The Cyberiad Overhaul - GAME OVER - NEUTRAL VICTORY!

You can make all sorts of unfun and Unwise games that aren’t bastard. I think “surprise” game-endingness of a neutral can feel like a blindside, it can feel like it was difficult to anticipate and play against, but I don’t think that would have been remedied by putting “this game is kinda bastard” in the OP. I think that falls into the space of a design issue, not a communication issue. And I also think it falls into the space of a Skill issue on our part for not really thinking about it, though by the time we did think about it, it was already too late

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So they would’ve seen them visit anyone who didn’t die

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Except they wouldn’t have because of the ability

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Therefore, false investigations

(no results are shown if they are the cause of a player dying)

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Yeah I agree. OP said there’d be neutrals, I think like half the game expected it to be a SK, we just got complacent/were forced into complacence when Sultan fakeclaimed a different wincon and there was no way for town to win. Playing out a game you’re mech forced to lose from EoD3 sucks but that’s a Kingmaker Issue inherent to neutral deisgn that’s not fixed by calling a game bastard

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Oh
Yeah tbh my memory is hazy

OH

Agreed
Originally the PB just instantly won if everyone was infected tho
I turned its wincon into what it is now

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I think a “transformation announcement” probably would’ve been appropriate here
When I decided that 3 deaths was probably enough of a signal I forgot that it was 15p

I have a vague intuition that undisclosed game-ending neutrals are non-bastard if they’re Basically Serial Killers but kinda bastard if they’re Something Totally Different (e.g. game-ending jester) but I don’t know if I can really justify this :joy_cat:

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This didn’t effect the game but

The Soul Collector has transformed into death! If death is not killed, everyone loses.

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no i mean in addition to these changes

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It’s too late, soul collector is going into the next game

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I think it’s a fun/expectations distinction? Like a SK is basically a solo mafia faction, you can beat it by doing the normal gameplay of Voting Out Scummy People and when you lose to it, it feels like you got outplayed In The Expected Game Of Mafia.

When you lose to, like, a game-ending Jester or Plaguebringer or whatever, it feels like you got outplayed in a game entirely perpendicular to mafia, which this jesterboy happens to be playing, and had your perfectly good game of mafia ruined by someone who is not playing it.

This is also why I don’t love playing as Weird Neutrals. It feels like you stop playing mafia, the game of lying and reads and such, and start playing some other kind of game where you have to guess random shit

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There may or may not be conversion in the game.
There may or may not be claim vigilantes in the game.
There may or may not be tailoring and/or framing effects in this game.
There may or may not be neutrals in this game.
There may or may not be dead interaction in this game.
There are hidden mechanics in this game, however, your class card, the OP, host announcements and player flips will not lie to you.

this is from a game on Old FoL but there was a point in time when a lot of games had messages like this in the OP (sometimes with some aspects specified as definitely appearing or not appearing)

though on modern FoL some of these warnings would be a Lot more :eyes:, we’re much less conversion-happy and dead-interaction-happy than FoL used to be

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yeah agreed
this is part of the reason i dont like Inquisitor in a longform game

There may or may not be conversion is such a wild thing to say

we’ve tried to make it work and it generally just doesn’t