Pokémon Mafia: Arceus - Game Thread

[Butterfree]

Also the GPT-generated win condition is amazing I am dying

 

[qenya]

also fascinating that there was already a role cop picked out. like rnp could have picked any other 2 things but apparently it was a bona fide role cop choice already there for the AI to tunnel on

yeah! that impressed me as well

in all honesty I had to retry several times with varying prompts to get it to work; I didn't save the rejects but iirc it kept trying to write trainerfic instead of an actual mafia role as instructed. once it did, though, oh god what a delivery

I would have picked town but I didn't have the option >:/

I figured there was no way a game where people pick their alignments could be anything resembling balanced and instead the point of the game would just be shenanigans, on which it delivered. Unfortunately I reluctantly picked mafia over the two third parties in the hope that then at least I'd get to have a partner, only to be the only Diamond Clanner, and also didn't really get to do anything and also genuinely forgot about the game for most of the first day and then had a very busy day and wasn't even home in time to catch up before EoD on the second. Need to play another game on here soon to make up for it.

yeah. personally I thought you were doing very well at evading suspicion (even if it was unintentional!) and was rooting for you... but then RNP got his unfortunate lucky investigation on you and the writing was kind of on the wall. :( if not for that I think you would have gotten very close to victory! but it is a shame you didn't get to play on a team as you'd hoped. sorry about that.

 

[Zori]

working on spinning up gamethread right now!
i havent had all the rolecards written but i have all the roles in shorthand on a pm so its only a matter of time tbh nya

 

[JackPK]

I have a question! were the sets of 3 roles to pick from curated or randomly generated?

I'm just curious since it sounds like the 3p role options were pretty heavily concentrated, and if that was random it's a hell of a coincidence, but if it was curated I'm curious why

 

[Zori]

or rather, sign ups thread

 

[Herbe]

"hello herbe this is your partner. your wincon is to kill him. his wincon is for you to kill him."

blood cult sacrifice! blood cult sacrifice!

 

[qenya]

I have a question! were the sets of 3 roles to pick from curated or randomly generated?

the latter! I think I did say that on the signup thread, in fact, though it might not have been obvious enough. There were initially 27 rolecards, and I picked three for each player completely at random

by a bizarre quirk of RNG, the 3 rolecards that didn't get assigned to anyone were the three Miss Fortunes, who were all self-aligned doctors with the wincon "you win if any Miss Fortune is alive at the end of the game". if mewt had been playing after all then I guess they would have all gone to the final signup, Butterfree... perhaps she got off lightly in her quest to avoid self-alignment

 

[M&F]

the latter! I think I did say that on the signup thread, in fact, though it might not have been obvious enough. There were initially 27 rolecards, and I picked three for each player completely at random

by a bizarre quirk of RNG, the 3 rolecards that didn't get assigned to anyone were the three Miss Fortunes, who were all self-aligned doctors with the wincon "you win if any Miss Fortune is alive at the end of the game". if mewt had been playing after all then I guess they would have all gone to the final signup, Butterfree... perhaps she got off lightly in her quest to avoid self-alignment

"the illusion of choice" meme but all the options lead to "play survivor"--

anyway this game has been exactly as baffling and batshit as the premise called for, so what can I say? sold as promised! I suppose there would've been time and space (har) for more shenanigans if there were more players, but it would also have definitely broken poor qenya for good-

I can't say I wasn't expecting a lot of people to pick mafia when given the option, but I suppose that what didn't properly occour to me is that the whole alignment slurry situation would have drastically diluted the chances of people ending up as town regardless. but what can I say, I did not have long to adjust my play- but speaking of, I guess it's all the funnier that it was one of my measely few fellow townies who started the push on me. I really am just that bad at coming across well that I can get mislynched in a game where that's literally less likely than not huh

if absolutely nothing else, I suppose the lesson to be taken away here for people aiming to design a mafia game (like, entirely on purpose) is this: don't let multiball mafia turn into the kingmaker scenario of the year for town- if/when I go there next I'll have to think of how to get town invested in swinging at one side or the other at a given time instead of just "everyone has to beat everyone else; you're the only ones who go into this without privileged knowledge".

anyway, good game yall!

 

[RNP]

wow

boring

 

[RNP]

i will admit to being salty about this and also say that herbe is being ignored for at least a few hours

 

[RNP]

why can't i get a normal game as ingroup. why is it always fucked

 

[RNP]

...wait. if herbe "cannot be protected from effects that would kill you" wouldn't I be able to just kill herbe since the roleblock couldn't protect them.

i'm going back to work.

 

[RNP]

wow

boring

boring as in the outcome not the game you did great qenya

 

[RNP]

yeah... I was worried the vote thievery would end up being too far over the top (since I originally wrote it expecting you to be working alone, Herbe) but it didn't actually end up affecting anything. in fact I think the two of you actually ended up underpowered compared to the Pearl Clan

underpowered

underpowered

sorry, what?

 

[RNP]

herbe had 3 power roles and jack had 1-2, right. are we looking at the same rolecards

 

[Zero Moment]

I can't believe I went and used my oneshot healing power on RNP and he went around and backstabbed me

 

[qenya]

herbe had 3 power roles and jack had 1-2, right. are we looking at the same rolecards

the conspiracy didn't help them at all (actually it was more of a hindrance since it was straightforward to narrow down who had it) and the vote thievery didn't end up getting used, so really all they had going for them was a roleblock+poisoning which had to be carried out on the same person. pretty in line with other 2-person factions imo?

if absolutely nothing else, I suppose the lesson to be taken away here for people aiming to design a mafia game (like, entirely on purpose) is this: don't let multiball mafia turn into the kingmaker scenario of the year for town- if/when I go there next I'll have to think of how to get town invested in swinging at one side or the other at a given time instead of just "everyone has to beat everyone else; you're the only ones who go into this without privileged knowledge".

yeah, it's tricky. to some extent I think it may be unavoidable - if you have at least three distinct wincons, then it's inherently possible for one of them to become unachievable before the other two have been decided. but at the very least I think a good principle to follow would be that the less informed a faction is, the more members it should get. if I were actually trying to design a normal game, even with two scum factions I would be aiming for around two-thirds townies.

 

[qenya]

...wait. if herbe "cannot be protected from effects that would kill you" wouldn't I be able to just kill herbe since the roleblock couldn't protect them.

I don't think the "Macho" modifier usually prevents killing night actions from being blocked or redirected, it just renders things like doctors and bodyguards ineffective

 

[RNP]

yeah but a) we only had one actually useful role and b) our wincon was to be the last ones standing, not to just kill one specific player

plus herbe had a villager rolecard that wasn't part of the villagers faction and foxes had a card of a character who's not a villager or in the game at all actually but was a villager and was this revenge for frenzy plant. i feel like this is revenge for frenzy plant

 

[RNP]

it's just a game rnp. just close the tab rnp.