My games definitely try to break players from this mentality. But as seen in this game, the tracker, RT, and cop were all taken out super early and town then ground to a halt.

Also, to meta myself a little, Hellboy should have been a super safe claim, and if no one else stepped forward claiming cop, should never have been lynched. Unless everyone thought Monster Energy would in any universe be a cop. But I love Hellboy, and a good portion of people on here knows that. Of course I'd try to fit him in.

This could be seen even in this game. gfish admitted to screwing up several times, but no one ever put pressure on him. I don't think any memer of the mafia was seriously pressured all game. RP almost stopped posting all together except to hammer. And Mal, I get that I had a lot of silly roles this game, but a role that doesn't do anything until Day 8, was it? that seems a little far fetched. Not that it COULDN'T happen, but it SHOULD be questioned.

Also, as they have admitted, they kinda stopped reading the writeups. It was obvious Jack had some kind of pushing power and there was something wrong with Godzilla. But no one really brought it up.
Yup, hence the victory conditions in this game, being non-realms standard. In all of my games, I design the roles around town needing to be aggressive to have a shot. In my Big Hero 6 game, not getting anything done on day 1 might be the reason town lost. Day 1 plays and non info gathering roles making plays should be more common in my games if town wants any shot. No lynches until Day 5 had me face palming. People noted the two PGO thing, but no one ever followed that up with votes. it was a little mindblowing.

The Day after Grinner was killed, it should have been obvious from the tracking info claimed in the thread, the info Grinner claimed, and the writeup, that Grinner used his drag magnet on Rokk and caused a bunch of chaos. But no one even voted for him, even though he was clearly not what he claimed to be via the drag.
This game had team wins. All my games, starting with Jurassic Park, now have team wins. Other than Neutrals, of course. So you just have to deal with it.

1) It was easy to pass myself off as the winged monster from Grinner's drag so I don't fault people on that.

2) Hellboy wasn't a safe claim after the Town idea of theme was corrupted.

3) I'm sure there was a less snarky way to tell Colon your feelings about team wins

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@TB : Don't internalize so much. I don't think a single person was thinking of you.

In my meager defense, it was just poor timing on my part. Baby, busy at work, and just missing timing of the phases. Maybe people noticed that, because my gaps were site-wide and not just in this thread? But I am surprised it didn't draw more attention. I kept coming back expecting to see that I was lynched in the meantime.

I agree that having games with this mechanic of shared win condition could be good.

Like you, I have the 'issue' of perhaps being too vocal for my own good at times. But everyone has a different play style and I think it is fair to expect that everyone will play how they play.

One thing I think hurts us more than anything else is the huge role the meta plays here in how some players gun for others on the perception they are good players, which while a perfectly legit strategy, can get old really fast. It's why I love it when Mags does the anonymous games.

Speaking in general terms (and not just your game mechanics) I think there is currently a disparity between having your 'faction' win when you're scum then when you're town. For example it is much more satisfying for me if I am mafia and my mafia I've worked closely with for days wins at the end, even if I am dead, then if I am town and the same thing happens.

One argument in favor of shared wins is that if you sacrifice yourself for your faction you could still get a win, which is pretty cool. If I am the cop and die N2 to an undoctorable kill because I outed myself D2 to lynch a scummer, I can still feel good about my faction getting that win because I contributed to it.

I guess this is why I feel that I see things from a merits perspective.

So following that, an argument against shared wins is that it waters down the feel of a victory that is really not merit based at all. I don't know that it's fair to give a townie/mafia who did't check in to the game/proboards and contributed zip but dies night one to a MD into a PGO (the least deserving win I think of) the same benefit as one who lasted into day 3-4 and contributed significantly to their faction getting the win.

Still some good food for thought, and I do like that your games offer this variant mechanic. If I ever get around to running my game (go sign up for it so I can get to 21 players guys) I may go with it.

The ideal situation is to be in two games at all times with alternating phases. Or one game.

The problem is that with so few games and with long startup times, being in one game turns into being in none really quickly and then you're not playing at all for two weeks.

So you sign up for four and figure you'll die in two or three....but you don't and your play suffers.





Changing the win conditions isn't going to fix turtling. You can say I won if I died night one and my faction eventually wins but it doesn't feel like winning this game did and it never will.

I personally think the best game (in all games) is a close one where the players/teams were evenly matched and everyone did their best. So I don't need to win. I'm just saying the wording of a win condition won't change player behavior much.

QFT. I use to sign up for everything years ago, but I soon realized that it is pretty hard to be in 3+ games and keep a high level of play (and interest) in all of them. I found this to be especially true if you're scum in more than one of them as then you have to keep all your lies straight, which for some of us who get busy with RL too, can be quite difficult.

I agree on what makes a good game, but I think that a shared win con could also lead to some apathetic behavior.

Re:Realms Meta.


I agree with Silver that targetting players perceived as good at mafia sucks. 9/10 times, night one mafia nightkill targets are determined like "Who is the best player who probably won't be doctored." Then you have discussions about getting rid of power roles and power day players.

There's been a lot of shakeup as some players have really come into their own in the past year or so (Iceman and GFish come to mind) and I think that's a very good thing. You want the mafia to see the 10 remaining townies as all potentially dangerous people just waiting to catch them in a lie. That makes their kill decisions part of the evidence instead of "Well, Rokk was town and now he's dead. Maybe his hunches were right. Maybe they were wrong. We know the mafia killed him not for what he did but because they're scared of Rokk."

On the other hand, I really like the meta of "Silver Lantern is acting weird/scummy for Silver Lantern" way better than I like the "Such and such action is arbitrarily always scummy" rules of other mafia forums that will not be named. Getting lynched as town because you don't fit into some predetermined townie box is super frustrating. I can only imagine that playing in it would be moreso. I'll take a little meta over that.

I can't possibly follow three Proboards and three game threads at once. I become that guy who shows up on day four on the Proboards like "Oh hey guys. Sorry I've been inactive."

Never again.

So has anyone tried a 'no Town' game? Just several Mafias trying to get rid of each other?

No you didn't. You just trusted the wrong person and got blindsided. Even veteran players can do that (although more rarely). This is a game of lies and deceit and no one, not even the moderator, can be trusted (though if the mod deceives you it is usually for a good reason).
I think the main mistake you did was not claiming PGO when rorschach did. If you have a good reason to suspect another player, it's usually better to just outright say why and let the mob figure out how to handle it. When you just try to arouse suspicion for no good perceived reason, you look scummy yourself to the town. The mafia, on the other hand, knew rorschach was up to no good, so by trying to cast suspicion on him you painted a target on yourself without also drawing on any protection from the town.
But it's a dang tough game to play right. Sometimes you get overaggressive and sometimes too passive. I know I was very passive this game, but as a Neutral I had very little reason to vote for anyone, particularly since I didn't want my power outed too early (though I suppose that might have helped me survive). It also didn't help that Girathon's schedule meant the end of the phase happened while I was sleeping - I don't think there was ever a clear cut lynch candidate when I went to sleep even though lynches happened later.

Absolutely. It tends to be a bit chaotic, but fun.

Twice, iirc.

Both times, people figured it out about halfway through. In at least of of the games, the facade of townies trying to lynch scum remained for the whole game.

The first "free for all" was probably Stan's Schwarzenegger Game. Four groups of Arnies - all Mafia - fighting each other with a Predator SK in the middle (it was me and I lasted like a night or two).

Arguably before that was RCricket's Cereal Mascots but each team knew they were a group - no theme beyond given a colour tag - and were trying to make voting alliances to whittle down other groups.

Aegon's DIY 2 Mafia had four Mafia teams and like two Townies - the Mafias could only make hits every other night so there was only two kills per night. Once the townies were gone it was revealed that all the remaining players were Mafia.
MSU's Disney X had 5 different Mafia teams, all with revolving power sets. To make things more interesting, everyone autopsied as Town until their Don died.
I think gfishfunk's Laser Tag Mafia had an all-Mafia setup with a SK in the middle too...