Pirate Ship Mafia III [Concluded]

[Montmorency]

In conclusion, Visorslash = Townie MVP

I like to think of myself as #2, though...

[Csargo]

In conclusion, Visorslash = Townie MVP

I like to think of myself as #2, though...

Nah...

[Ituralde]

Dead on the last day. What a shameful display. I came so close to the finish line.

Also I can never make heads or tails out of these large games. Too many actions and roles just confuse me.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Stick around, though, Ituralde.

I say, as I continue sailing away on a dinghy with El Barto....

[Askthepizzaguy]

The ability for townies to abandon ship is a little overpowered. It's essentially suicide with little downside, and it's an action the french/maven folk don't really want to take.

When I came under suspicion as did a few others, we simply left, removing us from suspicion. It's like free lynches for the town side.

Well played to the French/maven team, under those circumstances.

[BSmith]

I had a lot of fun this game. My goal was to get the 4 items of clothing. By working with people i would be able to detect if they had an item and then I could solo kill them the next night. If i was in a vig group and our target had an item, i'd get it. Lastly if i wad stolen from, i could find out who did it an had to kill them within 3 nights. Csargo was next. I got stolen from 3 friggin times and was never able to secure more than 2 of the items at once. If I had 3/4 items I would act as 2 townies for night actions. If I got all 4 I would have gotten a new goal. My guess is that I would need to become captain. I thought about pushing harder for the captain role, but frankly I have been out of town the past few days and not at a keyboard making posting much more difficult. I didnt want the FM or QM roles becuse they would interfere with my looking for and getting the clothing items.

[BSmith]

If i hadnt have been blocked and the JHT kill went through i would have had 3/4 items and known gaius had the 4th allowing me to kill him the next night. I was so close!!

[Csargo]

I think the lack of conversions was because of not scanning players that were susceptible to conversion. Ishmael, auto, and spaceman will know better than I, but that's what I understood.

I think the fact that vig attempts show clearly how many attackers show up, it doesn't allow much wiggle room for other actions. Unless they could vig, steal, or protect as an alibi and then convert, scan, or kill as well. Whether that would have made the French overpowered or not I'm not really sure. From what I understood is that they could vig, protect, scan, etc. and then steal as an alibi if they were doing French things. With the majority of the town wanting to vig, it left no room to do other things. If they refused to participate or didn't show up they'd be suspicious. I guess GH would be able to explain exactly what the French could and couldn't do in one night phase.

The game definitely felt unbalanced towards the town, but that just might be because of when I got converted Ishmael was basically a guaranteed lynch that next day. That left me and auto as the only two French. I scanned ATPG and El Barto the next night, but should have blind converted ATPG instead like auto suggested. I wasn't back in time to change my orders, and both of them abandoned ship. ATPG was susceptible and who knows how that would have changed the last phase.

[autolycus]

As it turned out, it wouldn't have mattered, because once I stole from Bsmith, I was effectively dead. It sounds like Bsmith himself had an interesting and challenging role, but because scum were the only ones who were likely to be able to steal every night, we were much more likely to get picked up on his radar than other people. I think it would have been more fair to both him and the scum if he couldn't lose items (presumably because he's wearing them).

[spaceman98]

Here's what I posted in the French QT about the game's balance:

First, I'd like to say that I enjoyed this game a lot, despite my early demise. I'm skeptical that it was balanced (more on that later) but that certainly didn't make it less fun.

Second: A lot of our sucess was dependent on early luck. Speciffically whether we scanned convertible people. It looks like the number of convertible individuals was small, though that will be more clear in the post-game. If so, we had the main disadvantage of a cult (heavy dependence on one person, the Frenchman) but not the main advantage (potential for rapid recruitment).

Third: In many ways, I would say we got lucky this game: The town was disorganized, and spent a lot of time fighitng itself. If I understand correctly, the mutiny against Kage was the first ever in Pirate Ship Mafia. If it weren't for the chaos that created, I would probably have been lynched a lot earlier. At the same time, every townie having a gold-centric VC did promote intra-town disorganization and helped us significantly.

Fourth: Despite 2, we lost fair and square. Visor caught Ishmael with old-fashion in-thread scumhunting. Honestly, you should probably have bussed me. That would have given you town cred, and you could have recruited Csargo as my replacement. Shame we didn't think of that earlier.

Basically, it was possible for us to win, but the small number of convertible people means a town victory was more likely IMO (something like 60% town, 40% mafia I'd say)

The BSmith thing actually helps the town even more, because only the French are free to steal often.

Town disorganization made us competitive this game. If Kage hadn't been mutinied, I would have been lynched much earlier, most likely, because of the roleblock thing. A well-organized town could have set things up such that everyone appeared in the writeup, thus preventing us from converting.

question: Who was Andres and how did he die?

[spaceman98]

Did the Fancy Cutlass do anything aside from marking me for BSmith-ellimination?

[GeneralHankerchief]

I think the main thing I'd change, if I had to run the game again tomorrow, would be that I would make every night writeup ambiguous like it was the night in the storm. You'd know there was an action against this person, but not how many people took part. This would give people more cover to go off and do their own things at night without feeling pressured to be locked into a group or else.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Did the Fancy Cutlass do anything aside from marking me for BSmith-ellimination?

No, BSmith was the only person those items meant anything towards. I got the idea in my head that eventually it would become known that these items marked you for death and then the race was onto avoid BSmith until you could pass them on, but due to the way the game went that idea never materialized as much as I thought I did.

The more I hear from you guys, the more I question that BSmith's role inclusion was a good idea, but there was a method to my madness, I promise.

[Visor]

Oh man that is a weight off. Good job guys.

[Csargo]

I think the main thing I'd change, if I had to run the game again tomorrow, would be that I would make every night writeup ambiguous like it was the night in the storm. You'd know there was an action against this person, but not how many people took part. This would give people more cover to go off and do their own things at night without feeling pressured to be locked into a group or else.

I agree with that.

I agree with spaceman that the mutiny allowed him to survive longer than he would have otherwise.

[Visor]

I'll read comments later, but I feel like frodo at the end of lotr after they just destroyed the ring and are sitting on the slope of Mount Doom.

Good job guys.

[Visor]

After setting up club kill, I didn't kill a single person in the game.

[Golden1Knight]

I almost left the ship at the end xD

My choice to rob someone I knew was about to die on the first night was not very wise of me, and when I forgot to send orders I should have said I was protecting my gold :P

Anyway, I had a great time. And BSmith almost got the fancy cutlass at the beginning of the game, I was going to sell it to him.

[El Barto]

I be havin' ta agree wi' wha' was said earlier: this game be a contest o'er whether th' cap'n can rule his crew, or at least a sizable enough subset o' it, with an iron hand. If an' whan he do, then the Frenchman be toast.

Good job guys.

Thanks, laddie!

[Visor]

Is there a mafia qt we can read?

[Golden1Knight]

Out of curiosity, who else here came from CFC?

[Visor]

Out of curiosity, who else here came from CFC?

There is a lot of us that play on cfc (Zack, choxorn, spaceman started at cfc Iirc) somewhat regularly.

[Myrddraal]

Well, that was short and sweet for me . Thanks for putting up with me as I got used to the game, and thanks for the 5 gold Monty

[GeneralHankerchief]

Well, that was short and sweet for me . Thanks for putting up with me as I got used to the game, and thanks for the 5 gold Monty

That reminds me: Sprig's "mercenary" role was completely fake. Major credit to him for coming up with an innovative way to get more gold, and major credit to Myrddraal as well for not only running with it, but faking a PM for it too!

[Montmorency]

MY GOLD

[GeneralHankerchief]

MY GOLD

Don't complain too much, you were the sole recipient of Csargo's will. Your total is actually somewhat respectable now.

[Ishmael]

Congratulations to the town and particularly Visorslash, who apparently has the oddly specific superpower to always be able to pick me when I'm scum . I had a tremendous amount of fun this game, particularly in those two day/night phases where I was desperately trying to delay the inevitable for as long as possible. I posted my thoughts on the game towards the end of the quicktopic - I might expand later, but that will do me for now.

French QT

[Csargo]

Don't complain too much, you were the sole recipient of Csargo's will. Your total is actually somewhat respectable now.

You're welcome. That's 80ish gold.

[GeneralHankerchief]

All wills maxed out at 50 (the dead keep the rest), so not quite 80. Still respectable though.

[Askthepizzaguy]

I think the lack of conversions was because of not scanning players that were susceptible to conversion. Ishmael, auto, and spaceman will know better than I, but that's what I understood.

I think the fact that vig attempts show clearly how many attackers show up, it doesn't allow much wiggle room for other actions. Unless they could vig, steal, or protect as an alibi and then convert, scan, or kill as well. Whether that would have made the French overpowered or not I'm not really sure. From what I understood is that they could vig, protect, scan, etc. and then steal as an alibi if they were doing French things. With the majority of the town wanting to vig, it left no room to do other things. If they refused to participate or didn't show up they'd be suspicious. I guess GH would be able to explain exactly what the French could and couldn't do in one night phase.

The game definitely felt unbalanced towards the town, but that just might be because of when I got converted Ishmael was basically a guaranteed lynch that next day. That left me and auto as the only two French. I scanned ATPG and El Barto the next night, but should have blind converted ATPG instead like auto suggested. I wasn't back in time to change my orders, and both of them abandoned ship. ATPG was susceptible and who knows how that would have changed the last phase.

It wouldn't have changed much for your team because I had been telling Visor and the captain I would leave any night they ordered me off the ship, no questions asked. When I didn't do so I would always be the lynch the next day. I also spread it around publicly that I would leave if asked. So I did that to discourage myself from being recruited.

At that time, because Visor began suspecting the thieves, I was going to be asked to leave soon, so I felt like I'd rather leave now than wait much longer. It was a good idea, it denies recruits to the French. I also said I'd have to leave if I was scanned susceptible to conversion and not made into an officer, because eventually, I would become an obvious convert from the ever shrinking pool.

I had been playing a fairly anti-French game despite my lack of desire in forming groups and also doing vigs, I didn't even want to appear in protection groups because I wanted the fairness that comes with the ambiguity of having to trust the folks I said I had stolen from as being reliable witnesses to my own location, obviously, the French could have said they had stolen from a convert for example. It's risky but it's one way of blending in. The trouble is not enough townies did what I was doing.

I wanted there to be room for the French to do what they were doing without it being a simple solve by spreadsheet, but I also wanted to fight the French at every turn and find them myself.

I also wanted to accumulate gold from my fellow players as part of the sport of the game because otherwise it totally overlooks that mechanic. I felt like it needed more than a token nod from the players.

I get that some folks wanted to simply catch all the french by vigging and lynching as much as possible, and I don't begrudge them that, but I also thought that stealing and the bonuses associated with stealing should be emphasized.

I believe the folks who did stealing often got triggered an event just for them that made it much more profitable to steal, that one night, which encouraged them to not participate in night actions.

That sort of thing was really good, fun, and balanced- I think if the thefts were a bit more dire, as opposed to likely not being as good as a protect that did nothing, and people lost more gold that way or gained more gold that way, more people would have bothered protecting their own stashes and stealing.

As it stood, most of the thieves in the game were kind enough not to steal from the same person over and over again, and more people were attacking and defending, so there wasn't much worry about being stolen from in general.

I could be wrong, I know Visor got stolen from a lot just as an example. The officers are generally sitting duck steal targets.