The Inquisition [Concluded]

[Nightbringer]

Good game all!

[Ituralde]

I'm glad the simple scenario won out! Quite a stroke of luck, good advice by town, for Montmorency to get three guilty results in a row. Turns out the town was actually too good for it's own sake and hindered itself a bit. We could have won sooner, but the way it stood in between, I'm glad it turned out so well for the town!

Great game!

[Askthepizzaguy]

Haha, I asked him point blank what he thought of Sooh (around the time edse was lynched IIRC) and he was noncommittal. Dear god did the foursome of me-Pizza-Monty-Myrd not trust each other.

I didn't trust Monty because his data kept not making a whole lot of sense from an honesty and completeness perspective.

This was before I knew he was third party. Frankly I'd have lynched Monty if he hadn't kept coming up with guilty results and I didn't know he had a third party claim, because he was remarkably bad at conveying the whole truth this game.

Once he gave all the necessary information I asked for and I knew he was third party, I made a commitment to keeping him alive and risking his winning the game in a surprise upset, because he would prove a threat to the mafia if he was being honest (enough) about his role, and if he was alive in endgame someone would have lynched him in my place.

I trusted Myrd for most of the game.

I think it was during the Visor chat that I decided Sooh was scum. Visor and I, when we're both townies, tend to wreck games with our combined thinking. He has missing pieces of the puzzle inside his brain and vice-versa.

I think the universe forces us to be on opposing sides more often than not to keep it sporting for the rest of you little peoples. :P

[GeneralHankerchief]

Also, if the game was still ongoing, I was fully prepared to go scorched-earth on the people who would vote me. I put way too much thought and effort into this to be lynched endgame because a dead, fishy, claimed scanner thought that I might be guilty.

[Myrddraal]

I'd like to know: did the Mafia suspect Kage was a power role, or was it luck? If you did suspect, what tipped you off?

[Montmorency]

And of course: QT?

[Golden1Knight]

Had a lot of fun, thank you guys.

[Sooh]

I'd like to know: did the Mafia suspect Kage was a power role, or was it luck? If you did suspect, what tipped you off?

I really didn't know he was the PR when we killed him. I did not lie about that in the thread. It's possible that the others knew, but they didn't tell me. (Perhaps I should have known...)

[El Barto]

Ah-ha! The towniest of townies has scored yet another crushing victory over the forces of Mafia!

[GeneralHankerchief]

For what it's worth, you and Ituralde were the two people I was most confident were town at the end.

[Zack]

I played in this game, technically.

[johnhughthom]

Thanks for the game, khaan. Nice set up and great write ups.

My role in the win was, of course, crucial.

Good job town.

[autolycus]

I'm sorry I missed the denouement of this game. I was moving over Thanksgiving and thought I'd be without internet for three days, not the week it turned out to be.

[El Barto]

What mythology is this based upon?

Thanks for the game, khaan. Nice set up and great write ups.

My role in the win was, of course, crucial.

Good job town.

Well, you did show up and vote for Sooh. Also, I was right about her being scum, even if it was based on 100% faulty logic.

[Ituralde]

I have to admit that Sooh had me fooled the first time the suspicion fell on her. I couldn't detect a difference in her playstile here and in the recent Pirate ship game.
But after the second protection with her failed and she didn't know the exact reason...

So was the protection breaking the secondary power of the Mafia all the time? Was it every second night or did it only work, when the Mafia was included into the protection group by other people?
I need more details. The game is over and I'm stil in the dark, it was bad enough during the game, but now curious minds have to know!

[edse]

To pierce protection all mafia needed to attack. dcmort wasn't participating in the kill of Kage so it would have failed if there had been a proper protection. We couldn't do group orders (but we would still show up) if we did mafia orders so Sooh's protection group failed and therefore Kage was killed. After dcmort was killed, the two of us could pierce protection (only one layer I assume, but that was enough).

[seireikhaan]

What mythology is this based upon?

Nothing specific. Just an amalgamation of ideas from different mythos. The names were made by combining different parts of names in Persian.

Also, I'll have a commentary up in a few hours later tonight. Had a version mostly done but lost it because I'm an idiot.

[seireikhaan]

So the belated commentary I’d meant to do, did, and now have to re-write because I’m an idiot and let an upgrade to win10 somehow eat the previous document. Anyways, the main priority to this will be explaining the role setup and the thought processes behind the setup. That’s what I’ll touch on first, because I think it’ll make more sense to establish why I did things the way I did before going into the roles.

So the main idea behind the game was to explore a setup where the average townie had power and authority at night, but tried to avoid the pitfall of negating the basic structure of mafia. The basic idea behind mafia at its original core was an informed minority(the mafia) against an uninformed majority(the town). The basic pitfall I’ve noticed over time with games where everyone has some form of night power is what’s been called ‘spreadsheeting’ the game, or consolidating information via a network to eventually force mafia into lose-lose scenarios. That said, I also noticed people often seemed to enjoy these games, and I can see why; it’s fun to be able to do more things. It’s not as fun to feel like you got “left out” in the lotto for roles, so townies with basic power *feel* more empowered. But as a host, I wanted to scrape out the ‘information’ powers that come with night group actions. I wanted a game with groups and night actions that kept to the original core of mafia and would hopefully enable mafia to play to their original, supposed strengths.

So how did I do that? The first step was limiting who people could work together with. The idea here was that people could be and feel empowered early and in the mid-game, and could use the power of protection and vigs as an additional blunt instrument in addition to the lynch. Again, I wanted this to a blunt instrument- risks should be entailed, much like the risk of potentially lynching innocents during the day. The idea was that as the game would go on, the town would be forced to rely less on night actions as they gathered data through people’s behavior; early game, when information is scarce, actions are plentiful, and late game, when information has been acquired, care should be taken.

The second step was inserting a Mafioso into each cult, and making sure to announce it in the game description. This meant that, if people wished to try and establish large networks within their cults to coordinate, it would become likely that the mafia would become aware of it. The primary reasons I announced it was for a) clarity the town, and b) to discourage large, nebulous networks in the first place. I wanted the town to get craftier, try to operate more as “cell groups” as opposed to just large blobs. Personally I thought the idea was sound, to make night actions more difficult and to require some amount of potential sacrifice, but if you’ve got thoughts, let’em rip.

So the last part of this ‘knowledge is power’ theme I was trying to run with was the creation of Monty’s role. It was, I admit, highly experimental. The idea was that he, as a solo player, is the ultimate ‘minority’ and thus, by the logic of basic mafia, should thus be the most informed. He had alignment scan, including cult, he got information on their night actions, and people he investigated wouldn’t count towards a kill against him that night. I crammed a *lot* of power, but in retrospect, the results on night actions maybe wasn’t the right power the role needed….. Not sure. Anyways, so the thing I was really testing here was just what someone could do with a *ton* of information, but no ‘hard’ ability to enforce their win condition. In this case, that means Monty was a solo player with no kill ability – he couldn’t force his own win con. The idea in my head was to make the role try and dance between the mafia and town, hitching onto the mafia like a parasite, if you will, and offing them late. Unfortunately, that’s not really how it ended up playing out, but I’m unsure of what happened behind the scenes exactly that kept it from happening. Either way, I don’t regret the attempt- it certainly *did* show the risk and power of someone with true-scan powers. :/

So as a last thing, I’ll now just run off the roles and what all they entailed.

Kagemusha- Jahandour, Royal Inquisitor. Kage was basically a more powerful townsperson. He had no cult alignment(loyal only to the emperor), and could kill or protect with the power of two people at the start of the game. This meant he could protect with one other person, or vig with two other people. Lastly, he gained power for successful actions. This was to reward him for managing to stay alive in a game that was generally going to be hostile for him- the mafia were quite well embedded into the town, and he had to be both lucky and good to get himself promoted to maximum power. After he got successful protections or vig kills, he would then count as an additional person in these attempts- so after one successful protection, he could protect solo, and after two successful vig kills, he could vig solo. It was a lot of potential power if he could survive for a while, but even then, he had his limits- mostly related to the mafia having an ability to bypass protections, making it impossible to defend kagemusha for long once it came out he was ‘special’. That’s fine- he was supposed to be an additional weapon for the town, not something to auto-win. I think the role went about as I would have expected- Kage got a couple nice protections early and set the mafia’s progress back a bit before suspicion of his role finally did him in.


Sooh, Edse, Dcmort- Shahnak, Armouz, and Firnaz, respectively(Mafia). So the mafia’s kill power basically went like this at the start- they could kill solo, at 50% success rate(this accounts for a failure or two early), kill as two, with a 100% success rate, or send everyone and have a 100% success rate with the ability to bypass *all* protections, including Montomorency’s defense mechanism. This concept held for the mafia at all numerical points- with two Mafioso alive, both being sent would bypass protection, and a solo mafia could never be stopped. The reason I put this in was to give the mafia an advantage to their information, as well as give them the ability to deal with Kagemusha if he snowballed and got really powerful. Oh, and one other reason- I wanted the town to realize at a point that protections were not going to be enough – if they wanted to use their brute force from night actions, the would need to step up, take risks, and make a vig kill.

The other issue I want to touch on the mafia was the “shadow clone” issue, as…. Someone put it at some point, don’t remember who. The “additional thing” I gave the mafia as per the game description was that they could perform any night actions with their cult groups. If they didn’t partake in a mafia night kill, the action would stand. If they *did*, they would still partake in the group action, but be completely ineffective. This was another way to try and combat spread-sheeting, but wouldn’t totally eliminate information gathering. The town would be able to see that an action failed, and if a mafia was caught in a failed action, that could still catch up to them- this happened to a point with Suh, who ‘failed’ multiple night actions that she participated in. I don’t know if this was enough- perhaps a more creative option will be thought of at some point, but I didn’t want to give the mafia flat out two full, completed actions each, as I thought that might be too strong

Oh, and a last thing that didn’t end up mattering- a mechanic I’ve done multiple times was used again- if the mafia wanted to, they *could* have backstabbed each other at a moment’s notice for a solo victory condition. This ends up not mattering any time I do it because the mafia haven’t made it to end game, but I still like it conceptually, and it fit this game thematically.


Montmorency – Ardashad, god of secrets. I won’t go too much in depth here because I already mentioned most of the core issues earlier. Each night, Monty could investigate one person and get an alignment scan, plus their night action that night, the night before, and a promise of a result the following night on their action then. His goal, as mentioned, was to solo survive while not actually killing anyone. The basic idea behind the role was an ‘information lord’, and it’s an archetype I’ve been wanting to try for a while. I think the core idea is actually fine, but I don’t think this was the right game, actually, to test it. I think this kind of role requires a game of more nuance. Basically, I don’t think the night actions were enough for this game, but perhaps in a game where there were more factions, or people who are flat out unaligned(ala something like capo), that would be more impactful. Still, I’m glad I tried it, even if it didn’t quite go the way I envisioned.

Yeah, so that’s about it. Thanks to everyone for playing, and if you read this for some bizarre reason and have critiques or thoughts, by all means, fire away. See you all next time!

[Visor]

Is there a mafia qt khaan?

[seireikhaan]

Is there a mafia qt khaan?

Yes, but strictly speaking, that's theirs to share, not me. It's up to them whether they want to share it.

[Askthepizzaguy]

I pretty much always read hosts' postgame commentary. Thanks for all the thought you put into this, Khaan.

I'm also pretty much always lost by your creative and unpredictable mythologies you create. I tried to guess where you put all the scums and I tried to guess the game setup and I was wrong. You keep me on my toes.

Without Monty's role in the game, I would have been off-track a lot. It's the only thing which kept me from the true suckage I pretty much always display in every Khaan game, bar none.

I wish I could say I'm getting better, but truth is, I just got luckier. And had some good townies to work with.

[GeneralHankerchief]

I think the main issue with true third party roles like Monty's is that they very often end up determining the course of the game, and not in the way the host intends. If their primary win condition is solo, then you pretty much by default have a conflict of interest: Their victory condition dictates they must win alone, but in pretty much any game that's not basic vanilla, you need allies to do well. Here, Monty sought allies among the town - a far more common choice than the mafia for a number of reasons - and did work with them in a legitimate capacity. What happened? He was accurate with his results, both as a nexus point for other townies who wanted confirmation about their suspicions (dcmort and Sooh scans), and on his own initiative (edse).

Because of this, Monty was halfway successful in that he removed one obstacle on the path to victory: the mafia. The problem was the other half. This is where I think Monty not really being able to do anything to hard-enforce his VC came back to hurt. Sure, he could have played it a little better. Maybe faking a guilty result on a random target would have given more credence to the spoof theory and bought him some more time. But I think any story would have fallen apart in the end. Game mechanics dictated that the likeliest placement of scum was always going to be one in each group.

(I'm starting to ramble, indulge me.)

From my experience, there are a few basic ways to play the true third party role:

1. Brute force. Make little to no connections, act like a regular townie to everybody, do your actions at night and hope you're the last person standing. Generally not very effective.

2. Deception. Tell your faction of choice that you're aligned with them. Probably easier to pull off with town as the mafia are inherently suspicious about this sort of thing, especially if adding an extra weapon doesn't make sense from a balance perspective. Still need a damn good endgame to prevent your story from falling apart at the close though. Best (only?) example of this is TinCow's metagame-breaking turn as Hades in Netherworld I, and he had more "hard power" abilities. I think this is the route Monty wanted to take.

3. Play both sides. This one's dependent on a lot of factors. Your own abilities, a good read of how the game is progressing, etc. If you don't make the exact right moves at the exact right times, then you upset the balance you're so desperately trying to keep, possibly irreversibly.

To sum up, it's far more likely that the third party role ends up working with the town than the mafia. Because of this, the mafia are more likely to suffer, and there needs to be compensation for this in place from a balance perspective. This usually comes in the form of kills or a cult recruitment mechanic. At the end of the day you had a really interesting idea, but I think you came to the conclusion yourself that this compensation wasn't really present this time.

Once again, thanks for the game, I had a lot of fun.

[Askthepizzaguy]

I always factor things like non-neutral third parties (serial killers, cults, opposing mafia), anyone who cannot win with the mafia, as counting against the mafia's strength.

Only neutrals with no killing power really add to the mafia's strength. Every other kind of role is dangerous to the mafiosi. Unless I'm overlooking something.

If they are not town-aligned, I consider them to be even more dangerous to the mafia than, say, a town vigilante, if they can kill.

The reason being, a town vigilante doesn't want to shoot someone who they believe is a townie. So if a mafioso is capable of pulling off a deception worthy of fooling the town into thinking they're clear, the town vigilante may even leave them alone.

Not so with a serial killer type. You fool everyone into thinking you're town, and the SK will shoot you anyway, often as a priority, because then you're someone that won't be lynched. Now you have to worry about looking too townie, as well as too scummy.

That is the true danger of non-town roles which can't win with the mafia. It doesn't matter who you fool, you won't be fooling this person into thinking you're on their team, because they have no team, or know you're not on it. Whereas townies can't say that for sure.

Adding a serial killer or other anti-mafia third party to the game means you must always improve the mafia's balancing as compensation, since they're enduring a double threat of town and third party. The mafia and the serial killer, or opposing mafia, are almost always more dangerous to one another than the town is, unless the town is insanely overpowered, and in such an example, the mafia would be under about three times as much threat than a typical game.

I don't mind the occasional multi-faction game, but it's a problem imo that I can have Montmorency openly admit to me and several townies that he is not on my team and that he might even have win conditions that are opposed to my own, and my reaction is to then trust him more than I would trust a villager that I thought was a lock villager, and that's AFTER being paranoid about him and wanting him dead for safety reasons early on.

I can safely assume the mafia will kill him, or he will stick out like a sore thumb at final three and be the lynchee.

I shouldn't be able to make such a powerfully effective assumption when the guy's role is technically opposed to my own. I should fear his betrayal, but once he's known to the mafia and causing them deaths, he pretty much always loses the game, and, almost always helps town win the game.

He's third party almost in name only in these circumstances. He's anti-town-ish but he still added immensely to town's strength here. And even if it weren't Montmorency, who is known to play pro-town even when he's a SK or third party, let's say it were Sasaki Kojiro himself, you'd still end up thinking that the third party person adds to the town's strength.

Well, maybe... I mean Sasaki might just play it pro-scum because that's how he rolled. But almost any other player I'd imagine would end up helping town win unless they sat down, shut up about their role, and tried to win it the brute force way, or save their reveal until endgame where they made one big play or ploy to win it all.

I feel a non-neutral third party should be a danger to all opposing factions, more or less equally, for it to really be a third party kind of feel to the role. The best example I could think of for that was a game Beskar hosted where one of the persons got transformed into a third party alien with no ability to control who they damaged... I think it was called "Parasite".

I had been playing pro-town the whole time, as I typically do when neutral (really! With only one major exception I can think of... ) but when my transformation was triggered, I could not stop myself from killing townies at my location. I still tried to survive and help the town but I was truly dangerous to them.

That is probably the best example I can think of, of a third party actually being really dangerous to the town. A serial killer who shoots more or less randomly or is really bad at locating mafia will be a problem for town, but since the mafia are so dangerous to serial killers it just makes more sense for the SK to try to eliminate them.

These are all observations. Conclusions, solutions, I don't know if I have them. A third party role needs to be very carefully constructed for their addition to the game not to simply be a mostly pro-town benefit. I really would weigh a town vigilante as only slightly more pro-town for the town than a straight up serial killer would be, who intends to defeat the town. They (Serial killers) really only go after the core townies if the town has an entrenched and trusted town network and is thus a greater threat to the SK than the unknown mafia would be.

Unless people get creative with their approaches. Or mix things up just to be different, I think this is how it always will be.

I would play with the mafia against the town if they were an entrenched network, because then it is a more balanced and more likely to succeed strategy imo, but rare is the circumstance where town is that "in the know" that they have such a core of cleared persons to make them more of a threat to the SK than the mafia themselves, and vice-versa.

One serial killer can eventually pick off most of your team and they don't care how townie you look. There is no greater danger to the mafia than that. I'd rather take my chances with a town detective that I know probably scanned me guilty N1. At least then I can play some head games.

[GeneralHankerchief]

I've been essentially the same third-party role twice in khaan's games: I could possess any person at night and dictate their night action, to various degrees of success. The first time I was an anomaly and actually aligned with the mafia. This was a miscalculation on my part as the town got utterly, utterly crushed, but I simply didn't have enough resources at my disposal to overcome the mafia's power.

The second time, I tried to finesse it and made a cover role, ostensibly working with the town but using my fabricated role to be more of a true SK. Things were going well and I made it to the endgame with a more or less ideal numbers distribution, but I ended up getting lynched through too many plain old scumtells in the thread.

These roles are fun, but they're super-challenging. And that goes for both the player trying to win and a host trying to properly balance things.