Mini | DnD Statbuilder Mafia - Game Over!

[Dabuz]

Can we see stats? Also, I am so happy the 10 points in charisma made me confirmed town, had a feeling 10 points in char would do something like that ^^

 

[Xatres]

To anyone complaining about the setup, hopefully seeing all the roles laid out gives you some idea of what I was going for. Abilities were differentiated between being magical or physical (and in some cases, social). Like I said, my primary interest was coming up with something interesting to pair with each player's stats, hopefully giving them something akin to what they wanted in the first place. I tried to create checks and balances as best I could, but in the end this was a role madness game of the highest caliber, which I warned you all about in advance. And like any good game of DnD, players were bound to get up to all kinds of shenanigans with the abilities they were handed.

A LOT of you went for extremely low charisma, including both players randomly selected to be villains, which made it a bit of a challenge to give each player unique posting restrictions.

Some skills went unused (all of JeXs' abilities).

Others never had a chance to go into affect (Chaco's Pixie dust couldn't protect Bunzy from a physical attack).

Still others were completely wasted (Drexel stole from Bunzy, mod confirmed town, on D2).

There were a TON of potential interactions this game, but I tried to make decisions based on what was most consistent with intended flavor and gameplay potential. Some players made great moves, others not so great, just like any other game of mafia. I know I learned a lot about modding more complex games (my setups so far have been pretty conservative by comparison), and I certainly won't be loading up so many Day actions again anytime soon (DnD Statbuilder 2, perhaps?). Ultimately, though, you can't play a DnD flavored game without them. Party members get in arguments and fight and use their abilities in weird and creative ways. I wanted to create a game that emulated that experience in a mafia environment. And in that sense, I think I was successful.

 

[Xatres]

Role PMs edited to include stats (Drexel's adjusted for 30 points).

 

[Chaco]

To anyone complaining about the setup, hopefully seeing all the roles laid out gives you some idea of what I was going for. Abilities were differentiated between being magical or physical (and in some cases, social). Like I said, my primary interest was coming up with something interesting to pair with each player's stats, hopefully giving them something akin to what they wanted in the first place. I tried to create checks and balances as best I could, but in the end this was a role madness game of the highest caliber, which I warned you all about in advance. And like any good game of DnD, players were bound to get up to all kinds of shenanigans with the abilities they were handed.

A LOT of you went for extremely low charisma, including both players randomly selected to be villains, which made it a bit of a challenge to give each player unique posting restrictions.

Some skills went unused (all of JeXs' abilities).

Others never had a chance to go into affect (Chaco's Pixie dust couldn't protect Bunzy from a physical attack).

Still others were completely wasted (Drexel stole from Bunzy, mod confirmed town, on D2).

There were a TON of potential interactions this game, but I tried to make decisions based on what was most consistent with intended flavor and gameplay potential. Some players made great moves, others not so great, just like any other game of mafia. I know I learned a lot about modding more complex games (my setups so far have been pretty conservative by comparison), and I certainly won't be loading up so many Day actions again anytime soon (DnD Statbuilder 2, perhaps?). Ultimately, though, you can't play a DnD flavored game without them. Party members get in arguments and fight and use their abilities in weird and creative ways. I wanted to create a game that emulated that experience in a mafia environment. And in that sense, I think I was successful.

See, this is the one problem I had in this game the potential interactions. I think you were so focused on all the possible interactions that would make the roles work successfully that you missed out on the things that did not. When balancing a game, and it took me a lot of reading lately to get to where I feel like I can balance a game. Most importantly what I realized was, I had allllll these ideas floating around in my head and wanted to incorporate them all. But an IMPORTANT quote I read brought me to level:

"Veteran players like simpler games."​

LI'm gonna be honest too, this is something that is hard for me because I love to create interesting set ups. I'm most typically known for going for ******* mechanics. I love to ******* mod, it's my ****ing favorite. So a rule of thumb to take when creating set ups is "Less is more." When creating roles, make one or two, and balance around those roles. Otherwise you're going to have such a heavily laden game in PRs that it's mechanics become more trying to keep up with. Something I also don't agree with is the lack of protection from poison. Everything needs an answer even if only a slight possibility. So that's something that definitely struck me wrong, I have the only protect in the game and get my target right and can't even boast a solid protect. Anyways, the particulars of this game are, you have some REALLY strong roles, and then some really weak roles. Aurelias is a JoaT ****in powerhouse. To be honest, Mafia has no answer for his DAY abilities, JeXs can entangle them at night and it follow through, but take into consideration he dies D1. Where does your balance go to? The result is a really swingy game, and necessarily that's not a bad thing. I'm just trying to shed light for you on where I see potential game breaks, because I personally like to hash out set ups with people. I've had SEVERAL ideas for Hentai Mafia 3, and the hardest thing for me has been trying to incorporate ALL these ideas. So finally, after talking with Macman and him showing me where he thought the weaknesses were, and telling me I was having way to many potential interactions, I had to step back, breathe deep and start to look at my set up objectively. There's a check list that Vi from MafiaScum wrote, I have a "modding packet" essentially of balance guides and the like, as well as this checklist that Vi wrote which asks about 15 questions, iirc, and if you answer to yes to more than a few of them. You need to review your set up in a different way. And that's what it took with me and Hentai Mafia to grow. Now, I'm trying to put together a game that both appeases veterans and leaves them with a feeling of "Okay, this game actually rely's on skill" while still having that fresh, new feel to it. Cause let's be honest. Open Games are fun, but essentially DGamers livvveee and thriiiive on Large Theme Games. We love em. It's what we like to play, and that's just DGames culture. So it's kind've like around here, who can put out the most memorable games, the most fun. Hell, that's what it even says in the new guide to hosting, make it memorable so your player base stays constant and it builds.

But I feel like you had a ton of potential with this game, Xatres. I think you have brilliant ideas, but need to work between the lines of the scales. Those scales being the SSoCvI: Sliding Scale of Cynicism versus Idealism. This is where I really had my shortcoming, and there's nothing wrong with that. It just means we have ideas spurting out of our heads!

But I hope you continue to host Xat, and I'd definitely join a DnD2 to see what you come up with next!

 

[Xatres]

Oh, I knew there were a billion potential game breaks here. Balancing this complex of a game perfectly is nigh impossible. Like I said, balance was secondary to giving players interesting roles.

Thanks for the advice though. I'm going to be running a game in the Broom pretty soon. Maybe I'll run it by you and see what you think before I run it.

 

[Chaco]

Exactly, so I definitely know where you stand.

And I'd love to, my dude. Just drop me a line.

 

[Dabuz]

I personally want more day abilities but never another vig!

 

[#HBC | Dark Horse]

You won't believe how happy we were when Jexs was dayvigged so early

 

[#HBC | Dark Horse]

I'm going to be running a game in the Broom pretty soon.

Hopefully it's not a clean sweep for town

 

[Chaco]

You won't believe how happy we were when Jexs was dayvigged so early

Ahahaha. I've seen a LOT of improvement out of JeXs since the beginning of this game to how he stands now in DC v Marvel. I like JeXs, I hope he continues to stick around and get better. He takes the hard body pretty well.