossible claim, and that’s boring. If you have an awesome playerlist or something, that’s fine because that makes it interesting, but you should never rely on that. At the very least you need a restriction to make their game more fun. The “critical mass” for players in which inactives can start hiding easily is generally around 7 players, so you’ll always have those.
Entertainment-wise, Fire Emblem. That was fun. Balance-wise, I dunno. It’s hard to think back say “man, that **** was BALANCED”, so I’m gonna have to go with Mafia Royal Sleepover again.
One I probably won’t run for a long time unless the mods say “Hey, we want you to run this” and that’s my DGames mafia. Each player in the game would be another player in the game. I’d have to rearrange some stuff since it’s an old setup and there are new faces, but it’d be… interesting.
Depends on the point in the game. There are a lot of players I’d never want in lylo that could otherwise be useful. Ryker, Gheb, Adumbrodeus, and Pierce all come to mind as players that might make a good start of a game but royally screw it up in the end because they decided they were right on D2 and plan to see it through to the end of D5 no matter what. Players like J, Zen, and X1-12 might have a really crappy early game and be tripping over themselves in mid game, but they also constantly re-evaluate themselves. While that makes their early game streaky, their late game is significantly better than the “rock” players that refuse to listen to anyone else. So it’s pretty dependent on the scenario.
Will we ever use delita now that Tom's not ever doing FMA: B?
I appreciate the compliment OS, but my scum play really isn't that good. I think you're just basing that off of Community mafia, which is one game where I was good as scum. My future scum games after that weren't so great, tbh.
Also curious as to why you believe I'm especially good as town if I get an information role (like cop)?
EDIT: Also yeah good interview. One of the better ones IMO.
I appreciate the compliment OS, but my scum play really isn't that good. I think you're just basing that off of Community mafia, which is one game where I was good as scum. My future scum games after that weren't so great, tbh.
Also curious as to why you believe I'm especially good as town if I get an information role (like cop)?
EDIT: Also yeah good interview. One of the better ones IMO.
It takes two things to be good at scum in a vacuum:
The ability to plan accurately
The ability to manipulate accurately
In a real game, if all three scum are doing the above it generally turns out very poorly. Too many chiefs, not enough indians. It's much stronger to have each person acquiring a role to a plan that was created by either one person or the group.
In a real scum game, it takes two things to be good at scum after the plan is finished:
The ability to stick to your role in the plan
The ability to think on your feet during situations of high tension
You were able to do both very well; I can take credit all day for creating plans and handing out roles, but when my scummates are able to do those roles perfectly it's the real big thing. It'd be like a writer or director taking credit for an actor's work; yes they had a part in it, but the bulk of it relies on the actor.
Occasionally there needs to be a hail mary play like I did in Fire Emblem mafia when I suddenly had to switch to be the town trustee instead of the guy who got lynched and made my scummates seem like town; that was a difficult play and it took a lot of risks. Occasionally there have to be uber strategic "let's play this until the end" plays like my bus on Chill with KevinM on D1 that allowed me to survive until the end. That was fairly epic, but it was a result of a poor scenario: Chill was inactive.
Those uber strategies that look so cool and seem awesome are really acts of desperation; your scum play in Community showed your strong points well. All you need is a good planner on your team, or learn to make a good plan yourself, and you can do the rest from there as long as the plan is good. You're the perfect employee looking for a manager, to put it in a metaphor.
I'll still never play with OS though, I'd love to play one of his setups though.
I'd suggest playing All-Stars... I may have two large games soon if things go according to plan, and if that is the case then :D and you should join the first one as All-Stars would be after.
Overswarm's set-up isn't an issue, but the problem of large games mathematics is. Scum will kill active contributors which inevitably leaves large games dying to inactivity.
That really was a pity, I was looking forwards to betraying my former mafia scum mate KevinM after becoming cult recruited by faking a tracker report on him for the second game in a row. (No seriously, it's true.)
@OS
Any comments regarding Megaman X mafia, or is that one memory we should all keep buried?
Megaman X mafia is probably a prime example of why you should look into every possible aspect of the game, but not necessarily listen to them all. AB and Gheb blinded themselves completely from the points of "OS can never be right" and "Ryker SHOULD be scum", and they had justified their push regardless of their flip; in other words, they'd happily lynch him in lylo and say "eh, his fault if he's town". That's stupid. The fact that dead town reads were forgotten and never looked into was even more stupid. -_-;;
Overswarm's set-up isn't an issue, but the problem of large games mathematics is. Scum will kill active contributors which inevitably leaves large games dying to inactivity.
Megaman X mafia is probably a prime example of why you should look into every possible aspect of the game, but not necessarily listen to them all. AB and Gheb blinded themselves completely from the points of "OS can never be right" and "Ryker SHOULD be scum", and they had justified their push regardless of their flip; in other words, they'd happily lynch him in lylo and say "eh, his fault if he's town". That's stupid. The fact that dead town reads were forgotten and never looked into was even more stupid. -_-;;
If you wanna blame somebody for that, blame me, I was primarily pushing it, and Gheb wanted to re-examine the entire thing with the flips as of the final day.
At the same time, I did re-examine several times, and there really was nothing that based on what I knew of him then that I could've changed. I misjudged how egotistical he was.
But attempting to distract attention from your scummyness by various means is pretty much the core of scumhunting, we attempt to prove it linking actions together to show this pattern, but here it was handed on a silver platter. The only thing we have beyond that is meta.
Mafia is little if not attempting to establish a motivation.
Also, the reason why ICD mafia phailed was because of the chance mechanics which made the game blatantly uninteresting.
Furthermore, the lack of any realistic protective role (vig, 25% of the time, really?) meant that the best option for mafia was to scythe through the active players.
