A lot of you know me from most recently as one of the two guys that filled in hosting for Capo IV last year. In case it wasn’t clear back then, I didn’t enjoy anything about that experience. issaikhaan and I were basically learning things on the fly, we could see that the game was terribly unbalanced, and since it wasn’t ours we didn’t feel like we had the authority necessary to take steps to change this.
As you might imagine, it burned me out. I played even fewer games than I normally do afterward. I didn’t do much hosting, either, running an entirely forgettable vanilla game this past February that was already on the queue when I got called in for Capo duty that I felt obligated to play out. Eventually I stepped down as Gameroom moderator after three years. I just didn’t have it in me anymore.
Looking back, the separation was what I needed. Time passed. I graduated from university this past summer, and was a bit more lackadaisical than I should have been looking for a job the first couple of months. Not having anything on my plate at all, my mind got bored. In late July, I got bit by the hosting bug again for the first time in a long while. I started reminiscing again.
What I wanted to accomplish more than anything, I think, was to exorcise the personal demons still left over from Capo. If this sounds a little melodramatic, well, I’ll grant you that but it’s also how I felt. I wanted to run a game *right*, one that was mine and that I wasn’t afraid to take total ownership of. I reread the first Pirate Ship Mafia game. The one thing that stuck out to me in the postgame for that was how many people described that as “fun”. That above all else was the quality that Capo had lacked, at least for me.
I knew what I was going to host.
My main question going into the development process for Pirate Ship II was how could I recapture that same crazy, anything-goes element from the first game and others like it, while still keeping it well-balanced and not have the potential to become a chore for the players and myself? In other words, how could this game fulfill the promise of Capo without falling into its traps?
Two solutions presented themselves. The first of these, which I entertained for a couple of days, was to scrap the idea of making a mafia faction at all. There’s simply X amount of players on the ship, here’s the ways they can get gold, and it’s a free-for-all. The game would end by mutual agreement once a certain point had been reached. This sounded interesting to me and I wouldn’t mind implementing a game like this at some point down the line, but for now it was just a little too radical. I eventually dropped this idea and went towards a more traditional setup.
The other solution, the one which won out, was the idea of me putting in checks and balances for absolutely everything that would come up. For every mechanic that I would insert, I automatically assumed it had the potential to be abused and worked to ensure that it would have some sort of counter. Going into the game, I was quite confident that I had accounted for everything, and even though this didn’t quite work out entirely, I still believe I was ultimately successful at this.
There were two things I was looking to adjust in particular for this game: First, I wanted the townies to focus more on the acquisition of treasure. There was some limited focus of this going on in the first game, but mostly, everybody just kept their head down and did their standard night actions. Second, I wanted the Captain’s security to be much more in jeopardy. In the first game, Captain Crazed Rabbit was never really challenged over the course of nine days and nights, and pretty much cruised to first place.
For the first issue, I dealt with it in two ways. More simply, I made the acquisition of gold a victory condition equal to that of town survival. For example, if you died, you weren’t put at any disadvantage minus the 50 gold you lost as a result of your death (ATPG, for example, died but finished up with more gold than some living players). This, I think, worked moderately well but it still didn’t stop the town from still buckling down and focusing on killing the Spanish, where I wanted there to be more distractions. The more complex way I dealt with this was the addition of the stealing/protecting mechanic.
I’ll admit that I was probably too excited about thinking it all the way through.
This is going to be awesome, I thought,
there’s going to be so much treachery and backstabbing going on, and everybody who’s caught stealing is probably going to be lynchbait. Whoops. Turns out that stealing, while profitable, also served as a spectacular alibi (even though Jolt, a Spaniard, actually stole once or twice), and getting caught stealing was what ultimately brought TinCow into Zack’s confidence. I’ve got a couple ideas for the sequel already, but I’m definitely going to keep this mechanic in and most likely address it so that it’s much harder to be used as an alibi.
The second issue, the one of the Captain’s security, I addressed with a battery of mechanics. In the first game, the Captain could only be removed two ways: a mutiny that would yield pretty meager rewards for the mutineers involved, and via coup with both of the officers on board. In addition, I even put a specific anti-mutineer role in that was a triggered killer. Naturally, CR never came close to being threatened.
The very first thing I did was to increase the benefits of a mutiny. Where before it was simply a lump sum of gold that was given out to the mutineers, now I tied it directly to the Captain’s supply. As the game continued, the Captain’s treasure count would become increasingly higher and the amount of people needed for a successful mutiny would become much lower, meaning that the rewards for a successful mutiny would increase almost exponentially by the endgame. The longer the game dragged on, the more precarious Zack’s position would become. For example, if the game were to continue into D7, 10 votes were needed for a mutiny. Zaccino had 260 gold, meaning that each mutineer would receive a whopping 26 treasure for their efforts. If there would be no mutiny the next round, assuming a couple of casualties and Zack’s daily salary, I estimate that each mutineer would have gotten around 32 gold, simply for being greedy and getting rid of their Captain. And so on.
This went hand-in-hand with placing a greater emphasis on the acquisition of treasure, which I have already discussed. Ideally the escalating mutiny bonus combined with individual greed would have served to remove the Captain at some point, but obviously this didn’t quite work out. Again, something I’ll have to look at for the next game.
The third thing I did to address the issue of the Captain’s security was to beef up the Frenchman role and turn it into a mini-faction. In the first game, there were three roles: The anti-Captain Frenchman, the independent Woman who would automatically ally with the Frenchman if they went up at night, and the very pro-Captain Fanatical Loyalist. In the first game, the Woman role sided with the town from the very beginning of the game and didn’t meet up with the Frenchman until literally the very last night. Here, the Woman was upgraded into the Frenchman’s Consort with some added solo powers plus a really neat combined power where she and the Frenchman could blast through protection. Additionally, the Fanatical Loyalist was scrapped and turned into the Drunken Pirate, a more neutral role. Finally, I added an alternate route for the Frenchman’s faction to acquire the Captaincy, one where they could bribe the Captain 400 treasure if they ever got to that amount and the Captain would automatically step down. All in all I felt these changes would allow the Frenchman to truly hold his own in the game as opposed to desperately allying with anyone and everyone just to stay above water.
Delving deeper into things, I identify a couple of key points in the game that rendered my tweaks null and void and essentially turned it into a repeat of Pirate Ship Mafia I. These are, in order, the death of Arjos on N2, the public reveal that TinCow and issaikhaan were caught stealing treasure on N3, and Zaccino’s and BSmith’s actions on N4.
The first action was the N2 death of the Consort, Arjos, via First Mate Choxorn. Despite the fact that Arjos was protecting on N1 when he had been investigated, Zack still received a private tip that Arjos was Spanish and ordered the hit. Just like that, the Frenchman’s advantages were shot and he was reduced to being what he was in the first game. This came down to nothing but simple bad luck.
The second action was the N3 treasure stealing incident. Since I didn’t work into the mechanics that the Guardacosta could complete multiple actions in one night (and since I was under the assumption that people caught stealing would be marked for death, via either lynch or vigs), people figured out pretty quickly that stealing was actually an excellent alibi. Despite the fact that he was attempting to steal from the Captain himself, TinCow quickly got inducted into Zack’s inner circle. With his knowledge of the mechanics from the first game (he and I exchanged more PMs than anyone else over the course of the first game and I referred to these discussions extensively when balancing this one) plus his steady personality, TC became a huge ally to the officers, as they could now trust each other. This one is on me and I will have to rectify it for the future.
The third and final action was Zaccino’s and BSmith’s play on N4, which was absolutely brilliant. At that point, there were four separate threats to the Captaincy: the Musketeer group and their allies looking to increase their treasure counts by causing mutiny, the Guardacosta, looking to fulfill their victory conditions, Visorslash, looking to cause a coup, and TinCow’s group, who were uneasy about the fact that Askthepizzaguy had become Quartermaster and were planning to mutiny for the good of the town. BSmith in particular had a decision to make: whether to side with loyalty or to chase the gold and endorse the coup. He chose loyalty. By the end of the night, the Musketeers had been neutralized with the death of ATPG, Visorslash’s coup attempt had failed and he was rendered useless, and TinCow’s group had allied with Zack once they realized the Captain was, in fact, pro-town, leaving only the Guardacosta as the threat. This one can be chalked up to excellent play on the officers’ parts. Furthermore, I was happy about the very existence of the Musketeer group, as it meant that at least a couple players out there were focused on the gold equally as much as they were the town victory.
What does this all mean? Well, for the most part, it means that I was successful in the game and most of the reasons why it went the way it did weren’t my fault.
For the third game, the Frenchman is going to be out in the open, as teased in the epilogue here. In addition, I’m going to look at the stealing mechanic and see how to improve that, as well as add a couple of other things for the sake of fun. But it seems that most of the issues from the first game – too strong networks, not enough chance at a mutiny – have been more or less corrected.
In the larger sense, this game accomplished a personal goal for me in that I had fun hosting a game again, which is the first time this has happened in over a year. Considering the main rule of the Gameroom is, in fact, to have fun, I’m therefore glad to call Pirate Ship Mafia II an overall success. Hopefully, using this rule, you can say the same.
I don’t know when I’ll get around to hosting the third game, but when that time comes…
… the sky is clear, the decks freshly swabbed, and the ship afitted with new sails. Treasure awaits, laddies, and the
Presence may just be ready for another voyage. I hope you'll all join me aboard when the time comes.
~ General Hankerchief
Re: Pirate Ship Mafia II [Concluded]
Originally Posted by GeneralHankerchief
… the sky is clear, the decks freshly swabbed, and the ship afitted with new sails. Treasure awaits, laddies, and the Presence may just be ready for another voyage. I hope you'll all join me aboard when the time comes.
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