Wait, so we had two roleblockers, and they were both on me those last three nights?
And GG everyone.
And GG everyone.
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OC Circus Maximus and the Temple Mafia of Doom - Game Over, Town Relics Win!
- Thread starter Yeti
- Start date
Good game everyone! The game was really cool yeti the temple concept is really fun, can't wait for your next game!
Thank you Bass, Dak, Mekkah and Lonelyness for inviting me and other villagers to the temple run discord, it was really fun there. Last day was really wholesome
Thank you Bass, Dak, Mekkah and Lonelyness for inviting me and other villagers to the temple run discord, it was really fun there. Last day was really wholesome
Good game all, was an unfortunate ride to the end but I will say town played pretty well and they earned the win
Postgame Part 1
Sheet
Document with all PMs, results, temples, etc
Results and other interesting things start on page 33
First off, thanks to everyone for playing. I will say that this game had some experimental concepts, mostly revolving around utilizing the temples as a larger element of the game than they were in Raiders of the Lost Mafia. I am not 100% sure I like how things worked, so to anyone who didn’t have as good of a time due to these mechanics, I apologize.
I wound up feeling like a lot of the mechanics and roles would have been better served in a NOC and less exploitable there. The ‘cool factor’ of temple destruction catching a lot of villagers by surprise was almost instantly mitigated by LonelyNess publicizing two 100% safe temples (Heaven and Constantine), meaning there would be fewer villagers to catch and kill at once in vulnerable temples. At the same time, neither mafia utilized their Temple Track ability to try and find villagers going somewhere exploitable, so I think the capabilities of destruction as a kill were left on the table.
The village did not have a full inspector. Its only alias-targeting info roles were Temple Tracker, which could see what temple an alias went to, the Item Result Checker, which saw what item an alias received that cycle, if any, which was only really good at catching liars, and I suppose the Big Bopper and Love Interest after she upgraded her hook, because if she followed an alias into a temple they weren’t supposed to be going to, which the Big Bopper could learn as well.
The rest of them are circumstantial evidence, outside of the Town Crier, which can fail pretty easily AND does not learn the aliases. Obviously the Temple Watcher should be used in conjunction with the Town Crier on the same temple. Both the Crusader and Hwow Checker can only catch someone lying, and neither gets alias.
This was by design. I wanted to make people have to not just play “follow the inspector” and actually piece together evidence to clean people or find scum. The mafia were also given copious tools to keep their stories straight, and however they wanted to play it, they could. I really don’t think the mafias were underpowered.
One thing I did NOT consider, because to me it was always just a funny mayorizer, was that The Beatles became an alias checker with aliases on. It didn’t matter with usernames because of course dak would know who he sent a Beatle to, but with aliases, he could demand to know which one someone received to tie alias:user. It was a 4x fruit vendor.
Because the mafia kills worked as such: target ALIAS, if ALIAS is in a temple, they are protected, and the destruction activates. I did modify the mafia move pools to let their chosen killer ALSO temple redirect, so they could prevent someone from being in a temple if they wanted to kill them, without using up one of their move pool slots, because it felt unfair that if the village was going to ‘exploit’ the fortification mechanic by making it public so early, they would need to utilize a move slot to successfully perform a single nightkill. Essentially, the killer could perform faction kill + temple redirect on the same alias, and then another move pool - hooking the killer obviously stopped all of this, as hooking any killer would. The kill+temple redirect would bypass safeguards, but the move pool redirect would not; this was so that the mafia could nightkill like in a normal game, where SG doesn’t block it.
There were definitely some roles that did not play out as I expected. I will endeavor to think through the possible exploitations of roles more thoroughly in future games; that said, I think the temple destruction falling flat was dramatically exacerbated by the two mafia’s inability to communicate. I think if they were talking, a lot more villagers could have died early, OR if they were using their temple tracks or watches to find better places to destroy.
Honestly, I expected a lot more chaos early. I expected the mafia to deal some devastating blows to the village by destroying multiple temples filled with people, especially with aliases, which would allow the mafia to contact each other and coordinate. Instead…
Why is Every Villager Claiming Mafia Now?
So, the game kicks off by both M2H and UncleSam, two villagers, pubclaiming mafia and seeking contact with ‘the other team.’ These two begin talking with each other and just went absurdly deep down the rabbithole of “omg I’m mining so much info I’m such a good villager heehee.”
Yeah it was town/town.
Then, convinced that UncleSam was indeed mafia, M2H as he was being voted out enlisted Redless to help. Redless asked me for help with a fake that gave credence to M2H being a death mole who had a fake flip, which I wrote for him - btw UncleSam saying the fake was more realistic than Clippy, the first PM I wrote for the actual game, ,,|,, you - and proceeded to continue with the charade, hoping to extort info from each other.
Still town/town.
Meanwhile, both mafias refused to reach out to any of these individuals. Jalmont told the PCTR each time they asked not to bother, accurately reading the claimers as fakers. Up until Flandrs was being voted out, at which point I think Flandrs received several PMs from fakers… and one from DBD, who did reach out to make contact with the other mafia. He accurately answered Flandrs’ question of how temple destruction works (prior to it flipping), however Flandrs and the UP did not think DBD’s answer was thorough enough.
They thought DBD was faking being mafia to extort info from them, except now the DMs were actually mafia/mafia.
Flandrs would go on to tell DBD to talk to pulsar after his death, which DBD did, believing he and Flandrs communicated successfully. Pulsar rushed to LN for help in keeping her believability up to DBD.
Now we’re mafia/town.
Pulsar gave DBD erratic answers and vague responses because she didn’t want to tip her hand she didn’t have a dang clue what he was talking about. She kept it up long enough for DBD to tell her the PCTR had found LN’s alias, Lyretail Anthias, and to mess with their D2 and D3 destruction. The mafia teams, not in contact, double-targeted Kalasan on D2 by pure rand - one of them thought they saw genisu say he went to it, so they were actually trying to aim at a temple GENISU was in, and it was completely unrelated to Former/Mekkah being there. Lmfao. The other mafia was originally on the temple Gmax/aska were in but switched it to Kalasan.
DBD again reached out to zorbees when he was voted out D3. I even overstepped a little how I would as a host when zorbees didn’t tell his team anything to ask zorbees if he received any messages from the other mafia, hoping he would mention DBD. Nada. DBD then went back to his team and told them zorbees ghosted him, which was weird, and they really wished pulsar would talk to them more or tell them her final teammate. After the UP were eliminated, zorbees went back to look at his DMs when I mentioned DBD tried to reach him, and discovered the message from DBD did not go to his normal inbox but needed to be accepted specially. It didn’t display with the rest of his messages. A terribly unfortunate Discord problem.
The Utility Players then complained the PCTR were ghosting THEM and refusing to talk, AND killed NightEmerald. Pulsar told the PCTR not to destroy the Temple of the Great Jaguar, which AngryPidgeon was in so they weren’t going to anyway, and they randed again from dak’s public list. Apparently Genoa being on the list was a mistake by him.
I then asked the Utility Players if they wanted to send an anon message to the other mafia since they were down to 2 remaining - Laurel, who was essentially outed, and Day, who was a first-timer. They declined. The PCTR, meanwhile, were wondering why pulsar jerked them around so much and didn’t warn them about Genoa. I am not sure if UP genuinely believed that LN and/or dak were on PCTR or if they were just very upset at PCTR ‘failing’ to contact them.
PCTR spent DAYS lamenting “why didn’t pulsar tell us NE was in Genoa.”
Tommy then discovered that town knew DBD as PCTR, via pulsar, and threatened to blow it up that LN had an actual Comedic to vote out and chose zorbees instead. LN got upset that Tommy was going to expose pulsar’s cover when she was getting legitimate information from DBD, but dak talked Tommy into keeping it quiet I believe.
The day DBD was up for the vote, I believe bluedoom and jalmont both outed to pulsar, or were told as contacts to her, to try and keep mafia communications up. The UP spitefully posted their entire role list when they were down to two players, to sabotage the PCTR and their safeclaims, because they were still upset the PCTR killed NE and ‘refused to talk to them.’
PCTR still asking why pulsar let them blow up Genoa, btw.
Laurel finally made contact with DBD while the latter was dying and the 6 remaining mafia hopped into a group chat together. Ecat was initially offered up as the new contact, then realiti, then realizing they were so far behind, pulled everyone in.
Their action planning improved a lot more once they were working together, but it was not enough to make up for the deficit of whiffing so hard early. The village also knew the mafia began working together because the PCTRs abruptly stopped speaking to pulsar.
The mafia struggled to get out of each others’ way and their own way, really. Ecat for some reason insisted on actually bodyguarding LN when he was asked to, instead of spoofing a target on him again or just not killing him. The UP attempted to kill LN but whiffed due to Ecat’s bodyguard, which also led to Ecat being scumchecked by LN.
It is unfortunate because Ecat and pulsar were scanned in the same Crier result, and one was town and one was PCTR. If Ecat was against anyone else, he could’ve pulled off a misvote on the other person (unless it was someone pre-cleaned, they used dak to re-check people). Pulsar, however, had DAYS’ worth of logs talking with DBD that clearly indicated she was not on PCTR - she could only be the other.
The PCTR knew there was someone else (Gcat) in Tenochtitlan with DBD. They wanted to blow it up for a kill, but Laurel convinced them not to when they asked if he knew who ‘Pinnatus Batfish’ was, because he was ‘moling’ Gcat and she would tell him things, as she was frustrated with LN handling her with the kiddy gloves. This was, of course, another mistake, because both mafias blew up empty temples that day instead of taking at least ONE death.
Even working together they struggled to piece together how to gain info on where people were. Certainly their numbers were halved by that point, but they had all-temple sheriff, role cop, watch, temple track, their own redirects… there were ways to find out where villagers were, and these were not utilized well.
This has been one of the most painful two mafia interactions to witness as a host. Both teams were trying to talk to each other - and with aliases I really did not think they would have ANY difficulty hooking up. I did NOT expect the Kalasan double-target D2, I did NOT expect the NPC kill N2 leading into PCTR killing only NE on D3, I did NOT expect they would just keep talking past each other and PCTR would legitimately believe pulsar was UP for as long as they did. I felt sick to my stomach when bluedoom suggested destroying Genoa with NE in it, and then they locked it in.
I think it was extremely obvious there were no moles whatsoever in the village by how dysfunctional the two mafias’ actions were. I thought that LN publicizing Heaven and Constantine as safe havens would be a huge mistake, because both mafias could all-temple hook + ability cop them, which would have spooked villagers into being like, “LN set us up to be hooked! He’s scum!”
Instead they did not punish LN/the village for revealing the fortified temples at all. LN said at one point “they must have a full sheet by now” since they killed saber (great rand by realiti, he was very good at picking cleaned village aliases lol) - dawg they had NOTHING. No info combined.
I do not think this was a casualty of the format. They had ways to punish the village for flocking to LN’s publicized temples and did not utilize them. They had a Worst Outcome Guard and didn’t use it on Celever or AP when they adventured to their deaths.
I think the most that can be debated here is “should I have reranded after all ‘the sweats’ went onto the village,” or artificially placed ‘a sweat’ on each mafia. They certainly felt that I should have given them ‘a sweat’ to dictate things for them (though they phrased it as ‘help/guide us’). I am of two minds on this.
One, I was that sweat on a scum team with a total newbie who would sell me out by accident. It was tiring. Every game me and LightWolf or UncleSam were expected to produce fakes for our newbies, mole the village, talk to the other teams, whoever my co-sweat was, we were supposed to pull the weight of 4 people. I don’t necessarily think there SHOULD be an expectation of having ‘a sweat’ on your team to do things for you and properly prepare you (I also must say the current crop of newbies are very smart players, they don’t noob-out their team like old newbies did, we’re working with a higher caliber of newcomers to OC). At a certain point it gets unfair to ‘the sweat’ to expect them to be mentoring a full mafia team. And who is to say I rand or move the right sweat onto the mafia teams? What if I move someone on who signed up thinking “oh boy hope I rand town so I can sheep, I want a lowkey game” and they don’t have the sauce?
Two, how deep was the deep end to ‘fling’ the newbies into? Were there simply too many elements in this game (items and temples and roles interacting with temples and aliases) for newer scum teams to both learn how to mafia, and optimize, at the same time? Possible. I do think the mafia’s abilities were extremely exploitable towards town if utilized to their full potential, so I wasn’t like, upset, that almost all ‘the sweats’ randed onto the town. If anything I thought they would start infighting because “we can’t all be town” like Sam and LN started to do.
Do people think we need to ensure a sweat is on every team, every game? How do we monitor we aren’t overtaxing one sweat, or asking someone who doesn’t actually have the time/mental energy to carry, to carry?
What Happened with Internet?
So, internet sent a variety of players the message “hi can you add me to the team server please” early on N0. His Discord name is pinkmoth, which is nothing like his forum name, and he was the cohost of Laurel’s game. This led to a very unfortunate mafia member who shall remain nameless going to the game thread, CTRL-Fing “pink” to see if the user who DMed him was a player, seeing he was not a player but was a cohost before, and inviting internet to the PCTR’s game server, where 5 of the 6 were.
Internet then joined and realized this was a significant problem, so he informed me of the situation. I tabbed in from work to discover this little mfer sitting in a mafia server, where most of their role PMs/aliases were. I made the decision to put his slot on lockdown, deleted any public messages about it, and subbed him out for the only available sub on N0 (nobody else was ready yet), Tommy. I also implemented the rule that if your Discord and Smogon names were mismatched you needed to identify yourself in DM to avoid this.
I felt this was the fairest thing to do because the mafia in question DID attempt to verify he was being messaged by a player, the game would be almost impossible to play for the team if their identities were exposed 3 hours into N0, and internet was being a cheeky lil wanker trying to Gmax in 2024. I am sad he couldn’t play the game, but 5 mafia being revealed due to a janky message is pretty bad for game integrity.
In retrospect, it may have behooved both mafias to have 5 of them exposed so they could stop messing each other up.
Please don’t be a wanker and message people “add me to the server.”
The Village
The village was supposed to be a circumstantial-evidence solving gig. They couldn’t just play follow the inspector. Well, they kinda could with the Town Crier (incoming flame), but it was easy to mess with. Like, it doesn’t list alias. It needs a certain number of people. If you find/kill it, it’s a sizeable chunk of the town’s cleaning power. Now, what I SHOULD have done is given the mafia a watcher that let them see who TARGETED a temple, not just who VISITED it. Anyway, let’s review the town:
Role: The Switchguard! I have used this role in the past and it never makes waves. This was the first role made for the game, pre-dating the Utility Players gaining that faction name. I didn’t really see “Clippy” as in theme with their actual role names, so when people voted him for being a likely UP role name I was like wtf? Clippy was able to prove himself by his target receiving his assistance. They could then choose if they would like to be BGed or SGed. While the cast could be hooked, the actual delayed protection could not be disrupted.
Player: M2H kicked things off by claiming mafia, hoping to get someone to take the bait and give him info. This landed him in hot water because he didn’t really tell anyone what he was doing, and UncleSam went into a “no this guy is totally mafia he told me they have a delayed kill” ego trip. He was voted out Day One. He couldn’t verify himself because the alias he randed, ironically, jailkept him and prevented him from using his ability. I was optimistic for a rompin’ wild game with the D1 misvote…
Role: If this looks like a Maushold it might be a Maushold, BUT, it had a rather trollish requirement to gain its votes. This is also the one village PM I seem to have messed up the formatting for, giving Clippy 4 sentences and this one only 2. Oops. This role was intended to be an advice column/Reddit troll, making up fake stories to evoke a response. I put the restriction on it that it couldn’t tell anyone to respond to its announcements, it had to successfully provoke a reply from someone. It gained a vote if it could bait people into replying or giving advice each cycle. It then could will half of its votes to another player, which could obviously backfire against town if it was moled and willed to mafia. Its ideal heir was the Ghost, who was a 0-voter but a BPV.
Player: So, I will confess, this role could not rand to ‘just anyone.’ Ditto thankfully randed onto the village and was assigned to it, because I was confident he could actually utilize the announcements. DLE was another person I would’ve felt could do it justice. Maybe the lesson here is to not make a role that you know a lot of people will underutilize, like the Anarchist in MM3 severely underperformed imo. Ditto’s first announcement received no in-thread advice, or people deeming the author right, so he tried a different approach and realiti blessed him with responses. He randed his heir as Bass, which the village never changed as they wound up stockpiling all their eggs into the medium’s basket.
Role: I think it was LN who said in some game server that the #fluodome Ghost was a terrible role and should never exist again and I kinda smirked to myself. This role shares some similarities: it is immune to factional kills and poisoning, it cannot vote. It’s a temple watcher and sees who successfully gets in. It cannot be used to get into number-based temple entrances, which was a late-stage change I made. This role obviously pairs ideally with the Town Crier, but if you do that and the Crier’s temple doesn’t fill, both roles flop. I deliberated what it was immune to death-wise and settled on letting it die to anything temple-related. This made the Ghost the ideal candidate to try any of the perseverance temples, since it couldn’t die while outside. The village picked up on this on N3.
Player: I was happy sunny randed this because it seemed like he wanted to be active, and I felt this role had a good shot of being trusted. He was in a chat with Lechen and Laurel and could’ve gotten himself into some trouble with the latter being mafia, but he was never really considered a likely suspect for the N1 LN fail and was added to the village leader chat on D3. Still not 100% sure why they felt he was cleared enough to add, but I was happy he got in! He served as item passer for the village since his alias was less likely to die to a nightkill.
Role: I kinda just wanted to use ‘Big Bopper’ as a role name and made it bop people out of the temples accordingly. It would then go in their place, so it could go to two at once, which also upped its chances of dying to RNG. It was supposed to be disruptive to temples, but I feel like with many of the other early town roles, it was actually a more interesting concept for a NOC than an OC. I would scrap this role if I made the game again, I don’t think the village had much interest in using it offensively.
Player: Redless hopped into M2H’s wild ride and tried to mole Sam for mafia info. Town on town hate crime. He also unfortunately bounced Galactikitty out of her temple when she was supposed to be checked. He is a pretty cautious player and was reluctant to tell town leadership too much info. Not super active once he got to graveyard, which was unfortunate the mafia killed him thinking his role was a lot better than it was, because he was in PoE with them.
Possible results:
Role: If there was to be a ‘pet role’ in this game, it would definitely be this one. It was the most fun to write flavor for. I think, however, that makes this role pretty obviously town, especially with the mafia move pools. One would have to come up with some pretty creative mafia stuff to match this role in its depth. Fortunately, it was one of the two LN tried to clean on N0, so the fact it’s pretty verifiable didn’t really matter. I designed it as a mayorizer. If all 4 of the recipients voted the same target, their votes counted for double. And til the bitter end, it could make the village have extra votes, so they could hang in there as long as it survived. The mayor part was never relevant and this role was used as an alias-finder by the village. A better modification would have been to make the Beatles silent, though less fun.
Player: We need to have a talk about this man’s actions as town. First he gasses poor ria. Then he pulls some Unit 731 bs stealth-infecting jalmont with the plague. He’s suspicious. dak was randed this, which gave him an easy-to-prove role. They began using it as a fruit vendor to alias scout. He also chose to idle it on N0, which led to the mafia rand-targeting him but missing that he was a mayorizer because the ability checkers were designed to see what ability one actively used on that night… I perhaps should have made it display the villager’s ability at ALL, so dak would’ve been caught and killed sooner. He is a pretty level-headed village leader; I’ll fault him that he needs to let go of not letting ‘the children’ have info/agency. Also probably needs a game off from leading.
Role: The worst outcome guard, preventing someone from dying in a temple (or being hooked if that was the worst outcome, etc). You can target an alias with this and they will not keel over to RNG! The role name is something I gave zorbees long ago that nobody understood at the time.. And nobody understood it here. I am not sure why it was so unfathomable early that town would also have a worst outcome guard to enable them to explore risky temples.
Player: AG wound up randing his ability most of the early nights (onto mafia aliases rip) because the villager leaders kind of just ignored him? They never gave him instructions until they decided to try clearing him N3 and realized they had no idea what he had been doing. He went to the temples they instructed were safe like a good villager. The role was criminally underutilized by town leadership. It should’ve been on someone going to the high-risk adventure temples, or on Redless, so he could scout what potentially-dangerous temples sus aliases were going to. For some reason town leadership saw that his role was on the UP’s move pool announcement and thought AG must be mafia for it, after they had ignored AG most of the game, despite poor AG just going about his business and listening whenever they asked something of him.
Role: This was intended to be the main village info role, but with some downsides. It used to post the temple as well, but after I made the change that temple destruction killed the occupants, I deleted that since it was a free kill for the mafia if the temple wasn’t fortified lol. Originally it was able to check 2-3 people in a non-alias game of 30, which let it clean the whole game presuming it only targeted people who weren’t dying on the N10 to D11 update, which was about the time the village needed to be voting the last mafia member or they would lose. I thought it was weaker with aliases because people could just not go and buffed it to check 7 over 2 nights instead of 6 for the 36 player game, but with more opportunity to fumble the bag on that second night of 2. I am sure I will be criticized for what was SUPPOSED to be a fun but rather exploitable alliance checker. It was also susceptible to the results faker items (made weaker by aliases since mafia had to find it) and the dickens item, so it could have false-cleared a mafian. There was also significant disagreement with my ranking it a 5 on the Hwow Checker, BUT, it only worked N0, and in its original form it would’ve failed every single cycle.
Player: God when I tell you guys that I was in disbelief the RNG gave this slot to LN. I considered if I should move him off it, and honestly, I kinda do wish I gave it to someone like Galactikitty to see what a newer player would do with a role. That said, I did not expect this role would lead, because in the non-alias version it was extremely exploitable (hook, results faker), I expected it would stay hidden and let someone else lead, not pubclaim D1. But, LN is LN. A lot (?) of people speculated he was actually mafia because the role was ‘too busted’ on town. It was a little curious to me that dak/Mekkah/others just took LN’s role at face value and let him be the leader when, technically, his role cleared them but nobody ever checked LN. They didn’t really question it even after the UP proved they could spoof his role. Might’ve been a more dynamic game if they did actually vote him out in paranoia. I do think he missed a few details in this game, which wasn’t difficult to do because of how many moving pieces there were, but he agreed to sheet about as many villagers as the core members agreed were plausibly cleaned.
Upgrade result:
Role: At face value this is a weak hooker. It must be in a temple with someone to work, and works on everyone in the temple, so it will hook its village teammates unless they have a passive role that does not technically ‘cast’ to be hooked. But! If it hooked someone successfully, which took until N2 to happen, it upgraded to being alias-targeted. It could follow someone in and hook them, which was then further exploitable by mafia if they went into a village safe haven temple and mass-hooked the villagers there. The flavor is a callback to when female characters in movies were literally just there to prop up the male lead.
Player: Sigh. I have already discussed internet’s N0 actions and why he was subbed out. The PCTR knew this slot was like, more likely than not to be town as a result, but that was less severe than 5 of the 6 PCTR being outed. Duskfall98 came into the slot and was a little more cautious than I think was needed about his role and claiming it. I feel like some people keep expecting old-school Smogon OCs to have some wild twists and they are never designed to have like, “the entire 7 village leaders were all moles!” plausibly happening. Not anymore, anyway. But they play accordingly with that paranoia. He eventually proved his role and was brought into the fold, where he was perhaps surprised to find so many other villagers added.
Role: This role would give villagers safe havens, either for item gathering by fortifying useful temples (like the Arch of Constantine, which perhaps I made a bit too easy to access and too good) or easy-to-access ones so that villagers could get in without dying. By about N10, if the mafia were destroying every day, there would be 20 gone, and 10 fortified, if this role lived that long. The mafia would’ve needed to use temple redirects at that point to ensure their kills. BUT, I think this might’ve needed to be every-other-night. It’s hard because if mafia rand it early there are only a couple safe temples. If it lives 5ever it fortifies maybe too many. The mafia, of course, flamed this role hard for existing.
Player: next Circus MVP saber randed into Temple of Heaven when LN tried clearing it and just submitted a fortify on wherever he was going, including the Arch when the Arch was the best source of poison cures. He was later added to the village leader channel. Saber has learned a lot since he started playing OCs and TMIing in the game thread in MM3. He knows to keep things on the DL now!
Fake if successful:
Role: Ah reviving rogue. My old friend. This role was literally exactly as described. Amy’s role from the original Temple Mafia, with a little enhancement or two. It could also revive into the NPC, because that was always cool.
Player: Ullar was a tried and true golden villager, loyal to the leaders, always gave them results, even risked his life going into Torre del Oro for them and pulled out the best BPV/DPV in the game when they were hoping he was mafia and would RNG to his death! Unfortunately, and to my irritation, they never prioritized clearing his role over suspicious characters who caused LN’s role to fail, so he kinda just sat in his chat with the leaders telling them what he knew and asking for crumbs. He deserved better from the leadership.
Role: Standard conditional delayed killer. Could be cured with Rosemary, found in a couple different temples. If those temples were sealed, just like the mafia, it was lethal. There was a fourth item, the Marijuana, which was intended to let at least one of the poisoners pull off a kill because it claimed it could cure anyone. But anyone who knows me should know I would never make the devil’s lettuce a miracle fix-all, so it was actually just a placebo.
Player: des was forum-only, so thank you to the (almost all) not-old-guard players who tried to make her included and talk with her. She actually had the first (and best) reads of the game, that Flandrs and AP were scum! She received the UP hook flavor because NE unfortunately forgot to submit his fake flavor, but told LN she received “nothing” - I think she got a little confused/overwhelmed by what was going on by that point as she had idled and didn’t submit, so she asked to sub out. Pidge came in, was told his slot claimed in full to LN, and killed jalmont. He was then added to the actual 12 villagers.
Role: This medium went through a few incarnations. At first, it had to be in the temple a villager died in, and could only speak to that specific villager. Once I made temple destruction more of a mechanic (and a means to kill) I realized the role would probably not be able to actually be in the destroyed temples, so I changed it to needing to alias/temple match. I then made a #graveyard chat for villagers where they could continue playing based off whatever the medium told them, with no spoilers. This role was INTENDED to find out info from dead villagers that would implicate a mole in village leadership who was setting up town to die, hence why it initially could only speak to one at a time.
Player: But, of course, our best-laid plans go haywire. Mekkah dying with sheet/chat access and no suspicion dak/LN were moles turned the medium slot into an innocent child. It was not my intention that dead villagers be able to see the sheet/village leader chat, but since Mekkah could, it was either tell him to leave (not very fun), tell him to c/p things over for the other dead villagers (kind of work), or let the other deads in once Bass approved them. Oh well. Bass randed onto the village and I specifically put him here because he was gone the first 4 days of the game, and this role did not have anything to do until villagers die. And because it was funny after MM3 for him to get his nemesis of a role. Once he trusted the leaders and gained sheet from Mekkah he integrated himself into village leadership and began taking over some public roles from LN. At least he had more fun than in BIGSANDS! I would say this was probably one of the best-played village roles, though it did get away from me in its scope.
Role: This is kind of as-described. It gets the dirt on two temples a night, a role shared by the mafia but in the singular, so that each team could get in. This role could also catch someone lying about a result from a temple.
Player: Well at least pulsar got to have fun when Flandrs named her as his successor to DBD lol. She went right to LN, as any villager who is moling or doing mafia shenanigans ought to, to ensure they are trusted, and fed DBD enough half-truths and noncommittal answers to string him along until Laurel finally reached out. “Why would pulsar do this” re: NE. She won the 50/50 with Ecat when their LN scan turned up Town/Comedy since she had DAYS of logs planting her as non-team with DBD and was added to leadership. Another well-played village role.
Role: This one could initially only check 2-3 people. I made it 2-4 when the game went up to 36. It is capable of getting multiple roles in one night, including None if someone idled or had no role, but it can’t tie them to any aliases. More of the circumstantial solving requiring people to put multiple pieces of evidence together. It could catch people lying, or performing actions that weren’t part of the alleged mafia move pool. It was one of a few passive temple-based roles that could not be disrupted (but could be SGed) - there are mixed opinions on that design choice.
Player: Alice talked to a lot of folks and got herself added to the village leader channel. Then, the deads realized they weren’t sure WHY she was cleaned and added, so LN/Bass/dak pulled a ‘me and the boys’ to set her up to blow up Corvin, claiming there were multiple villagers inside. Alice, for some reason, thought it was St. Vitus they said had many people, and was confused when the mafia blew up the empty Corvin, by sheer dumb luck. She then produced a ton of logs of her with Ecat that heavily indicated they were not S/S, and was trusted again. Alice is probably the nicest person we have playing mafia, we should all be more like her.
Role: This role was originally a same-temple SG with a ‘twin’ that was a same-temple BG. I realized the latter and temple destruction did not work well together so I cut it, and then modified the same-temple SG to be replaced by the numerous identical but unique SG items found in temples. The Gelatinous Cube became a jailkeeper capable of temple redirecting, dragging someone along with them, or keeping someone safe (like Alice or aska, whose roles could not be hooked since they were passives).
Player: LW kinda helped M2H’s mislynch go through by randing him N0, preventing M2H from proving his flavor, and then staying quiet about having done it lol. He was cooperative with the leadership and proposed flinging himself at a high-death temple like Biete with a likely-scum. I think everyone ignored that his role protects people from abilities and KILLS, which I suppose is nebulous enough to exclude temple deaths, but let’s be real, the temples are killers. He was added to the village leadership because Alice saw his role, he always listened, and mafia did not seem to have a JKer themselves.
Role: Steals the items of anyone in its temple. Could not be hooked. Was supposed to go around temple-fishing to find mafia items.
Player: Poor genisu wanted to organize a trip to the Hagia Sophia but nobody else bought. Then, he got into Kalasan, said something in public that made one mafia think he was in there, and got himself/Mekkah/Former killed lmao. At least he got to hang around in deadchat when his dad wasn’t kicking him off his servers. No more slurs though, kid.
Role: What it says in the PM. Same-temple item SG, obviously meant to camp out in a fortified temple with other villagers.
Player: Don’t think he blocked a single theft all game because a. The mafia never used it b. The one time the village tried to prove his role they told him and the theft target to go to different temples lmao. Aska randed into LN’s check temple N0 and was not fully trusted by them for a while, so he sadly sat on the sidelines for a while before being granted access. I wish he had been on a bit more engaging of a role so he could participate more.
Role: I was surprised at how distrusted this role was at face value. It was the dreaded vanilla villager, but with temples, it had a twist! It could go speeding at the most dangerous temples every day looking for the best rewards.
Player: Yeah I thought it was funny to make Gmax the Very Vanilla Villager, considering:
dak — 06/30/2024 11:55 AM
and the fact that that fuck has never been village in his whole life
He misunderstood that his role only worked on the probability temples at first, so he spent a couple nights in the snake pits of Taq Kasra, and then he went on a fun journey to find the Sarcophagus. Stole it right under Celever’s corpse! Gmax never actually randed one of the death outcomes, so his role never ‘saved’ him. He was added to the village server to make sure there were ACTUALLY 12 actual villagers again, after LN died and made it only 11 villagers.
Role: Item scavenger off dead bodies. What it says in the role PM.
Player: Poor Gcat had an awful time of it. Nobody died with any items for DAYS. She was slated for clearing twice, only to be bounced by Redless, then redirected for death by PCTR. Her execution was stayed in a confusing move by the mafia, but she did find one of the better info items while she was in Tenochtitlan! She was frustrated she wasn’t given info, couldn’t be cleared through no fault of her own (and being absent from her anticipated temple twice made her look very suspicious), and had a cheeks role. I should have switched her (and other new villagers) onto a better role. She was finally cleared/trusted and given access, though!
Role: Temple tracker with two different options. It could either gain the information, or ride along into a temple if it felt daring or wanted to bypass entrance requirements. I’ll be honest, some days I was so tired after work doing updates. I had this role as ‘temple tracker’ on my sheet, I knew what it was, and I still sent Blazade the alias targets one cycle instead of the temple. This was also the final village role of the original 30p setup.
Player: Dickbags never let Blazade hop into anyone’s pocket. Blazade randed into LN’s clear N0 and was added after a cycle or two once he produced legitimate results. He helped out but didn’t take the lead, mostly just proofreading actions and making suggestions. I think a nice, easy game did him good - hope it did, anyway lol.
Role: This was a troll role. It originally only received the number, but I realized without any sort of meaningful scale or information to go with it, it was very, very bad. Like one could presume that a 2 would not be a factional kill. I thought it was funny to add as a sort of backup for the better role cop, the Crusader, and to maybe catch someone in a lie.
Player: And catch someone it did! Working as expected, I guess. Former died in the great double-bombing of Kalasan, then went on to work with Mekkah and Bass in #graveyard. He did get a little too paranoid of Alice, perhaps out of jealousy that her role was the superior version of his, but all’s well that ends well. I think that the #graveyard/medium mechanic worked out well for him, though, since it let him still be involved despite dying early.
Role: Expansion role 2, this was another very weak info role that could catch someone in a lie. That was my goal for this game, that the mafia lies would catch up with them if they started telling too many. I think the role was misunderstood: it only saw the result for the same cycle it was used.
Player: I think poor Lechen was forgotten about by the village. They never suspected him, and he did provide accurate results whenever someone on town got an item, but he was never sheeted or trusted. He just kinda hovered in ‘Town but not confirmed’ land with Ullar and Gmax. He was more active early, then went on vacation. I hope he had fun despite the weak role.
Role: You all said it couldn’t be done. You said bus drivers were inherently toxic and couldn’t be balanced. But here you have it. The TROLLey Driver. A bus driver so innocuous it almost doesn’t look like one at first. Meme status aside, this role was intended to give the village a way to shuffle any prying eyes away from an alias they want to keep secret. I made it operate silently, which I think was a mistake. I would make the driven info role know it was driven next time. I know people will meme but I actually do think this role, in its primitive trolley driver form, deserves some consideration for your next TvM game on the village.
Player: Did I shuffle Mekkah onto this role from another village role? Of course I did. One must always do the thing with the greatest comedic value. He was one of the players LN intended to try his role on N0, because mafia is nothing but a good ole boys club I guess, and was sheeted. His early double-death was truly sheer coincidence and had nothing to do with Mekkah being there at all. He gave Bass the sheet as of his death once he trusted that the medium was not a trick role (lol) and continued to help lead from beyond the grave.
Role: The final addition to the village, this was a second, weaker rogue. It could not prevent its own death, but it could trade 1 for 1 IF it was lucky with its targeting to find its killer. Its kill and its imminent death were both unblockable. It was weak, yes. That was by design. Not every village role can be strong. Some just need something to do.
Player: Ah UncleScam. He said ‘boring role can’t lead with this oh well’ and was then forced to sit back as Notorious Fellow Sweat LN lead this village, after Sam’s push for M2H to be voted D1. He then insisted his read was not wrong, M2H was in fact a death mole, Redless was also mafia, while the actual two mafias ignored his open buffooning as they knew death mole was no such thing in their powers. He sat back and kind of refused to cooperate with going to temples, insisted he was ‘cleared’ after being kidnapped, then threw a big fit about Laurel’s vote that ALMOST got the other villagers to deem him mafia mad that the last Utility was dying. Unfortunately, it was not quite enough. I think this game demonstrated where Sam could improve in ‘letting other kids play in my sandbox.’
I will finish and post my writeups on the mafias, temples, and items in Part 2.
Some role names for your next game inspired by my experience in this one:
Dear user, you are...
...Getting Cleaned N0 - vanilla, until N5 when your allegiance becomes public
...An Unprovable Role - village but inspects show up as mafia. True allegiance not revealed on death or in postgame
Dear user, you are...
...Getting Cleaned N0 - vanilla, until N5 when your allegiance becomes public
...An Unprovable Role - village but inspects show up as mafia. True allegiance not revealed on death or in postgame
Literally none of us thought DBD was legit, atp I think there’s just something about how he interacts on Discord that always feels… a lil sussy
my guy if you thought my answer wasn't specific enough then tell me or ask for my role PM, don't fuck us both over lmaoLiterally none of us thought DBD was legit, atp I think there’s just something about how he interacts on Discord that always feels… a lil sussy
My record of hard throwing in every Big game remains unbroken, lesgoooo
Here are my thoughts on the game:
The town crier role and permanent reinforcer roles are overtuned. 5 Clears on n0 is pretty absurd though I know this is also just terrible RNG.
Comedy representative did a poor job in convincing us they were comedy to the point we told them to DM Pulsar as a troll and they actually did.
We played horribly. There are tons of examples of this including inexperienced people copy/pasting that they went into a temple that only mafia can enter… I assumed we could fake all players in a temple to look town, I did not realize our solution was sending another person to try and bypass a scan. I regret not taking a more proactive approach in selecting our actions.
We had horrible early RNG which denied us information.
Hindsight is 20/20 but the only way mafia has a chance is for both to n0 claim and connect with each other. Zorbees got a dm from comedy as well, but it didn’t show up in his messages for some reason.
Lastly, if I survived my lynch, I had an item called sheep’s clothing from Genghis Khan which probably bought me 3-4 more days because it smurfed all results on me to look exactly like I wanted them too.. thanks Sam for your effort.. (Town Relic, No Aliases Ever Targeted, etc.) but I was not around to submit my actions and our team legitimately did submit the wrong templ as I clearly stated I should just go to Hwangymong.. unfortunately, the temple they randed me too had the all-temple town hooker.
I really wish I understood the setup more from the onset and how to perform because I do think that if we worked with 12 actions with the other mafia on n0 this game is way better. I apologize to Yeti for not realizing this is how the game was meant to be played but also am a little upset because I know it shouldn’t squarely fall on my shoulders to realize this.
I do think that games moving forward should have some element on n0 of “this is how I recommend playing” especially since many of us are playing these setups for the first time. I think my mafia game would have benefited from it and this game too.
Lastly for the people with more experience, this is a very small community and your tones can be incredibly condescending. I’m unlikely to play another OC game because I can’t deal with people belittling me. I’m sorry you all have 15 years of experience and many of us have 2-3 games but saying “claim or your scum” and similar shit — when you frankly are not cleared and Yeti was literally writing fake role PMs is egregious.
Thanks again to Yeti for hosting and to the town, I don’t take this personally at all, we got roasted, GGs
The town crier role and permanent reinforcer roles are overtuned. 5 Clears on n0 is pretty absurd though I know this is also just terrible RNG.
Comedy representative did a poor job in convincing us they were comedy to the point we told them to DM Pulsar as a troll and they actually did.
We played horribly. There are tons of examples of this including inexperienced people copy/pasting that they went into a temple that only mafia can enter… I assumed we could fake all players in a temple to look town, I did not realize our solution was sending another person to try and bypass a scan. I regret not taking a more proactive approach in selecting our actions.
We had horrible early RNG which denied us information.
Hindsight is 20/20 but the only way mafia has a chance is for both to n0 claim and connect with each other. Zorbees got a dm from comedy as well, but it didn’t show up in his messages for some reason.
Lastly, if I survived my lynch, I had an item called sheep’s clothing from Genghis Khan which probably bought me 3-4 more days because it smurfed all results on me to look exactly like I wanted them too.. thanks Sam for your effort.. (Town Relic, No Aliases Ever Targeted, etc.) but I was not around to submit my actions and our team legitimately did submit the wrong templ as I clearly stated I should just go to Hwangymong.. unfortunately, the temple they randed me too had the all-temple town hooker.
I really wish I understood the setup more from the onset and how to perform because I do think that if we worked with 12 actions with the other mafia on n0 this game is way better. I apologize to Yeti for not realizing this is how the game was meant to be played but also am a little upset because I know it shouldn’t squarely fall on my shoulders to realize this.
I do think that games moving forward should have some element on n0 of “this is how I recommend playing” especially since many of us are playing these setups for the first time. I think my mafia game would have benefited from it and this game too.
Lastly for the people with more experience, this is a very small community and your tones can be incredibly condescending. I’m unlikely to play another OC game because I can’t deal with people belittling me. I’m sorry you all have 15 years of experience and many of us have 2-3 games but saying “claim or your scum” and similar shit — when you frankly are not cleared and Yeti was literally writing fake role PMs is egregious.
Thanks again to Yeti for hosting and to the town, I don’t take this personally at all, we got roasted, GGs
you aren't the only person feeling belittled, condescended and insulted in this game buddy.
Thoughts on the game from my point of view:
I have no idea what the UPs were doing when they redirected me to Pulsar. Even if my answer wasn't specific enough, tell me or ask for my role PM, and don't screw both our factions over when town is already steamrolling us. Jesus.
Permanent reinforcer is quite annoying, we didn't know of its existence and by the time we had located it LN was confirmed to be town and I guess we could've hooked it to no benefit as they had all of our info. It seemed overtuned to be honest with you, and the fact that this was an alias game made it so much harder to find Saber (we randed the temple destruction that led to his death).
Town Crier was used well, but real shame it was stuck on the main sweat and experienced horse of Circus Maximus in LN, he used it to just claim village leader and run over us.
Sadly I threw by being overcritical of LN (the LN-run propaganda machine has forced me to say this) and giving a weaker roleclaim than NE, but overall I'd say this was a decent game by me punctuated by a few mistakes both by me and the other faction.
I have no idea what the UPs were doing when they redirected me to Pulsar. Even if my answer wasn't specific enough, tell me or ask for my role PM, and don't screw both our factions over when town is already steamrolling us. Jesus.
Permanent reinforcer is quite annoying, we didn't know of its existence and by the time we had located it LN was confirmed to be town and I guess we could've hooked it to no benefit as they had all of our info. It seemed overtuned to be honest with you, and the fact that this was an alias game made it so much harder to find Saber (we randed the temple destruction that led to his death).
Town Crier was used well, but real shame it was stuck on the main sweat and experienced horse of Circus Maximus in LN, he used it to just claim village leader and run over us.
Sadly I threw by being overcritical of LN (the LN-run propaganda machine has forced me to say this) and giving a weaker roleclaim than NE, but overall I'd say this was a decent game by me punctuated by a few mistakes both by me and the other faction.
I think it is unlucky that you were not in contact with like me or zorb that night. I think given you were town fishing for information which is what we thought, telling you to speak to Pulsar was fine. I wish we had asked the other question which was “how do mafia roles work” but flandrs was pretty busy that night and had very limited time to talk. I think the blame does not fall on Flandrs alone though, if you had voluntarily offered up more information we would have known you were mafia. I also think your mafia should have provided you with more context of what to say to convince us.
Had we connected at that point, while we likely do stand a much better chance the game is still very hard with 5 clears so I wouldn’t beat yourself up.
you jabbed at me throughout the game as well and this seems pretty silly given I’m obviously mafia trying to convince you that the obvious town clear is sus. sorry if your feelings were hurt but please don’t act like it wasn’t mutual.
I did try contacting Zorbees that night but apparently some Discord shenanigans meant that he had to approve the message and so didn’t see it
i mean the night previous when you spoke with flandrs
i jabbed at you only after you started talking shit about me. Before that our conversations were cordial even though I did not believe what you said about LN. no beef though
I am onto the adventure temples with death as a result section (which is the last section) but not gonna finish it tonight. Look forward to part 2 tomorrow!
I really liked the medium role. That combined with mafia being able to talk in their chat while dead means that players get to play even if they got targeted or unlucky at the start. Really cool concept that makes games more fun to play for everyone.
Postgame Part 2
The Mafia:
Rather than dissect individual misplays by the mafia members, of which there were multiple, I will instead use this section to offer some helpful advice for our intrepid youngsters. Some shoutouts to good moments:
Realiti: probably the best mechanical player with the strongest action submissions and most direction with his choices. Master of RNG picking strong village aliases, too. I am uncertain why NE refused to sheep those submissions and changed them to his own picks, realiti was bigbraining!
Ecat: great fakeclaim, a bold move picking full BG but well-rewarded by the village lacking a BG due to the temple mechanics. Got a misvote onto M2H D1 with his claim! Has great “I’m noobtown” energy.
AP/DBD: two promising whippersnappers who need to hone their craft and consider how they come off in public to let them blend in. Mafia’s not all mechanics, it’s a social game, too. These guys def have the sauce to become great.
Celever: certified not a pussy. Was proud he got his fake together and claimed ASAP, the village didn’t have much suspicion on him outside of the overlapping claim with pulsar. I think if he didn’t die to RNG he could have gone far this game.
NE: absolute master of server organization. With some mentorship to refine his action choices and direction I think he will be an excellent player with a lot of energy. Would love to see him get ‘a sweat’ to help sharpen the blade next game.
Laurel: made a hard pivot on his social game when he realized it was tanking him and he needed to buy time to get the Sheep’s Clothing onto himself. Excellent recalculation of his tactics. I think he’s another who could benefit from a mentor helping him learn how to direct his energy.
Jalmont: was not feeling great a lot of the game but did his best to provide guidance to his team when he could and accurately read all the early scumclaiming as townies to avoid. I know he may not be the most proud of his performance but I saw effort and commitment to the cause.
Bluedoom: very ambitious fake that made the village leadership doubt it was a fake at all because of the levels to it. Step above the usual easy-to-catch mafia fakes - though it was a little too complex to sustain in the long run. Would love to see him go to the next level in the next game, either with moling or with leadership.
Flandrs and Day were not super active while alive and the former was voted out D2, but I hope they enjoyed the experience all the same and will take some of the lessons from this game into their next one! Zorbees was also an early death but I think he did well trying to get himself cozied up to LN for help with poisoning, etc.
The mafia move pool:
All-temple hooker (this hooks everyone in your specified TEMPLE):
Meant to punish publicizing fortification and turtling there, or good moling to figure out where multiple villagers were going.
Single-target hooker (this hooks the specified ALIAS):
A more standard and targeted means of disabling an ability.
Single-target martyr:
No martyr was on the village so this would let mafia fakeclaim a pretty darn believable role, and have some hooker-esque disruption.
Safeguard:
Standard.
Bodyguard:
Also standard. One of their best fakeclaims as it turned out.
Thief:
Standard.
All-temple ability inspector (this ability checks everyone in your specified TEMPLE):
Would get alias:ability for everyone in a temple. Meant to reward mafia finding out where people would be, and punish turtling by exposing town info.
Single-target ability inspector:
Reliable means of getting info. This was originally a full inspector but I removed inspectors from the game altogether, which made the Ghost role a little difficult to deal with in retrospect.
2-ALIAS item safeguard:
Kind of bad but like, it’s something to do.
All-temple sheriff (this alliance checks everyone in your specified TEMPLE):
Not the MOST informative thing because if the mafia work together they know what aliases are town, but it lets them scout for where villagers are.
Vote negator (target can vote but it counts for 0):
Was originally persuader but I don’t like giving teams ways to username:alias match. Lets the mafia play with votes in the lategame if they want.
Temple watcher:
Equivalent of the Ghost’s role except it was supposed to see attempted visits as well as successful visits and I think I did not always give results accurately for that, oops.
Temple tracker:
Equivalent of the Zune role, sees where an alias goes.
Fake temple track/watch plant:
Lets them spoof their own aliases onto somewhere they suspect is being checked to not look sus, or spoof someone somewhere they shouldn’t be. This is probably best utilized if the mafia mole and are able to see where the Ghost/Zune are looking.
Mask temple track/watch:
Hides an alias from showing at a temple on track/watch, useful for pretending like you weren’t somewhere you shouldn’t be.
Temple probability/entrance check:
Equivalent of the Two-Party System role except only gives a single temple’s info each night.
Temple redirect:
Forces someone into another temple from their original choice. Can be used to set up big bombs on temples by pushing people in successfully, OR to fail people at the door to solo-kill them.
Item graverobbber (targets dead ALIAS):
Item scavenger, not a great role especially because I let the mafias pass items during the day (I shouldn’t have let anyone pass items at day).
Announcer:
A late addition to the lineup just to give them something else believable to fakeclaim as, if they wanted.
All-temple worst outcome guard:
I did miswrite this role between the sheet and the PM, it was supposed to be single-target but I made it all-temple here and I think had it work as single-target for most of the game until realiti pointed out it said ‘all-temple.’
Temple probability/outcome path - night-based:
This was kind of troll, it was actually a cut village role and was only intended as a very believable and easy to prove fakeclaim. Of course it required long-term commitment to the bit if one went to unique temples, but, I think it was a great way to worm your way in to trust.
Every-Other-Night Delayed Poison:
Arsenic Poisoning / Proper Comedic Timing / Activated Charcoal
Poison Hemlock / Utility Players / Turmeric Root
Delayed poison to give mafia extra KP. Wound up being very bad no good because one mafia only targeted the other with it (cough Comedy) and the village found/fortified Constantine instantly.
Factional Kill:
Would be blocked by BG/being inside a temple. If it was blocked, would unlock temple destruction during the day.
Temple Destruction:
This mechanic let mafia kill an unlimited number of villagers (assuming nobody protected) if they were in an unfortified temple. Obviously moling into the village or luring people to go with you to somewhere like Hagia Sophia was recommended to pull this off. Neither tactic was successfully utilized.
One point of discussion is mafia action economy. With so many actions, they obviously cannot use them all in one night. I would posit that a normal TvM scumteam would only have one action per member, so I don’t feel like having them only choose one ability to use a night is underpowered or out of sorts. I think there is good cause to say that poisoning should have been an ‘in addition to’ like the factional kill, instead of taking the place of a move pool slot.
It was always meant to be a choice, to some degree. It was up to individual mafia members how long they wanted to keep up their fake charades. Bluedoom realized his fake required significant investment of their economy to keep up, and could be caught if the mafia SG was used on a target that was targeted by a non-disruptive. The SG would also block their ability cop, so he couldn’t provide an accurate result. That’s the name of the game. Forsaking your claim’s activities or making a claim that let you not need to provide tangible results was an option. It really depended on how mafia wanted to play it.
Perhaps one track that could’ve been taken is to divide the roles into Tier 1 and Tier 2, with Tier 1 being obvious-mafia-activities like hooking and role copping, and probably a full inspector so they could get surefire info (or making their role cop work different to the village’s on villagers). And the mafia slots could use a Tier 1 and Tier 2 ability each night, 1 for advancing their wincon, 2 for providing fakeclaim cover. In theory, they did not need this. In practice, it may have freed up their economy to punish LN for publicizing too much information, as this didn’t seem to have ever occurred to them around maintaining their fakes and bumbling (sorry) around to get info.
With aliases enabled, the mafia were missing a role that let them watch a temple to see what aliases also targeted the temple (and thus find the Town Crier, Ghost, etc). That’s probably the most valid criticism of mafia weakness in this game, because I really don’t think they WERE weak.
They had the capability to mass-detonate villagers and never really did anything to ensure they could. They weren’t talking to villagers trying to arrange visits. They weren’t pushing their advantages, which very quickly turned into having severe disadvantages. If they coordinated on D2, and Utility stayed on Taq Kasra, that was 5 villagers dead in one cycle. Which is about as many as they killed the rest of the game. Oof.
They had the ability to punish LN severely for publicizing fortified temples. If they all-hooked and ability copped Heaven and Constantine, suddenly you have 10+ villagers saying “I’ve been hooked because I went where LN said!” and maybe people trust him a lot less.
They just didn’t do this. They couldn’t get out of their own ways. One would suggest temple redirecting to ensure a kill went off and the others would hem and haw about doing it until it was deadline and what they submitted wasn’t REALLY optimal, probably because they were greeting for more temple destructions. The problem was, they weren’t using their actions to ensure they knew WHERE to destroy, nor using the social side of the game to root out where villagers were.
My suggestions to aspiring young scumteams:
Start planning your actions before deadline is looming. Please. I feel like there was always a rush at the end by mafia that did not exist on town (by necessity, they have to PM people instructions) and they would kind of ask each other “do you think I should do this?” “should we do that?” and run out of time to really settle on any solid plans. Now, imo, the question you should be asking is, “what do we hope to accomplish doing this?”
It didn’t feel to me like either mafia was really thinking through what they wanted to get out of using their actions, with the exception of, figuring out how to use them for their fakeclaims. They did great on that front imo. But when it came to figuring out what to do with your all-temple hook and all-temple ability checker, the planning fell flat. When realiti took his hand at directing actions he would label what he wanted to happen with the kills and temple redirects, which I thought was extremely helpful, because previously there was a lot of “should we kill-kill or try to bomb” surrounding that.
It probably would have helped if they designated someone to break down the actions and figure out a best use for each one, so when they looked at “what should I do” they could easily pick out “let me do something that disrupts a temple” or whatever.
They would also submit some weird temple choices. This game’s design was for the mafia to be caught by their lies instead of by an inspector checking their aliases in unison. The village had no alias-targeting info role in the traditional sense, only tracker/item result checker/I guess hooker became a tracker. The mafia would then just… lie. About stupid stuff. Town told Laurel to go somewhere and for whatever reason NE wanted him to go to possibly the worst temple he could’ve gone to instead, NE suggested a claim to cover why Laurel went to a random place (not even a temple that gave him anything useful for his troubles lol), being SGed and redirected, and Laurel did not claim that. Which of course exposed he SGed himself and that’s why he didn’t have Tommy’s hook flavor despite being in Cashel. Added benefit of pushing AG further into the “oh this guy is clean actually” area, because AG’s result did line up.
Think about your story before you tell it. Yes, being scum is a little more taxing than being town, because you have to lie about some things. Consider what you are lying about and how you’re keeping your story straight. I think the mafia’s heads started spinning from trying to keep their fakeclaims together and do things that benefited their wincon, so maybe be tracking what lies you tell people so you can easily refer to your established logic for a decision.
I was criticized for not “telling the mafia to make fakes on N0 and guiding them more.” I don’t think this is my job as a host, and I stepped in a little more than I thought a host should have to guide the mafia when it became clear the struggle bus was not slowing down. I also told them to make a channel in their Discord servers FOR fake discussion/planning when I sent the team PM.
I wrote their fakes, I copy/pasted villager wording to keep things consistent, I told them in their team PMs to discuss their fakes, I even let them submit fake flavor so they couldn’t be caught by that, and they STILL would forget to submit flavor to be used for their fakes.
I am not sure what else a host can do if the mafia just forget to submit stuff. Yes, one can argue that “a sweat” on their team would have done the submitting for them, or nagged them to submit themselves. At a certain point, though, I do feel like players need to take full responsibility for their own fake/actions, and ensure that their fake is fully set up without expecting the more experienced person on their team to babysit that process. Or, even worse, expecting the host to babysit it.
Like I really do feel this format was very scum-friendly and gave them a lot of room to be creative with how they moled or disrupted the village. They were able to spoof LN’s role in public, down to the flavor. If they guessed the number right he literally would not have been able to tell which result was his. The capacity was there.
The potential of the move pool was not reached, or, maybe the root issue, grasped by the scumteams. Maybe there were too many options and they just didn’t pick out the most important roles to use for pro-scum activities, instead of ‘how can I support my fakeclaim’ activities.
I do think the mafia came up with some great fakes. Ecat’s BG claim contributed to M2H’s misvote, because his claim was seen as more credible and as a staple of the village. Some of the Utility claims overlapped with villager roles, but were still solid concepts, and led to confusion by the village leaders about the nature of Gmax’s pure-passive role.
I think the newcomers were an eager crop of folks who didn’t really ‘settle down’ into the scum roles and take a good, hard look at their abilities and how to utilize them to disrupt town, despite their proficiency at looking town with good fakes for a while.
I also encourage mafia members to consider HOW you come across in public. Too many of you open gooned by opposing LN when it was clear that dissenting village voices faded away. Yes, the game is not going great for your team. If you make that frustration public, people will suspect you are on the rough times scum team, and not on the town. If you show up with a proofed fake and hand your alias over readily, you will not be on the chopping block for a bit. Sometimes, you need to blend in by your public persona. Sheep LN. Give him a couple strokes (ok maybe don’t do this) of how great he is for voting out a mafia. Don’t give the village leaders an opportunity to be like “lol this guy is so salty and opposed, must be mafia,” if there is not enough on-town dissension for you to blend in with.
Item management was another big issue for both mafias. They both had results-faking items and did not ask enough questions about using them to realize they could spoof LN’s results, which would have false-cleared Ecat, potentially. I know there were a LOT of things to manage in this game, so maybe designating one member of your team to keep track of all relevant info for: actions, temples, tidbits picked up in public, items, idk, whatever else you could keep track of. That might’ve helped you guys stay organized and aware of what tools were at your disposal.
I’d also say maybe come up with some Big Plays of your own? Public claim that one of you greenchecked the other, solicit claims, try to arrange temple visits. Aliases are on, so people can’t find you even if they do sus you out. Come on and have fun with it! Be creative on what public role you can spoof with announcer, come up with something quirky enough to seem real, extort some info before you go down.
TL;DR of my advice:
- Slow down N0 and make sure you understand what factional tools are available to you.
- Get your fakes in order on N0, especially if the host will help you with them.
- Start your actions early in the night phase, giving yourself plenty of time to discuss as a team.
- When discussing your actions, include and ask about the why’s behind each choice and target. It may help you catch a foolish decision or a conflicting role.
- Make sure you are keeping track of your items and things you learn about other users/aliases in the game.
- Make sure you are keeping track of your lies. Oftentimes you see people go “I don’t remember what I said to who” and you tell on yourself.
- Pay attention to your public persona and how ingratiated you are with leadership/other players.
- Alliances and cooperation are important in games like 1 town 2 mafia, multifaction, etc. Do not give away all your information to someone you cannot win with, but don’t shoot yourself in the foot having bad comms or teamwork when you need something from someone.
- You don’t have to wait for an actual villager to claim cleaned and leading, you can stir up claims yourself.
- If some schmuck DMs you to add them to your server, DO NOT. DON’T.
Solving the Game
The game took a very unexpected turn for me, as I fully thought the village would suffer heavy losses early and NEED the temple sealing comeback mechanism. Instead the Medium was running out of fodder to temple-match and access #graveyard. Who woulda guessed. Turtling in the fortified temples was intended, and still punishable if scum found out what temples there were. I thought LN publicizing them was an absolutely terrible play by him with the tools the mafia had at hand, but they never once made him regret it.
Despite the mafia’s, uh, difficulties in securing kills, I thought the village side played out as expected.
The Hwow Checker caught one guy in a lie, and only because that guy later admitted to what temple he was in when he didn’t have to. I think the Crusader (Ability Checker) only checked villagers, up until DayDiamond accidentally stumbled into the cleaning temple. So the Crusader’s evidence for or against someone was “well, if they aren’t lying.”
The Town Crier was thwarted three of the six times it was used, it almost went over capacity N0, and it put Ecat and pulsar in a 50/50 against each other another day. I think all of its confirmed clears were added to village leadership, but both mafias were VERY close to being able to dupe it. If Laurel didn’t SG himself and go to the wrong temple the night prior to his demise, he would’ve Sheeps Clothinged himself and appeared town to LN - or, at least, shown up on sunny’s watch as expected. He could’ve then been cleaned next night and shown up as town.
LN said he enjoyed having to post stories of the accused’s crimes, since the village could never point and say “look our inspector said he mafia.” It is reasonable to say I shouldn’t have taken the full inspector out of the mafia’s move pool, especially since I made idling give a None result since ability checkers were based on that night’s role used.
For the village, though, they solved as I had hoped they would. They put together the pieces, they found a couple items that confirmed people were doing things they shouldn’t. For example, the full targeting history for DBD’s alias showing him targeting 2 people 2 nights, and a temple the other 2 nights, when his claim was every-other-night hooker. A liar! The full watcher history on Tommy’s alias showed realiti targeting Tommy one night, when realiti claimed pure passive. Another liar!
I do think that, without scum knowing the extent of items in the game, they didn’t craft their fakes and action choices QUITE carefully enough to avoid these items outting them. That was always the design, though, that given enough time and enough lies, the info items would expose the scum, if the village could find and target them right.
I’ve seen people say I should have made this a 1v1 if the mafia were “meant to work together” but I feel like people have maybe just forgotten that is how a 1v2 is meant to go, the mafia join up for a bit to avoid crossfire but will need to stab at some point. Also, if one mafia had ‘a sweat’ psychopath who figured out how to ravage the village numbers by temple destruction, I don’t think there would be as much Discourse about the 1v2 format, nor quite as much need for the mafias to be buddy-buddy since town’s numerical advantage would be stripped.
The mafia side of things obviously backfired and did not go as planned. The village side worked as I hoped. They never had ‘lock scum because the inspector got a role pm,’ they caught people in lies and voted (or infected) them accordingly. So I am pleased with that front. They were also able to sheet the vast majority of the village off of circumstantial evidence in the townspeoples’ favor. If the game was going worse then more caution would have sadly been needed.
Actual channel of 12 actual villagers!
The Temples and Items
I will go over the items with the temple(s) they were available in, since almost all of them were unique to a temple. Like the first Temple Mafia, these were side-quests people could go on to receive perks or hindrances depending on their RNG/adventure path. Sometimes even death, because that’s the funniest outcome!
Full pathways and flavors are available in the linked Google Doc I used to write out all relevant things to copy/paste for this game. Having to go look up each result for a role, an item, a temple, etc. was part of what made updates take so long, as there was a LOT of stuff to c/p and I didn’t want anyone’s results to be inconsistent (until we reached the point where the PoE was very exposed and about to go next).
Chichester Cathedral, Temple of Heaven, St. Vitus Cathedral
Entrance: None
Results: 60% unique SG item, 40% non-unique announcer item
Three identical temples that awarded a unique SG item that restocked on use, or a scroll that was either for announcing, anon voting, or sacrificing to better temples. Intended to be a safe place with one possible actual reward. Like you could turtle there and get a SG every phase you used it but not much else.
Rock of Cashel
Entrance: None
Results: PR 100%
Kizhi Pogost
Entrance: Say “Let me in”
Results: PR 100%
But Thap Temple
Entrance: Go in a pair (2 people total)
Results: PR 100%
Somnath Temple
Entrance: Go with 2 others (3 people total)
Results: PR 100%
Kalasan Temple
Entrance: At least 2 people
Results: PR 100%
Bait temples lol, the lot of them. They won’t kill you. They’re even quite safe! But they can give away you are in them. Some of y’all have such sticks up your butt about playing along with PRs. Some of y’all have a sense of humor. Respect to the ones who went hard in the paint for their PRs. Shame to the ones who didn’t vote to avoid their PR.
Hagia Sophia
Entrance: At least 4 people
Results: Nothing 33% Role Name Checker 33% Ability Checker 34%
Village-friendly temple with some weak info items. They restocked on use, and were considered a separate item to the versions found in other temples. There could only be one Hagia-Monocle out at a time. It was sealed off early and never gone to. I think these items are find, I guess Monocle is essentially a sheriff item since a role name mismatch is quite convicting for mafia.
Great Mosque of Samarra, Selimiye Mosque, Great Mosque of Djenne
Entrance: Go 2 nights in a row, alone
Results: Activated Charcoal, Rosemary, Turmeric Root 100% respectively
The cure items! I shuffled around how to get the cure items quite a bit and I think Constantine is the biggest area of this game you can flame me for. These temples were intended that you could always get the cure, as each temple awarded one item, if you knew where to go, but the delay on getting the cure would probably mean someone died early before figuring it out. Or, they could be bamboozled by mafia trying to go to the temple and bouncing them on the ‘alone’ requirement. I like these 3 temples as cure distributors. They are easy to destroy as well if you want to shut down access to your poison.
Hassan Tower
Entrance: Go alone
Results: Persuade 25% Temp Item Vault 25% Marijuana 25% Nothing 25%
Not a great temple to fortify or destroy since only one person can be inside at a time, but when you’re the mafia this game, it’s better than your usual kills per day… Only source of the persuade item, which let you control someone’s vote. I like the temple as a concept, though. It was the only RNG with 4 possible outcomes. Perhaps I should have done more like that, and fewer PR temples.
Todai-ji Temple
Entrance: Even nights only
Results: Item Disabler 45% Silenced 45% Death 10%
Taq Kasra Temple
Entrance: Odd nights only
Results: Roleblocker 45% Roleblocked 45% Death 10%
These two twin temples were even and odd night entry. One could either roleblock you or give you a targeted roleblocker (since the Love Interest was only sometimes one), and the other gave you an item disabler or silenced you. The Deep Sea Diving Suit was very misunderstood and Gmax sacrificed it to Theodoric twice. Very sad. It was intended to use on someone to disable a BPV or LPV if you thought they had one, or disable their roleblocker item, or what have you, but the circumstances in which it could’ve had a tremendous impact lategame did not manifest as well. The Music Box I think needs no explanation.
Biete Amanuel
Entrance: Say “please”
Results: Death 40% Thief Item 30% Temp Item Vault 30%
BAIT. Since the village had a temple-based thief, and the mafia might not want to put action economy into thieving, here was an item to do just that. The Diversion Safe was a one-time insurance against a thief, so teams could store their valuables in it. Biete itself is total bait though lmao, the rewards can be gotten elsewhere and are not worth the highest death percent in the game. Unless you’re Gmax. Then you can go. Biete wound up with the best kill percentage, taking out three mafia in one night!
Borgund Stave Church
Entrance: None
Results: Marijuana, Hooked, Safeguarded
Borgund is fairly safe but has an obvious downside in a third of the paths leading to hooked. It’s not really a great temple, since Marijuana is bait, but it is A temple one can easily get into. Marijuana I was so upset nobody ever tried to cure someone with only for them to die anyway. It was a placebo, of course I wouldn’t have this thing actually help anyone’s problems!
Brihadisvara Temple
Entrance: None
Results: PR, Thief Item, Target History Checker
I will accept flame for putting Dead Sea Scroll in a temple that is both easy and safe, as Brihadisvara is. The other comprehensive info items were locked behind temples with worse outcomes than a PR (which nobody who received it actually tried to do, you all suck). Funnily enough town was never able to get a second copy, they kept picking the wrong re-randed paths. I suppose, though, that if things went disastrously wrong for the village like I anticipated, the Dead Sea Scroll could’ve been a saving grace for a ravaged town.
Maria Laach Abbey
Entrance: Have successfully completed an action the prior night
Results: Marijuana
This temple originally rewarded priority changes but I decided I didn’t want to deal with that bs and made it COMPLETE BAIT. Honestly, a waste of a temple, and it was destroyed D1. Would redo into something more interesting but I felt like I needed some bait temples to prevent too many good items from entering the game.
Genoa Cathedral
Entrance: None
Results: Results Faker, Ability Checker, Vote Negated
The other home of the Magnifying Glass. I think that Genoa is a pretty good temple. It offers a mafia-sided item, a village-sided item, and a punishment that grows worse in severity as the game goes on and votes begin to matter. The Fake Painting unfortunately sat in the Comedy inventory unused once they obtained it as they couldn’t figure out how to implement it. The unfortunate resting place of NE, killed by pulsar not telling the Comedies smh.
Corvin Castle
Entrance: None
Results: Item Checker, Temple History Checker, Role Name Checker
Other home of the Monocle as well. This temple probably should have had a fourth, negative outcome, but I also didn’t want every temple to have some risk for some reward, if the village needed scraps. The Travel Log is a way to verify if someone is lying or not about what temples they went to, such as if they snaked LN’s role. Perhaps too info-heavy of a temple and one of the results should have been non-info. The Magnet was about the only way to check someone’s held items without being a thief, obviously intended for thieves to know where to go. It should have been a little more plentiful because thieving was very irrelevant this game.
Arch of Constantine
Entrance: Do not hold a cure item
Results: Marijuana, Activated Charcoal, Turmeric Root, Rosemary
I regret Constantine. When I was fiddling around with the temples, specifically the cure items and how they could be accessed, I had a moment of severe village-siding weakness and wanted there to be a decent but not assured source of cure items. It would take four people going here and each picking a different path to ensure you received the specific cure item you needed. But, it made mafia poisons entirely irrelevant (not that the Comedies ever poisoned a villager for it to matter…), and because the mafia were not bothering with Constantine, required more investment by them to cure the plague. Which, like, was the point in a game where the village took the expected number of losses. In this game, Constantine being fortified on N1 was toxic af.
Hwangnyong Temple
Entrance: Say “open sesame”
Results: Results Faker, Safeguard, Items Stolen, Hooked
An oft-visited temple despite the fact it had two bad results, and the items needed to be used to restock, so there was literally nothing in it. Poor Alice was mugged twice by this temple. This was the source of the Spoofer the UP obtained, which led to Laurel’s lies catching up to him about how he obtained it, because that conflicted with his earlier claims about N1. The Spoofer was only used once, by the village, to mask jalmont’s infection with the plague, so the mafia would not cure him. Sick and twisted. Pork was a clone of the other SG items. I think Hwangnyong was a well-designed temple by me, but definitely not one I would have chosen to fortify or return to often.
Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan
Entrance: At least 2 people, 1 sacrifices an item
Results: Death, Vig Shot, Watch History Checker
I think Tenochtitlan was an excellent temple. It required investment to get into, 33% chance of death, but also huge rewards if you picked the right path. The Guest Book is obviously a town-sided reward, which will let them catch any aliases that were doing something they really shouldn’t have been doing (realiti was caught targeting Tommy when he claimed pure passive for example). Yoko Ono (dak’s PM warned about her!) was a one-shot kill that bypassed temple protection, but not BG or jailkeep protection (or BPV). Any team can utilize her. The Comedy tried to get back in here to find Yoko Ono again, but were unable to successfully reenter.
Temple of the Sun
Entrance: Go 3 nights in a row
Results: Death, BPV, SG
I think that going 3 nights in a row, and getting in on the third, was a bad entrance requirement. Very few roles except the village would want to invest in getting nothing for two nights, while also risking death. The Ghost is the obvious candidate to go here, since the Ghost cannot be nightkilled outside a temple. It is not very mafia-sided. The Solar Panel was the weakest BPV as it only blocked one way to die, but I mean, it helps, if you need to absorb some KP. Abuela was a funny SG flavor but she was never found, sadly.
Great Tent of Genghis Khan
Entrance: Must have been responsible for a death, via nightkill or on-wagon vote
Results: Death, Dickens Item, Flip Tailor Item
This is “the mafia temple,” yes, although contrary to initial belief it was not exclusively available to the mafia. LN lied about this when voting out Day. Mafia probably should be going here, which makes it an excellent watch target for the Ghost. Unfortunately, the cycle they decided to start putting sunny on Genghis was the cycle the UP decided to send Day. There is risk in this temple, of course, but I think the rewards are extremely strong. The only cardflip-altering item or role in the game (UncleScam currently in shambles M2H was lying), which could throw public leadership into chaos. Perhaps, I will say, the item was not available ‘early enough’ to make a difference since there has to have been a wagon or nightkill to enable someone to go. Sheep’s Clothing was a silent dickens that would give whatever fabricated result the item-holder selected upon an info role hitting it. Laurel would have shown as Town Relic on LN’s check, for example. Unfortunately his activities caught up to him once Gcat was sheeted and posted logs with him. And after he told the Comedies to spare her! I think this was a strong temple. Probably the first candidate for the village to seal, if they want to cut off access to falsifying items.
Humayun's Tomb
Entrance: Must sacrifice an item
Results: Death, BPV, LPV
It’s what it says on the cards. 33% chance to die, get a BPV that will tank any of the standard kill methods, or get a LPV to let you tank the vote. Sac an item to get in. This was sealed on D1 and never used, which was quite possibly a misplay by the mafia because I think if you worst outcome guard it, it’s a pretty mafia-friendly temple. Allows them to soak a crossfire when the other mafia stabs, or soak a vote. Or a sealing by the village. Nothing in here helps town solve, anyway.
Mausoleum of Theodoric
Entrance: Must sacrifice an item
Results: Item returned, Death, Temple Full History Checker, Permanent Item Vault
Now it’s the Mausoleum of Celever! This one has a troll result from the first game, in returning your item. It can also kill you, though with four paths instead of three (or ‘six’ that share outcomes), your odds of survival are better. The Sarcophagus allows a team to stash items that can never be stolen or found by other teams. I thought it was a pretty good item; by the time Gmax found it, the game was over, so its utility in keeping Bass’s DPV safe was minimal. The Sacred Texts were picked up early by Redless but never used. Gcat had to scavenge them off his body. They are another info item that gets better the longer the game goes on, because it will display more information. You could use this item to catch people in a lie, being places they shouldn’t have been, or not being somewhere they said they were. I thought it was a strong item. I think Theodoric was a well-balanced temple. Half the rewards are great, half are meh.
Temple of the Great Jaguar
Entrance: Go alone and idle
Results: Death, Role Backup, Dickens Item, Nothing
Looking at it, I do feel that ‘nothing’ for idling was too punishing to the mafia. They would need to give up one of their action economy while someone like Gmax or aska could just swoop on in because they had no action. Comedies did this when AP was hooked by a temple anyway (though they did not outcome guard and that was a fat mistake). Mauled by a jaguar! I think the Spellbook was the most interesting item in the game that, to my chagrin, nobody ever obtained. It could be gotten and used an infinite amount of times. It had a different effect depending on alliance. For the village, it would absorb the role of the deceased villager it was used on, allowing the living teammate to have two roles going forward. For the mafia, it would ‘absorb’ the move pool slot of the dead mafian, letting the living teammate use two of the move pool roles nightly. I guess locking it behind ‘alone and idle’ was not ideal to the item being used. This also has a Sheep’s Clothing clone which is quite mafia-friendly.
Torre del Oro
Entrance: Idle and sacrifice an item
Results: Death, DPV, Omniguarded, Gold (bait item)
Man go read Torre’s pathways. I did fine work on those. The Gold was a bait item, I was hoping it would be like the Diamond where people thought it was a free win or something and got dumb about it. It was never found. I think this was a village-sided high-risk temple, particularly with the entrance requirement. It has no info but it also doesn’t have anything that’s like, actively helping the scum deceive, only survive. This was the strongest BPV in the game, which could tank any attack on the holder’s life. Omniguarding is obviously a good result, could save you from destruction that very day! Ullar was the only person who went here, on a suicide mission to hopefully clear his slot, and he came out with the DPV. A noble hero.
Final Thoughts
Looking at the game now, I would have refined the temple results more. Put a few more ‘big ticket’ info items spread across temples that took more risk, maybe made fortifying and turtling in the weaker temples a little more punishing. Definitely changed Arch of Constantine to not give out cures too freely. Probably only made one ‘idle to get in’ temple and given it town-sided results, so the mafia could either ignore it without losing precious action economy, or destroy it without much loss to themselves, like they did with Humayun’s. You will notice that all the ‘mausoleum/tomb’ type temples are ones you can die it. That was intentional, if anyone picked up on it. Sort of a warning that this one was risky.
The churches and cathedrals tended to be safe havens, often with a useful info item. Except Biete which was the bait king. I think there were some thematic hints for the temples and their rewards, but I am not sure if anyone picked up on them. Probably one of the many moving pieces of this game that was a little overwhelming to try and condense onto one sensible spreadsheet.
My own sheet was definitely difficult to manage, even though I felt like I had set it up pretty effectively. I still sent a couple wrong results or forgot specific interactions and needed to re-check them. My advice to someone who wants to do locations or temples in the future is get a cohost and build the game from the ground up with them, so both of you can keep track of things to their full extent without needing to question the ‘main host’ or one of you interpreting an interaction differently.
I really thought I looked at all the parts of this game and how they would play together but some peoples’ questions I had no prepared answer for! Goes to show how creative players can be about interactions, and how many devils are in your details.
Since there is a current rallying against our old friend format, Town vs Mafia (particularly my favorite setup to design, 1v2), largely by upcoming OC game hosts grumbling my game will tank their game’s returning playerbase or by mafia members who were unsuccessful in exploiting the format for their team’s benefit, I am not sure if or when you’ll see a Temple Mafia 3. I do know I would remove the destruction mechanic so it’s less punishing for people to talk about where they are going and plan with their friends, regardless of alignment. Maybe once people get sick of watching their sweaty teammates play multifaction negotiation simulator and being kingmade against, there will be a cry for another rompin’ good time of a TvM. And maybe, if I feel like it, I will answer the call.
Most hotly-debated role is probably permanent fortifier. PERSONALLY, I still don’t think it’s that OP. Not nearly as OP as the mafia who couldn’t figure out how to punish it claim it to be. Saber was inside a temple he fortified N0, and N2-N4 (or would’ve been N4 if he wasn’t redirected to die). All-temple hook Heaven by Comedies, all-temple hook Constantine by UP, and he fails his fortify on N2 and N3 (he did on N4 because they hooked where he was redirected). All-temple role cop the same temples, and his alias is found on N2. I’m sorry but there were very obvious ways around his role, especially since I took same-temple SG off the village.
A role never being punished as it was intended to be does not make the role inherently imbalanced or OP.
I really felt that fortifier was needed to give village a chance after heavy losses early. Somewhere needed to be safe, and temple redirecting still let the mafia get 1 kill a night off, as most mafias function. Yes, their poison was hampered to the point of uselessness by Constantine, I’ll take that L on my host write-up.
I guess one design suggestion I have for people is something that’s long been an obstacle for mafia: villages usually have more ‘creative’ roles that are pretty easy to look at and think, hm, this is wild if it’s on scum, and it’s proving itself, so it must be town. I tried to give the mafia options to fakeclaim from a wide variety of abilities with the move pools, but there’s still a discrepancy between something like the Beatles running around sending the band on tour and what the mafia can fake. Part of that is, scum either have pro-scum actions that are creative, but if claimed as-is to the village, are obviously scum, or they have generic stuff like ‘hooker’ to disrupt village actions with, but what is the hooker fakeclaiming? What cool spin is there?
I attempted to prevent ‘guess I’ll claim hooker and use my mafia flavor and be instacaught’ by letting the mafias choose flavor for their roles. I think that would have been more successful if they remembered to set it. There were too many details in this game, I guess, for the mafia to keep track of. Even the village leadership messed up things like sending aska and Blazade to the same temple to try and verify aska’s action, because there was so much stuff to keep track of, and no team was really telling someone ‘hey can you please keep track of temple knowledge and movements’ to help with that.
Maybe having a task would enable people to stay engaged more, because they have a specific thing to look at without being overwhelmed, and something to ‘focus’ on.
In the end, the village solved as I hoped they would. Liars were found to be lying, and exposed by that, instead of by a point and click inspector dropping a role PM. It did require some more aggressive scumhunting to put all the pieces together, and reports by villagers of mafia logs that just didn’t quite make sense.
The mafias, well, UP giving actual-Comedy DBD a villager to talk to, and the Comedies all thinking “well pulsar could just be difficult to get into out of because that’s how she is in NOCs” for long enough to out half their members to her - that was not expected. Especially with aliases. I thought the mafias getting in touch and avoiding crossfire while targeting villagers was a given. Like I didn’t consider the possibility that’s how the game could go.
It played out how it played out, and the team that put together the clues to say “hey, you’re not doing pro-town activities!” won with a commanding numerical lead.
Thanks everyone for playing. If you liked my game feel, and the flavor, you can stay tuned for my effort at making a Co-op mafia where the town faces off against an NPC scumteam. If you don’t like my specific hosting pizazz, and you don’t think co-op mafia sounds fun, you probably won’t like that game, either, so I’ll see you ‘round in whatever OCs someone else hosts.
I think it’s like 5-6 months away in the queue. Plenty of time for me to develop it. It will be Pokemon Mystery Dungeon themed and feature exploring and item-based objectives to further your wincon, as well as scumhunting to figure out which of the aliases are the village’s, and which belong to the nefarious mafiosos thwarting your efforts. I am designing it for 20 players, so I hope it hits 20 since my thread about it has 15ish likes!
I don’t think TvM is a lost cause OC format and I look forward to seeing what other hosts do to bring new life into it.
I think getting a large list of roles to choose from and target is a really hard thing to think about, compared to "I have my role, who am I going to target with it?" I remember in the big mafia with the goons, I was mafia and we just had factional abilities, and by the time I was let into the mafia discord, it was just way too much to hold in my head. Roles tied to users are just easier to reason about, I think.
This likely added to the complexity in this game for the mafia teams, and probably contributed to checked out/poor decision-making. Combined with the total randomization of roles that resulted in 90% of oldheads being village, you get this game.
I wonder if the temple exploration concept was worth the complexity it added. Having every temple in the game start out secret, with secret requirements and secret rewards at secret rarities, all re-randomizing every night, meant that the "exploration" part of exploring temples was not interesting or really fun. It was always correct to go to a known-good temple instead of risking one you don't even know how to enter.
Maybe have fewer temples total, or have some with known rewards, or give more roles that tell players what temples actually do.
This likely added to the complexity in this game for the mafia teams, and probably contributed to checked out/poor decision-making. Combined with the total randomization of roles that resulted in 90% of oldheads being village, you get this game.
I wonder if the temple exploration concept was worth the complexity it added. Having every temple in the game start out secret, with secret requirements and secret rewards at secret rarities, all re-randomizing every night, meant that the "exploration" part of exploring temples was not interesting or really fun. It was always correct to go to a known-good temple instead of risking one you don't even know how to enter.
Maybe have fewer temples total, or have some with known rewards, or give more roles that tell players what temples actually do.