ElfQuest Mafia - Game Thread

[charlou]

but yeah, the Two Edge role was intentionally designed to suck town in with promise of pressies.

Night zero, the only night action was irre making and gifting an invention. When the role went to irre, I knew that the night zero action would probably give her more longevity than she would otherwise manage, because she was likely to be viewed no matter who was seer, and whether she was mayor or not.

Speaking of seer action, I think people should rethink which players they punish with a default night 1 view. IMO, it's much better to view a quiet player, who gives people very little to go on and who wouldn't normally be NKed if town, than an active player with short shelf-life. If one can't read an active player without seer help, one should simply aspire to get better, IMO.

Yes, good point. Ratz mafia could probably improve as to how to best utilise a seer role.

I agree.

I'm not an advocate of voting someone mayor in order to have them viewed, either. That's just illogical to me, as is default voting on day one (flippant/ice-breaker votes aside). I prefer to vote a person I think will use their extra 1/2 vote wisely for town.

From my perspective, which is not a player perspective, bolero dropped several sk tells, and I really didn't expect her to make it this far, much less to win.

I'm wondering if SK tells aren't on folks radars for some reason.

I think the problem was that not only Bolero dropped scum/SK tells.

I know I made several gaffes mid game which, when considered alongside my early game apathy, frankly have me astounded that I wasn't lynched then and there.

UT's comment that I picked up my gameplay once I felt cleared may be true, but I actually don't know ... and if so, it would only be part of the reason - he was also right about the RL stuff.

[irretating]

Just a heads up about my game at TR. I still need at least 3 more players, and will start the game on Monday if I get them.



http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?t=37233

Sorry, I'm exhausted by another marathon mafia game elsewhere. I might be available to sub, though.

[Linus]

From my perspective, which is not a player perspective, bolero dropped several sk tells, and I really didn't expect her to make it this far, much less to win.

I'm wondering if SK tells aren't on folks radars for some reason.

I think the problem was that not only Bolero dropped scum/SK tells.

I know I made several gaffes mid game which, when considered alongside my early game apathy, frankly have me astounded that I wasn't lynched then and there.

UT's comment that I picked up my gameplay once I felt cleared may be true, but I actually don't know ... and if so, it would only be part of the reason - he was also right about the RL stuff.

You're not the only one. A lot of people wanted to lynch me, so in a sense I failed the task of helping town by looking townish.

[divagreen]

It's amazing the way the game messes with your brain. Here I was saying we should lynch one of the 3 uncleared players at a time & in the end of day 5 we convinced ourselves to take out Denny instead. If Town (including me) had stuck to the hard-nosed measurement of the maths instead of my wild speculations about a denny/diva conspiracy, we would have won.

I don't know how you can make this claim with a straight face. If you had your way you would have lynched me and I showed up as town so that is one aspect where your reason is faulty. Two, Bolero was viewed as town, so whether or not a player was "cleared" eventually became irrelevant as the evidence became ambiguous.

I may be new to Mafia Wars, but I have played other role-playing games with those who claim to use "hard-nosed measurement of maths"; I always seem to end up on their team, we inevitably lose and the few instances we actually won it was due to random chance and luck.

UT, I am sorry I changed my vote at the last minute; I should have trusted your and Charlou. Bolero is right, I did allow our precious game bond to interfere with my judgment and I apologise to town for that. Bolero kept pinging for me because there was a distinct lack of self-recriminiation in her posts; she had developed a callous, "oh well, town is dead" attitude that was in sharp contrast to the previous game we played together. But then I thought that maybe she was just absorbing local game site colour. That "lynch uncleared players" rhetoric simply gave a means for Bolero to fly under the radar after she was cleared by the seer. Also I think you played beautifully. I am sorry I kept getting suspicious of you, but I kept hearing about "Oblivion's twists" and that was the only one that I could think of.

I think that the game was pretty balanced...town just had the good fortune to have wickedly good judgment on two vig kills and MZ's keen insight in lynching Gonzo on N1...although I can see where it be perceived that it is an unfair advantage to be viewed as town, as that renders the seer role useless when it comes to determining who is the SK and if they were viewed early they could have an unfair advantage throughout the game. That seems to be a tough call as the SK is normally at a disadvantage anyway with their win conditions.

I had fun.

[Athene]

This smilie should henceforth be coded :bolero:

Actually, yeah - I didn't realise I could have had a safe name. I just came out with my (very obviously linked to the dagger) character name. What an idiot!

That worked in your favour, I think. I kept thinking that there was no way you would hide right out in the open like that.

Exactly! Too damn obvious ... oh, the irony

And Charlou...

Which reminds me, here's to all the newcomers to ratz mafia ... I hope you enjoyed playing here and sign up for more.

Definitely. I will be like that mangy cat you feed once and then it's always coming back for more food and then 6 months down the line it's sleeping on your bed and crapping in your flowers.

[Athene]

I just want to say irre, I really really love your username. Very clever

[Athene]

From my perspective, which is not a player perspective, bolero dropped several sk tells, and I really didn't expect her to make it this far, much less to win.

Can you list the tells, please, ob?

I'll go back through the threads and point them out tomorrow. I don't remember which days some of them occurred. I should have kept track as the game was going on!

What jumped out at me was when she said she didn't have any clue what was going on - or words to the effect of that. That was quite late on in the game, after I was killed.

[praying]

Thanks for playing, everyone. I had a great time GMing this one, and I hope it was at least as fun to play. And thanks to gib for co-GMing and being an awesome sounding board during this epic tangle of a game design!

It was fun, I had a very hard time getting into to it in the beginning, the board interface, new people, my password issue, but as always a good game Raven.

[DennyB]

Thank you for the game OB and Gib.
It was a nailbiter at the end for sure.
I thought it was going to be a town routing for sure with the luck of some of our kills.
The addition of a town viewed SK sure made it difficult though.
Bolero, Congratulations and did you know you would view as town?
Of so that would explain why our seer was around for so long and should have been a clue for us since the don was dead.

[oblivion]

bolero knew she would view as elf.

I posted this in the sign-up thread:

Here are some links about elfquest that might be helpful during the game:

http://www.elfquest.com/pubs/WhosWho.html - list of characters. Some of them are from later in the series than this game will include, and some of the characters I'll use are not on the list.

the game will be set in the Original Quest series, mostly wrt issues 18-21: http://www.elfquest.com/gallery/OnlineComics3.html, though there will be some characters that didn't directly appear in that part of the story line.

tldr: it's elves versus trolls, sorta. some trolls may be elf-sympathetic and some elves may be bad elves.

Highlighting added.

Two-Edge was the elf-sympathetic troll, and Winnowill and Rayek were the bad elves.

[DennyB]

Dammit!
We screwed this up, eh?

[Zigmen]

GG and Grats to Bolero!

Also, Town wiped out Scum very professionally. Ratz Town is getting good!

[oblivion]

Dammit!
We screwed this up, eh?

I don't think so. the way town rolled up scum was pure shock and awe.

IME SKs either get ferreted out pretty quickly, or town eats their young. There's not a middle ground. Most of the time SKs come off a little like specials in their postings, which I think explains the tendency for town to eat their young.

[Feck]

GG and Grats to Bolero!

Also, Town wiped out Scum very professionally. Ratz Town is getting good!

Loved the post by UT when I got called an ass for 'viewing' AZA ...I'm glad some body has mentioned that town fucked scum and didn't even kiss-em first ....
It would sound a little feeble If I mentioned it

[oblivion]

some sk tells:

This was the first one IIRC and was posted in the peanut gallery shortly after the game began. For some reason inexperienced indies just can't help but randomly bring up indie roles.

Just bookmarking.

Oh, and quick question: Do you have independant roles in Mafia on this site? Or is it a straight town/scum divide?

This day 1 post was more of a scum tell than an indie tell actually:

Well, if nothing else, this banter has convinced me that MZ and Zig can't both be scum. If they were, they wouldn't be pointing at each other so much.

Of course, they could both be town grabbing at straws.

Or I could be way off - not enough practice at this game.

Whiteknighting:

I don't know. In my only full game over on RS, I was dead wrong about everyone, so I'm hesitant to point the FoS.

Being dead wrong is part of the game. What's your read of the RatSkep player divagreen so far?

Diva seems the same as usual to me, so far. I mean, it's surely a bit early on to tell, isn't it?

But I have a soft spot for diva, anyway - she helped me out a lot in the last game we played, where we were both town. She doesn't seem to be posting any differently this time.

(Nonsequitur: I'm not on TR - only this, RS and AFA)

Day 2,

lots of cheerleading:

Yay, we got a troll!! (Sorry, just catching up) Big bummer about higgs, though.

OK folks, I'm almost up to speed, and it seems like we were voting irre, but now you think her explanation has cleared her - have I got that right?

And as for the voting, well, I suppose that anyone who is still voting for irre looks a bit suss - would that be fair?

I think you should use a cleared town player. That would be Feck or UT.

Oh, I must have missed this - when did Feck and UT get cleared? That's awesome!

Yay for people we can trust!

And some reverse cheerleading:

Hey guys. Unexpected bonus alone time with the computer this afternoon. What's happening?

Oh right, it's night time - nothing much.

Bummer about DP.

So my thoughts at the moment are as follows: Who was suggesting DP? How did we kickstart that bandwagon? Were we tricked into the suspicions, or was it an honest mistake? Who was fueling the fire? Who was fanning the flames? Etc, etc.

Also, did I misread it, or did Denny warn strenuously against lynching DP, then turn round and join the BW anyway? If that's what happened, does it mean anything other than that Denny's as lost and grabbing at straws as the rest of us?

Or maybe these questions are useless, and I'm focusing on the wrong things.

There were some n00b card plays on day 2 as well, which were continued throughout the game

Day 3

pushing to out roles

OK, I've read through all the pages on this thread, and it seems to me that a good way to try and sort out who is who would be to compile a list of roles and tribes/affiliations. If - as people are suggesting - the scum have been given credible roles, it may not sort things out completely, but it would be a start, don't you think? I don't know if it would help if we knew anything about ElfQuest... DO any of us know anything about ElfQuest? Although maybe that doesn't matter. I don't know - just stream-of-consciousness-ing, sorry

"I'm not scum"

Oh, and my role is Rayek, from the Sunfolk tribe. I'm the tribe's warrior and protector, apparently....although I haven't been given any protecting powers so far.

That is interesting. So far there are only Go-Backs and Wolfriders and a two-edge with Elven allegiance. (Two-Edge is still by nature, dodgy).

Bolero, you do know that it was a Sunfolk knife found in MZ's heart, don't you?

Yeah, I did notice that.

Well, if there's only one Sunfolk elf in the game, then some bastard is setting me up.

And can I point out that I had no real motivation to tell you my role or tribe - I'm trying to figure out who's who. If I was scum, do you think I would have just come out and given you my head to put in a noose?

If you had not read all of your scum PMs, yes, I could believe it.

Yeah, I guess that's fair enough - it could be a workable scenario. I'm not scum, though, and I don't have an inbox full of PMs - hang on, we're not allowed to PM anyway in Mafia on this forum, are we? Or does that rule not apply to scum? I'm getting my forums confused.

Look, let's tabulate who's who and see what it tells us. What's everyone's claimed role?

More whiteknighting

Bolero, scum are allowed to communicate off-thread. But it's rarely done by PMs. Which is another reason diva tends townish.

I'm also definitely getting a town read on diva, irre. She's posting like she does over on RS, and she's been very involved in trying to work things out.

More cheerleading

Hey folks.

Just reading through what I missed.

Sucks we lost nelliken, but we've managed to get three scum so far, so I reckon we're still not doing too badly.

Can I just ask, is there some reason we're not supposed to reveal our roles? Someone (can't remember who) suggested I was scummy for wanting to make a list of roles. Maybe I'm too inexperienced here, but wouldn't you want to reveal your role if you were town? Seriously, if asking for roles makes me ping, I invite investigation by the seer if it will help ease anyone's mind. I've got nothing to hide. And surely the other townies wouldn't have anything to hide by revealing roles.

Man, I can't see any clear contenders for scumminess. I just don't know how to read stuff in this game.[/quote]
Day 4

starts with reverse cheerleading

Whoa, that's a bastard of a night for us. TWO town deaths is a little excessive, isn't it?

I voted for Aza yesterday, but if you've got something more concrete than a gut feeling, Feck, I'd like to hear it.

rehashing without adding new thoughts.

Hey guys. Just catching up.

Well, I feel better now about suspecting Aza - maybe my intuition in this game isn't so crap after all.

So now it's a matter of working out who we can trust, I guess.

On the assumption that that was the last scum... Some brief summaries:

ut - blocked N2 when mystery kill went through, least suspicious
feck - potential mason... potential something else? but it seems unbalancing
msg - credible doc claim, probably not SK, possibly third faction
denny - low-profile & confused lists of suspects, got extra kill, probably not SK, possibly third faction
bolero - could be
diva - could be
praying - almost 100% fluff posts, but entered discussion of role PM
charlou - low-profile, "well endowed" remark, looks like plausible N1 scum block

UT seems cleared, if he's the seer. He hasn't given us any bum steers for the whole game, so I'm up for trusting he is what he says.
Feck's claim to innocence was a message for higgs. Have we confirmed this?
MSG's doc claim has panned out in terms of protecting people who he said he'd protect.

The rest of us have yet to prove our towniness, I guess. If we make sure we vote with one of the above in terms of lynching, and pass all clues, hints, Mod PMs and such on to them, we have a good chance of winning. I'm aware that these people will also be scum targets (if there's any non-town-friendlies left), so if anyone has protection powers, they need to be used on these guys.

^^ and another SK tell in parentheses there.
"nothing special", nobody here but us chickens.

Bolero, who do you think is the bet as the person responsible for the mystery nightkills?

I wouldn't have a clue.

Yesterday I was happy to vote to lynch charlou, but tbh, that's cause I was a bit annoyed by her suggestion I wasn't helping (Sorry, charlou! Petulant and silly of me). Today (tonight? I've lost track ) I'm not sure at all, and I wouldn't want to point the FoS without a good reason.

Again, not so helpful, but if you have any suggestions with decent reasons, I'd really like to hear them. (Of course I realise that I'm on the suspect list myself, as are you, but I don't know how to go about remedying that. I've no special powers or gifts, and no role beyond waiting to get killed, as far as I can see.)

Day 5

"I know I'm not a SK", also telegraphing that the SK had nothing to fear from a seer, per se. Like I said, players sometimes just can't leave this stuff alone.

MSG, your reasoning re: Sunfolk dagger makes good sense. I didn't realise you were Sunfolk as well. I know I'm not a SK, so maybe there are other Sunfolk out there who didn't realise they were, either (or who are keeping it quiet - I mean you could SAY you were anything, right?)? Like I said before, using a Sunfolk dagger may be deliberate to set me - or you - up, or a diversion to draw attention.

Alternatively, the dagger could be a total red herring, seeing as it's an elf dagger, and we're fairly certain all the trolls are gone (are we certain of that?). It might simply mean that whoever used it is an elf, not specifically Sunfolk. Which could have implications for UT's night views in terms of everybody who's left viewing as elves. Actually, now that I think about it, why isn't UT dead? I mean, if the SK had something to fear from UT, he'd be dead, wouldn't he? Unless you protected him, MSG? - argh, my head is swimming.

There were others, but the main things that stood out were the excessive cheerleading, the posts that looked contributory but weren't adding anything, and the huge one at the beginning of the game where she asked about indie roles. The PG comment would have been on my mind all game long.