Mafia VIII: Return of the Recommencement of the Revenge of the Mafia [Concluded]

[Privateerkev]

Episodes 1-3 really suck...

And I say this as a HUGE fan of the original 3...

[GeneralHankerchief]

They do, but if we don't include them then it's not really much of an endurance test. Plus, there's the added motivation to stick with watching. "Hey, yeah, it's boring now, but we have Empire Strikes Back to look forward to later!"

...yeah, back to work, GH.

[Quintus.JC]

My first Mafia game ended in victory, not that I contributed to any of that.

Where are my manners, thanks for hosting GeneralHankerchief

[Privateerkev]

They do, but if we don't include them then it's not really much of an endurance test.

Watching Jar Jar tests my endurance... and my patience...

[GeneralHankerchief]

To make up for my lack of commentary for Mafia VII (I still have part of it done, somewhere...), I’ve written two for this round. One of them pertains to the “twist,” which as you know by now pertains to the “lost letters” and what they stood for. The first part of that is pretty much an essay on why I did it, the second, how to go by solving it. The other is in the usual mold.

On the Detective, why I removed it from the game, and the letters:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I’ve been noticing a trend in games recently. Usually, they start with the Detective investigating a high-profile target, generally Sasaki, in Round 1. The Detective reveals privately to Sasaki if he’s innocent and a pro-town group begins to form. If Sasaki’s guilty, the Detective reports his findings to the town and Sasaki does everything he can to discredit him. Hilarity ensues, but it usually ends up with two power roles gone.

Taking Sasaki out of the equation for the moment, I’ve seen more and more games where the Detective’s “investigate” list has been a who’s-who of Mafia vets and people that are generally considered “good” players. What these Detectives are doing is going off and doing work based on reputation, not thread behavior. Bad game tactics, IMHO.

Another thing that bothers me is the aspect of revealing privately. My games are well-known for barring any sort of private rule, but many do not have that in place. What usually happens is that all the power roles plus investigated innocents get together, become the “in crowd” for that game, and make a forum on Quicktopic to discuss things without fear of mafia corruption. In essence, they generally become a second mafia faction, an organized group that knows more than the rest of the people. This means there are three factions in any game where the host had designed there to only be two: The mafia, the elite town, and the normal townies who are doomed to die between the mafia’s killing spree and the elite town’s lynching efforts. Occasionally, when there’s ambiguity in Detective results (Stig’s Beer Salesman game) or out-and-out trickery (TinCow’s brilliant play in Netherworld) these groups can be infiltrated, but this is the exception rather than the norm. One might argue that it’s the next step for the good players, to be able to take out these groups from the inside, but a game of Mafia boiled down to its simplest definition is an informed minority trying to defeat an uninformed majority. Private reveals and what follows throw this out of whack.

This made me start thinking about the history of the Detective in my own game as well as its necessity. Take a ride, children, back to the prehistoric days of .Org Mafia, back before the Gameroom existed, to Mafia I.

The posts were few, and most of them were joking around, with absolutely no real detective (lowercase “d”) work being done. I think the players, to a man, had never played a game of internet mafia before. Kagemusha gets a lot of credit for being able to survive and deliver the game for the mafia, but really, it was only me throwing the odds significantly in the town’s favor for the final round (cryptic PMs to the innocents, a double execution, and letting the dead vote) that gave the town any resemblance of a chance in that game. I knew for Mafia II that something needed to be done, fairly, that helped the town a bit. Thus, the Detective was born.

In Mafia II, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. Tiberius, the first ever .Org Detective, fingered a mafioso, Lemur, mid-game and revealed a few rounds later, providing a catastrophic blow to the mafia’s chances. The first signs of decent townie play emerged late in that game, with Sasaki’s false claim (his first of many ) giving Tiberius room to operate, and Kommodus’s primitive vote-indexing system Watson fingering Lemur shortly before Tib revealed, but ultimately it was the Detective that doomed the mafia in that game. Mission accomplished.

The town started taking over as the main threat beginning in Mafia III, and consequently, the Detective’s importance and ineffectiveness dropped off. Crazed Rabbit lasted nine rounds and helped push town opinion towards lynching Kommodus in III, but in truth he was extremely unlucky and not the deciding factor (although to be fair, it wasn’t the town either, but more of a massive mafia choke – sorry to bring back bad memories, K). In IV, the game was over before Reenk Roink got a chance to do anything. Banquo’s Ghost was quickly lynched in V, Orb was killed something like Round 2 in VI, and sapi was killed mid-game in VII without any significant information to his name. Really, after Mafia II, the Detective was little more than a nominal threat to the mafia, just another townie with a little more at stake.

I think, looking back, I had meant to put the Detective in only temporarily as the town got stronger and more experience. Think of it as a crutch – when your leg is broken, you lean on it. But all the while, that leg is gaining strength and eventually, it heals. You don’t need to crutch anymore; as a matter of fact, continued reliance on it is bad for you. I think I lost that mentality somewhere in the tumult of Tiberius’s reveal and my “will it be this round?” speculation of Crazed Rabbit in Mafia III. I think it’s time, unless it’s a complicated game with a lot of ambiguity involved – say, Midgard II for example - that the Detective role be dropped. The town’s smart enough now, the only problem is that they can be lazy. Realizing that they need to take the initiative might remedy that. Looking back, I think the town would have been more active had I told them there wouldn’t be a Detective from the beginning.

So why didn’t I? Shock value, for one. Ideally, I would have liked the mystery to have been solved mid-to-end game, have the town realizing that they weren’t getting any deus ex machina help, and have them buckle down and do some serious work to make for another spectacular GH endgame. Secondly, I wasn’t sure how many players I was getting. If we didn’t get very many, I would have probably left the Detective in there. If we got some, I might have taken him out but told everyone. We got 38 players, however, a very good amount, so I decided to go forward with the clues.

I was thinking of a good way to do this when khaan and Curio sent me their N1 kill descriptions. Curio didn’t ask for much – just generally the running theme of a man wearing a trenchcoat and fedora and being cheerful (and later on, Cuban cigars). Khaan gave me total freedom. This was all I needed. Starting N2 I believe, I began subtly removing letters from kill and lynch descriptions, letters that would spell out “Sans investigateur,” or, roughly translated from French, “Without Detective.” This went unnoticed until the N3 writeup with TevashSzat’s epic death and my note telling everyone to find the lost letters.

(Random tangent: I originally translated “investigator” to “investigateur” due to dictionary.com’s online translator. About a round or two later, after I had already placed I, N, and V down, I translated it via the site’s French-English dictionary and got enquêteur, which was less obvious and would have worked better. Oh, well, at least I got the grammar of the initial note right.)
The general plan for this mystery was to lay down the initial clue in N3, have the town get on the track with the letters about a round later, and then have them figure out the message about midway through the overall game. They were quicker than I expected, so I had a lot of fun screwing around with their heads by alternating the amount of letters missing in the descriptions and having khaan’s mafioso continue to talk through his broken nose, lending some credibility to that argument, initially made by Ichigo. The way to figure out the true missing letters from the red herrings was spelled out in the two French notes provided to the town.

As noted over the course of the game, there were three different types of “errors” made in the writeups:

• Words with missing letters in them
• Words with extra letters
• Words with letters switched around

Early on, people only concentrated on the missing letters, but later, the distinction between the three was blurred and people didn’t really work to separate the three. Unfortunately, they were right earlier on. The note said to specifically find the lost letters – i.e. those that were missing.

A second layer of complexity was added when I removed too many letters – more than necessary to spell out “Sans investigateur”. Examples of these were the IC in “sufficiency”, an I in “extraordinaire”, etc. The goal of this strategy was to keep the phrase a useless jumble of letters until I provided them the ideal decoder later in the game: the second French note.

This second note, supplied N7 after the death of Joe Monks, reads in English:

“Some letters will be found, but not all pieces fit into the puzzle.”

The translation may not have been perfect, as emphasized with Sasaki’s only somewhat successful Babelfish attempt. For this, I can only say that I’m not a native French speaker, haven’t formally studied it in over a year, and that I did the best I could. Sorry for the potential mess-ups.

The first part, “Some letters will be found” was the decoder. In that writeup I had made an effort to use every “lost letters” word in the past whose letters didn’t go into “Sans investigateur.” The letters were added back in and doubled (“sufficiciency”, extraordinaiire”, etc.), thus removing them from the phrase. The second part, “not all pieces fit into the puzzle”, was a reinforcement of the fact that the townies were only supposed to concentrate on the missing words. Finally in that writeup, I added the final letters to complete the phrase: U and R.

For some reason the .Org’s spell checker only caught one of them, and this wasn’t the first time, either. In the N3 writeup, I believe, an I was missing in the word “in”, leaving only the word “n”, which nobody caught over the course of the game. Don’t rely on one tool, people! So really, when the infamous S A N S N I V I C was being thrown around, it read S A N S I N V, with an I and an IC being removed and another I being placed earlier on in the phrase. And so on.

To my disappointment, nobody really made any progress at getting the riddle until Kommodus extremely late in the game. There were some efforts, but they kind of stalled while the would-be solvers waited until I provided them with the codebreaker. By that point, the endgame was in full swing and everybody was concentrated on getting the mafia via more conventional means. Probably beneficial from the town’s point of view, considering what the payout would have been had they solved it (“hey, it’s telling us there’s no Detective! Great, we were operating on the assumption he was dead anyway. What a waste.”) but it was kind of disappointing to me because I had wanted to see it solved. Oh well.

I think the reason that the riddle went unsolved was an issue of timing, really. It might have been better if there were even more players, say around fifty. Capo II had, IIRC, 15 or so night phases and around 80 players. Had I done the riddle in an environment like that, it would have run its course by the midgame, or in other words, the part of the game where the townies still had time before they had to buckle down and kill the mafia.

All in all, I’m glad I did it, because I think it adds a new dimension to these games. However, future hosts who may want to follow my lead are warned. Be careful, because it could distract the townies too much. Make sure it stays the sideshow, the support effort, and never the main focus. After all, I’m pretty sure khaan and Curio were appreciative of all the effort that was (ultimately) wasted on it – while they weren’t sweating it out that the message might name them, of course!

On the game:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Pre-game
Mafia: makaikhaan and Gaius Scribonius Curio

Mafia VIII took place in a period of relatively low activity in the Gameroom. It was immediately preceded by Myrddraal’s “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” a very good game but with very few players, and Caius’s “Everything Happens in the Wild West”, a game which never really got off the ground. At the time of this writing, the game after Mafia VIII, Omanes’s “The Brothel”, is hovering around 20 players after several days of being open. So I was grateful that I was still able to pull in 38 players.

This was also my first post-Capo II game, bringing in several starring players from that game and beyond, most notably TinCow, Curio, and Privateerkev. Naturally, the Gameroom mainstays like Sasaki Kojiro, Ichigo, and Andres showed up. I was disappointed to know that a lot of the chatters like Prole, Xiahou, and Husar, didn’t play, but on the other hand the people whom I consider to be the Big Three of the Mafia series – Crazed Rabbit, Kagemusha, and Kommodus – did. These three have been playing since the beginning (M2 for Kommodus) and always seem to a) stick around until the end, and b) have a major impact. In this game, only one of them really followed this criteria, but oh, what in impact it was in the endgame. I was grateful for their continued interest.

And then, of course, we come to the mafia. Random.org gave me khaan, an established player who has been an extremely tricky mafioso in the past with the multi-role environment. We would see how he would fare when the game was stripped down. Its second pick was Curio, a new player who was leading the townie effort in Taormina but got badly fooled by PK. Would he get his revenge? Time would tell.

Finally, as discussed above, there was no Detective, for the first time since Mafia I.

Round 1

Curio kills Tratorix
Khaan kills Omanes Alexandrapolites

Good first kills by the mafia. The only contribution either of the two made in the game was Tratorix being the first one to translate the French “lost letters” message after N3. I felt really sorry for Omanes though, as he has the worst luck in my games. He’s played in two of them, VI and VIII, and both times he hasn’t even made it through the first round. Ouch!

(of course, there might be a pattern to this, as both times he didn’t really do anything after his death. A word to the wise: Mafia, take note, and Omanes, you might want to take action and start becoming more of a threat if you want to live longer. Easier said than done, of course, so I’ll shut up and get back to the game.)

Anyway, the round started off with an extremely questionable move by Privateerkev, in that he voted for himself using the following reasoning:

No mafia member would be so crazy as to vote for himself.

Therefore I must either be innocent or doing the biggest WIFOM in history.

My thoughts, both then and now:



I’m still not quite sure what PK was trying to achieve by this. My guess is that he wanted to gain the town’s trust and contribute while not waiting for the mafia to off him, thinking that a self-organized lynching in Round 1 would do the trick. However, the problem is (which I think he’s learned) is that it’s simply not enough. The only way you are exonerated in this game is if the mafia kill you. That’s it. Yes, PK organized and pushed for his own lynching, but the doubt was still there, the lack of a 100% certainty.

Other highlights of this round include the voting being extended due to Tosa’s massive upgrade of the .Org, Sarathos voting eight times in a row, and Sasaki voting repeatedly (and purposely) for the dead Tratorix and later Omanes. As custom in the first round, the mafia sat silently back and laughed as PK directed his own death and Sasaki walked perilously close to the line of lynching. All in all, it was an active, if unproductive, round.

Executed: Privateerkev

Round 2

Curio kills Andres
Khaan kills Craterus

Both targets were chosen, IIRC, because of Detective speculation/odd behavior. For most of the game (at least, the portion where khaan was active) Curio would send in his kill first. He provided me with kills of various degrees of completeness. Some days were outlines that I worked with (e.g. “Andres is jogging by a lake, he sees a well-dressed man wearing a trenchcoat and fedora sitting on a park bench. The man is smiling and makes a comment about the beautiful weather. Andres joins in, and then the man says “Unfortunately, this is the last day you’ll enjoy it”) and shoots him. Some days were nothing, and some days were pretty full descriptions that only needed a bit of polishing up (near the endgame, usually). Khaan, afraid that somebody would catch his writing style, gave me total discretion.

This was the part of the game where I had a strange obsession with birds/ducks being a linking theme. Some speculation was made from it, but to tell you the truth I just wanted a recurring bit of comedy with Beirut being more worked up over birds causing him property damage than the mafia killing the villagers. After a few more rounds, I got tired of using birds to link the two kills and dropped it entirely.

Finally, there was a small reference to “trace amounts of osmium” in the duck pond, a little homage to Mafia IV. Honestly, I was surprised that more wasn’t made of it. Guess the old games are fading into obscurity.

Elite Ferret quickly got into trouble this round due to most of his posts being simply joking around. Khaan happily joined the easy bandwagon, but Curio stayed away and voted for a future lynch-bait in FactionHeir. With low activity this round, EF was easily lynched.

Executed: Elite Ferret

Round 3

Curio kills LittleGrizzly
Khaan kills TevashSzat

Ah, the third round night kills. So much was made of Tevash’s epic death, the “find the lost letters” note, and the broken nose. Now you guys know the truth. Tevash wasn’t Detective, but I just felt like writing a good car chase scene. Plus, it was a good way of introducing the word puzzle, which had begun to be implemented the previous round.

A few calling cards were introduced this round. Curio’s dress, manner of speaking, and khaan’s shotgun were already in place, but I added a Cuban cigar for Curio and the Mercedes/broken nose for khaan this round. I wanted to do more with the cigars for Curio’s character, but kept forgetting to put them in.

I will say in future games not to make too much of calling cards, as they can be easily manipulated by the mafia and myself to screw with the town. Clothes and weapons can be leant. Even names can be manipulated, like in Mafia VII (I finally get to talk about that! Woo!). In that game woad&fangs’s character was named Mr. Arlen Frederick Ivanovich Ace, or Mr. A.F.I.A. for short. Later on, Crazed Rabbit named his character Mr. A.F.I.A. as well. In the kills, however, I always put at least one reference to Arlen Frederick Ivanovich Ace in woad’s kill scenes, and never put it in CR’s. After woad’s lynchings, Arlen Frederick Ivanovich Ace was dropped and both kills were made by the ambiguous Mr. A.F.I.A. Things like that can be tricky, which is why calling cards can be so hard to decipher.

The rest of the round was pretty strange. There were the usual junk votes being thrown around, but then peverpink started claiming left and right, first mafia and then Detective, and then renouncing it. He named Kagemusha as a mafioso, putting pressure, temporarily, on the old survivor. It would not be the last time.

Another reason why I got rid of the Detective is for rules purposes. There is always the opportunity to break rules and reveal privately, something which I almost had to deal with in Mafia VII and had no desire of doing so again.

Anyway, people were fed up with pever’s goofing around and gave him the chop. End round 3, with the mafia sitting pretty.

Executed: peverpink

Round 4

Curio kills Crazed Rabbit
Khaan kills woad&fangs

Both mafiosi from Mafia VII bought it the same night. I liked it.

There’s been a lot said about how my games are an absolute grind for the mafia (and they are) and that Curio and khaan are to be congratulated for getting as far as they did, especially with khaan unable to provide support for a week (and they are) but I still think there was a handicap in this game, more than in the others. For starters, obviously, there was no Detective. More subtly, though, the letters. This was the point where people really started focusing on them as opposed to getting a lot of data. That was a distraction and helped the mafiosi out. Finally, the players. Kommodus was inactive this game, popping in this round to avoid the WoG and then dropping off the face of the earth (and eventually getting mod-killed) until the final round. Sasaki never really made an impact. And Kage first went on a cruise and then went to his annual rock festival. So the town was definitely at a greater disadvantage in this game.

Their mindset didn’t help things either. In the transition from the goofy beginning game to the serious midgame, the town pretty much decided on a pecking order and stuck with it until the desperate endgame. #s 1 and 2 on this list were TinCow and FactionHeir, with Seamus Fermanagh, Sasaki, and even khaan farther down.

Honestly, I don’t know why TC was suspicious. References to posts were made, but really, I think it was the power of the bandwagon more than anything that doomed him. He went down, but only after a tie vote (after 2/3 of FactionHeir’s votes came from our mafiosi) extended his life a little bit. I hope I gave the .Org’s resident lawyer (quiet, Andres, I knew TC first ) a fitting send-off.

Executed: TinCow

Round 5

Curio kills Rythmic
Khaan kills Quintus.J.Cicero

For this round, I had total freedom on both kills. That hasn’t happened since, like, Mafia I. Cicero bought it via red imported fire ants (inspired by the recent Indiana Jones movie) right after he had narrowly escaped the WoG last round by voting.

Khaan started the round off by going after Sasaki with the most links I’ve ever seen in one post, including OverKnight’s “History of KotR” thread:

Vote: Sasaki

There is little good reason for your decrease in posting. You're count is way down, and many of your votes have been unhelpful, often unhelpful with either little or no reasoning.

Examples like this, this, this, this, this. Of note for this one is that he doesn't ever actually do as he said and clarify or discuss the vote or issues.
Here, Sasaki repeats his FoS of TinCow, but again does not offer any reasoning or clarification for it.Here he once again does a FoS of TinCow but doesn't offer reasoning. Here he states he even can't recall any actual specific post that actually struck him as suspicious. Also this



Non-contributory posts like this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this


Serious posts:
This, this, this, this, this, this, where he finally offers the faintest of a glimpse of his reasoning and his activity, but frankly, to me, this isn't all that acceptable. Hell, my state's flooded and I can find time to do this post.
This, and this, where he only finally offers some kind of serious reason for all of his previous votes and "FoS'".Here he offers a further vote for TinCow for the tie.This and this regarding letters.



Basically, Sasaki's been active enough to avoid major suspicion, but has most often been unhelpful in his votes and commentary. His activity isn't particularly explainable, and his behavior, for someone who is so experienced at mafia, is unacceptable, and has done almost no good for the town thus far; there were still two different killers for the night phase; the drummer and the man with the broken nose. This would rather indicate to me that TinCow was innocent. Sasaki's efforts to help the town have thus far been mostly subpar; I think its attributable to being guilty.

At the time I was concerned for khaan’s real-life welfare because this was when Iowa (his home state) was flooded, but apparently he was fine and smelling blood. The mafia were obviously gunning for Sasaki this round, his reputation obviously being scarier than his actual contributions to the game. Sasaki responded with a pretty decent, although short, defense:

There are far too many links in that post.

Some games I lead the charge some I don't. Think I got lynched as a townie in mafia VI (?) for posting less. It happens.

By the way makaikhaan, you should know that the "different killers" in the writeup doesn't indicate squat. Any one of the lynchees could have been mafia, the writeups wouldn't have been changed.

However, the attack was on. Curio, secondarily, led an effort to take down Kommodus, who was well on his way to the Land of WoG by that point. Clearly, the mafia wanted to take down a high-profile target this round. It worked, with Sasaki and Kommodus tying for the most votes in an inactive round.

One interesting note was what came out of the inactivity: Suspicion fell on the active people, with the logic being that the people who voted would also get their kills in on time. While incorrect (see what happened when khaan went AWOL), this logic would name khaan and Curio, among others, as major suspects. Later, when khaan dropped off the radar, Curio kept his activity up, which among other things might have ruined him.

For now, however, Sasaki was lynched, allowing the mafia to breathe easier. 5 rounds down, no problem. Of course, it was like that for many other ill-fated mafia teams...

Executed: Sasaki Kojiro

Round 6

Khaan kills shlin28
Curio kills RoadKill

Khaan sent in his kill early (around the start of the tiebreak vote), said he’d be having internet problems that night, and then dropped off the face of the earth for a week, leaving Curio with all the work. Curio, meanwhile, wanted to not kill anybody to throw the whole “if you vote a lot, you send in your kills on time” logic out of whack. After some deliberation, I decided not to allow it, and thus RoadKill went down. I think this ruling combined with what I allowed Curio to do in khaan’s absence pretty much cements the infallibility of the “there will always be two kills” rule.

The next couple of rounds that followed saw witness to probably the most herculean feat ever accomplished in one of my games: Curio’s solo effort (just beating out Crazed Rabbit’s prolonged survival in Mafia VII after he did an amazing manipulation of The Truth). He had no backup, no wingman, nobody to help advise him.

His first day alone went well, with Seamus Fermanagh getting most of the town’s attention. Seamus had spent most of his time trying to refine his play style in order to defeat Holmes for future games and, in his well-known analyses, several times forgot to include every person. Naturally, this got the town’s suspicion up, and Seamus was left scrambling.

IIRC, I think there were also some similarities to a kill in Mafia V (when Seamus was a mafioso), which further injured Seamus’s cause. Let me just say that, when you’ve done eight of these things, you have a tendency to repeat some kills! I remember looking back and rereading Mafia VII, I had made references to the “Ten Little Indians” poem as I had done this time, but not as blatant. There are probably more, too, and will be as this series continues. By then, it will be up to the town to determine whether these similarities are intentional or just coincidence (more likely ).

Beefy187 had a very nice analysis going in this round and ended up voting for khaan, but a quick post by PK made him change and he ended up voting for Seamus. Come on, Beefy, trust that initial instinct!

The bandwagon was initially on when discovery1 showed up, and, following the smiley, voted for Seamus. Interestingly enough, Curio started another side-bandwagon on Sarathos, which didn’t gain enough steam. This failed effort would have repercussions in the endgame, but for now, another “heavy hitter” was gone.

Executed: Seamus Fermanagh

Round 7

Curio kills CountArach
Khaan “kills” Joe Monks

I think this was the first time where the calling cards got tangled up, intentionally by Curio to throw the town out of whack. I exercised discipline and allowed a Marxist discussion to take place without any disparaging remarks (Capitalism FTW!!! ) between the two Backroom Aussie lefties. Interestingly enough, Curio PM’d me later to compliment me on CA’s death saying it’s what he would have done. I wondered if, because of it, suspicion would have fallen on Curio, but none ever did.

Funnily enough, it was this round where I purposely imitated another Mafia V kill (it was where Reenk Roink killed Kommodus, I think, and twisted a famous quote to serve his needs), but nobody said anything. This was also the kill description with the second French note, signifying the end of the letters.

Due to the change in kills, some people believed that it signified Seamus’s guilt. Curio asserted himself and, interestingly, provided the correct explanation for the kills (I think if people like Sasaki had been paying more attention, they would have blasted him for this. I was certainly chuckling at the monitor when I saw his posts like that. ). Taking initiative, he cast the first vote for a longtime target in FactionHeir. FH, for the most part, had spent his time abstaining and overanalyzing the letters. The bandwagon, however, was on, with the only real distraction this round being my banning Elite Ferret from Mafia IX out of sheer annoyance. You guys don’t know how much I hate that clown smiley.

Executed: FactionHeir

Round 8

Curio kills Beefy187
Khaan “kills” Sigurd Fafnesbane

Round 8. The endgame was upon us. The traditional round where the mafia, cruising along, hit the speed bump (with Round 9 being when they lose control of the car and slam into an oak tree at 60 mph). Would Curio, essentially operating alone, follow Crazed Rabbit’s pattern and make it? Or, like so many others, would he falter and ultimately be overcome by the awesome power that is the town?

Early in the night phase, Curio made his preparations and strongly went after Kagemusha and discovery1, both of whom took offense and started looking at Curio more closely. Curio, meanwhile, backed his accusation up in the kills when he made it absolutely clear (by now, he was beginning to write more) that there were two mafiosi left. Knowing my history, I personally thought Curio was a liiiiittle bit overconfident/cocky, but watched to see it play out.

Curio, of course, explained the kills perfectly and once again nobody really got on him for it. Interesting, really, that the one person who takes anything from the kill posts that doesn’t get suspected is the real mafioso! He and Kage started going after each other like two boxers, with most of the dead (barring TinCow, who suspected Curio for activity) backing Curio.

At the close of the phase, Kage got a temporary respite and voting shifted from him to KukriKhan, who for most of the game had been a helpful, if off-target townie. With four minutes to go in voting, Kukri, partially in an effort to save himself and partially convinced by reasoning, switched his vote from Kage to Curio, sealing the death of one mafioso. Once again, lightning had struck. The mafia had been dealt a blow and now the game, with khaan still absent, seemed to be in fate’s hands.

Executed: Gaius Scribonius Curio

Round 9

Khaan “kills” KukriKhan and Ichigo

My PM to Curio at the start of the night phase:

This next day phase is going to be an absolute farce. What it's going to come down to is whether or not khaan shows up and votes. I don't think a game has even ended by WoG before.

The bad news: Unfortunately, you are lynched and now pretty much have to rely on fate that khaan will show up to save the day. You also have to send in both of his kills and they will both be made by a man with a broken nose. I suggest that you mask that somehow.

The good news: Finally, precedence falls in your favor! As I have done in the past, I will extend the next day phase to 48 hours, so khaan will have more time to show up.

No matter how things turn out, you've essentially operated without a wingman for the second half of the game and survived this long, an enormous feat you should be proud of. Congratulations on that... and cross your fingers.

GH

Yes, khaan would have been Wogged had he not shown up. Sarathos too, leaving the possibility that the game might have ended with Disco as the only survivor! I can’t imagine how I would have written that one.

Curio chose Kukri and Ichigo partially because he wanted a bunch of lurkers left in the game and because he didn’t think khaan would be back (at the time, I didn’t know he had been on vacation and that his absence had something to do with the flooding) in time, so he wanted to get his revenge on Kukri. In retrospect, this was a big mistake. At the time, however, there was no way of knowing. I’ll discuss this more in my “game end” section.

Anyway, I posted the kills in the summary thread at 22:16, my time. At 22:19, I received the following PM:

GH, I'm terribly sorry about my disappearance. I was offered a last second opportunity to go on vacation with a buddy of mine in the northeast. I expected to have internet available, but to my surprise, I had none. I have had no access for the last week or so. I'll get back in the thread soon.j

Tonight, I'll kill Disco and Sarathos.

Khaan was back, he was ready, and most notably, he gave me radically different kills. He missed the deadline by three minutes! Had he PM’d me before I put the kills up, I would have given his kills priority.

I’ll always wonder how much difference those three minutes made. Had he killed Disco and Sarathos, it would have left khaan, Ichigo, Kage (target #1), and Kukri (also pretty suspicious). Instead, he was stuck with Kage, Disco, and Sarathos, with him as one of the two major suspects. He was coming home from a vacation. Three minutes... that’s one rest stop. One bathroom break. A couple of traffic lights. One “Wait, don’t start the car yet, I forgot to pack this!” It made all the difference in the world.

At least khaan had avoided the WoG, however. Now all he needed to worry about was keeping Disco and Sarathos focused on Kage, who by this point was defending himself like crazy.

Over the past two rounds, I was imagining potential crazy endgame scenarios, grinning wildly at the thought of them and the fact that they were, in fact, plausible. Kage could be lynched but khaan fails to show up, getting Wogged. Khaan shows up in the 11th hour and puts the clinching vote on Kage, thus getting his revenge and forever destroying the Curse. Kage gets lynched Round 8, with Curio getting the lynch Round 9 and khaan getting the WoG, thus marking the first time two mafiosi ever died in one day phase and pretty much affirming the Curse for all eternity (how else do you explain two mafiosi dying right after the guy gets lynched?). But I was never imagining what really happened.

As expected, khaan reacquainted himself with the game and went after Kagemusha, who proceeded to give himself probably the greatest defense in the history of mafia games. With khaan gunning for him and just about every single dead person screaming for his blood, Kage hammered three points over and over:

• As a mafioso, he would have a partner, and there was absolutely no clear-cut partner.
• khaan, on the other hand, had a clear connection to the lynched TinCow (wrong partner, right idea).
• If he were a mafioso, why would he make himself the only clear-cut lynch choice?

The third point was probably the most effective, WIFOM or not, which is why my confidence in WIFOM has all but evaporated. Some things are just common sense. It’s the final round, there are a bunch of lurkers alive... and you kill off the second-most suspicious guy (Kukri) and isolate yourself? When you can just tell everybody else to vote for the other suspicious guy instead? Please. There definitely needs to be a line drawn between WIFOM and common sense.

Amazingly, Kage convinced the two people that mattered. First Sarathos, then Disco, believed him and cast their votes for khaan. I closed the final phase, shaking my head in amazement. I’m sure the mafia were doing the same. Khaan was lynched with a ton of the dead screaming that Kage had played them all.

Executed: makaikhaan

Game end

Earlier on, khaan PM’d me saying, assuming Kage was the lynch, that Sarathos was to be killed in a 24-hour diner and Disco was to be run over by a bandwagon. A little hasty there, khaan? Lacking inspiration for the final scene, I decided to go with the diner approach but (obviously) change the result.

Curio definitely established himself as a very good player in this game with his commendable effort. He had to carry the weight for part of the midgame and most of the endgame and almost made it. There were a lot of moments he shined, in messing with the calling cards and his lynch choices, but there's a bit that needs to be polished up, especially in reaction to the kill posts. From my (obviously biased and informed) standpoint, those were the obvious parts that screamed "MAFIOSO!!!" to me. Look for him to become a very formidable player in the future. khaan, of course, turned in another exemplary effort and it was only due to Kage's amazing defense that he failed.

With yet another mafia collapse in the final two rounds, it’s time to reflect on what caused it this time. As my “console the losers” commercial noted, previous defeats have been caused by surprise reveals, chokes, turnarounds in town strategy, and Holmes. However, none of these really applied here. For a little while it seemed like process of elimination would destroy khaan and Curio, with both of them on the “watch” list, but both, khaan especially, fell off for a while. Curio got lynched, yes, but that was more due to luck than anything. I think the game was really lost when Curio made the decision to kill KukriKhan and Ichigo, most notably Kukri.

Things brings me to the lesson learned from Mafia VIII: Play to win, not to cover your butt. Both sides were guilty of this, I think. In Curio’s final kills, he had pretty much given up hope that khaan was coming back and acted as such, getting revenge on Kukri and putting khaan in a very bad position when he eventually did reappear. Had he operated under the hope that Kage was coming back, I think he would have killed Disco and Sarathos, leaving khaan in a better position. Heck, there might have even been a tie between Kage and Kukri in the final round, forcing me to further extend the round, giving khaan even more time to get back. The town, for too much of the game, was simply lynching people because they were on the “next to go” list – the sign of a lazy town. Case in point TinCow and FactionHeir, who really didn’t do anything to warrant suspicion in the later rounds and were lynched just because. This is the same reason why many of the dead people were gunning for Kage in the final round. They wanted him gone just because if he had stayed alive, it would have been a travesty and he would have skunked them all. They were so focused on making sure they didn’t badly lose (if they had lost to khaan, I don’t think it would have been a bad loss for them so much as a “good win” for him) that they didn’t analyze everything. In the endgame, you can’t afford to have narrow vision.

Now that Mafia VIII is over, it makes me wonder where it will rank among my other games. III, V, and VI, are the giants, of course, and VIII is most similar to them. VII had the most posts, but I didn’t like hosting that as much. I had to do too much enforcement/peacekeeper work in that one and the final rounds were pretty much a farce after Crazed Rabbit pulled “The Truth.” IV was promising, but far too short. I was special, but that’s all it’ll be, really. And II was a pretty mediocre game until Tiberius’s reveal saved that one. So where to put VIII, I don’t know. I’d like to lump it in with the great ones, but there’s still a lot of inactivity. I think we’ll have to reserve judgment until some time has passed and how fondly I look back on this game.

That said, I’d like to congratulate everyone that participated, with special kudos to our gallant mafiosi Gaius Scribonius Curio and makaikhaan, and of course Kagemusha, the man that credit for this town victory goes to! Congrats guys, and see you in Mafia IX!

[seireikhaan]

*sighs* Dang, that is one REALLY depressing summary.

Khaan started the round off by going after Sasaki with the most links I’ve ever seen in one post, including OverKnight’s “History of KotR” thread:

Oh well, at least I set one record.

[GeneralHankerchief]

*sighs* Dang, that is one REALLY depressing summary.

I feel tempted to make a "Three Minutes" commercial now.

[seireikhaan]

I feel tempted to make a "Three Minutes" commercial now.

Oh go ahead, I'm sure it'll make everyone else here laugh...

[GeneralHankerchief]

Oh go ahead, I'm sure it'll make everyone else here laugh...

Hey, don't be depressed, man. You guys did an awesome job. Think of it as being on par with Kommodus, Seamus, and Andres. That's pretty good company.

[seireikhaan]

Hey, don't be depressed, man. You guys did an awesome job. Think of it as being on par with Kommodus, Seamus, and Andres. That's pretty good company.

Even still, so close... so freakin' close... 3 minutes...
EDIT: plus, we didn't end up having to deal with a detective.

[Gaius Scribonius Curio]

Great and (as Khann mentioned) depressing write-up GH!

I'd just mention a few things as clarification of my actions. Most importantly:

Curio kept his activity up, which among other things might have ruined him.

It may be pretty anal, but if I sign-up for something then I'm going to contribute. It's just my nature to post at least once per phase unless RL gets in the way (like it did this weekend, some muppet headbutted me on the nose, I think it's broken... ironic much?). Plus by my logic to change my style and frequency because I'm coming under suspicion would exacerbate the situation. Then again that's probably down to my inexperiance.

Interestingly enough, Curio PM’d me later to compliment me on CA’s death saying it’s what he would have done. I wondered if, because of it, suspicion would have fallen on Curio, but none ever did.

I wouldn't have had the imagination to come up with something like that but I enjoyed reading it and thought it a fitting way to end CA's life. I also wondered if anybody would pick up on it, but apparently not...

Knowing my history, I personally thought Curio was a liiiiittle bit overconfident/cocky, but watched to see it play out.

I now agree, just a touch overconfident. The irony is that the 'research' I did into Kage and Disco was similar in nature to that which I did in Taormina. In other words, were I a townie I still probably would have accused them in a similar way (just because I've spent time researching and analysing doesn't mean that I'm necessarily right does it PK?). I'd finished my exams and had the time and the inclination to up my contribution. It wasn't down to me sensing blood as it were...

Curio chose Kukri and Ichigo partially because he wanted a bunch of lurkers left in the game and because he didn’t think khaan would be back.

I chose Ichigo because he always seems to vote for Khann regardless of whether he is seemingly innocent or not. I chose Kukri because of my idea for the write-up and I didn't expect Khann to be back. In retrospect this was a horrible idea. I did consider knocking off Disco instead (honestly I'd actually typed out a PM to GH saying that I wanted to change my kill from Kukri!), but didn't go through with it... I'm an idiot with delusions of grandeur.

Khaan was lynched with a ton of the dead screaming that Kage had played them all.

And I laughed... It was heartbreaking to come so close, but at the same time it was absolutely hilarious that almost everybody who couldn't vote and was active would have voted for Kage (according to their posts anyway).

Curio definitely established himself as a very good player in this game with his commendable effort.

Thank you but I still have a lot to learn.

Once again I'd like to congratulate the town, particularly:

Kagemusha: who won it for them.
PK: for providing the analysis that led to my downfall.
And..
Kukrikhan: for casting the deciding vote and lynching me, even though you immediately regretted it.

And thanks to GH for a great and very enjoyable game.

[seireikhaan]

Oh, and one thing I should mention to be fair: this game has gotten me absolutely psyched to host my next mafia game. I think I'm off to work more on it.

[woad&fangs]

The writeup was very enlightening. I feel rather embarrased knowing that GSC was frequently referring to the writeups considering that was one of my main reasons for going after FH and Seamus.

I once more must congratulate makaikhaan and Gaius Scribonius Curio on a game well played.

I personally agree with your descision to remove the detective in your games for exactly the reasons you mentioned. I'm very curious to see how that will shake things up in Mafia IX.

Thank you for hosting GH

I'd like to announce that I'm taking a short break from large mafia games. I still might play a few small games which are less intense and have lower stakes. I plan to return for Midgard Saga II.

[Andres]

Even still, so close... so freakin' close... 3 minutes...

Don't be too hard on yourself.

In the last round of Mafia VI, Stig and I were the two main suspects and I got lynched with 3 votes from Kommodus, CR and Stig against 2 from Kage and me for Stig.

After the game, Stig said that if I would have voted for Kommodus, he would also have changed his vote to Kommo. Kage was suspicious about Kommo in that game as well, so a vote change to Kommo and some arguments (I had been constantly questioning 'holmes' throughout the whole game) probably would have resulted in the lynch of Kommo or a tie between Kommo and me...

Alas, I was at my parents that day and didn't manage to return in time to change my vote to Kommo...

All of this happened in the old days, when the reputation of CR and "The Truth" was still intact...

Thnx for hosting GeneralHankerchief And sorry for my (post-mortem) inactiveness.

[TinCow]

The third point was probably the most effective, WIFOM or not, which is why my confidence in WIFOM has all but evaporated. Some things are just common sense. It’s the final round, there are a bunch of lurkers alive... and you kill off the second-most suspicious guy (Kukri) and isolate yourself? When you can just tell everybody else to vote for the other suspicious guy instead? Please. There definitely needs to be a line drawn between WIFOM and common sense.

I agree, but common sense is a matter of perspective. In Taormina I killed off peverpink at a time when he was on a very short list of potential serial killer victims, along with myself. That made it far more likely that I would be killed by the serial killer. However, from my perspective it made sense because peverpink was the only person I knew for certain was an innocent townie and I needed to kill a townie to 'upgrade' my abilities. At the same time, the serial killer seemed to be pro-town, and people thought I had been cleared of suspicion at that point, so I gambled that he would let me live a while longer. From an outside view, my move was just as insane as khaan's (well, Curio's), but from my perspective it was the most logical next step from my situation.

I do agree about the uselessness of WIFOM, though. I've said that before and it seems to just get stronger each game. Occam's razor generally (though not always) defeats WIFOM.

[FactionHeir]

Let's see who is the next mafia to each time kill those other main suspects and leave him instead.
"Hey, they are just trying to frame me every turn, not my fault!"

[KukriKhan]

On dropping the Detective role: I agree it's an unnecessary crutch in 'classic' Mafia games. The town will do all the investigating necessary in the public thread, making it more interesting and engaging for the town.

O'course, in the more elaborate role-heavy games, town will need a detective to counter the strength of multiple mafia families, serial killers, and any other ne'er-do-wells.

I was fascinated by the 'game within a game' puzzle concept. But “Sans investigateur” was too long a phrase to stretch out over several day/night cycles for me, and I lost interest after SANSNIV was revealed, deciding (er, gambling) that the clue - whatever it was - would not be a make-or-break factor in the game. Afterall, our job was to find and kill mafia, period. Being "without NIV" seemed increasingly irrelevant to that task. That said, if I ever host a game, I think I'll use some similar device, to keep the townies entertained during the long night phases, when they have basically nothing to do but wait to be killed/see who gets killed.