(Also, I really need to stop using Ctrl + Enter to post stuff.)
I think it was alright. Never a big fan of vote manipulation like how it was used here.
Fair enough.
it was okay, it was a decent game i enjoyed playing
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Iâm trying to go for 20, but I donât think Iâll be able to host 'em all.
Vote manipulation as a gimmick is an interesting enough starting place, though I feel the way the game ended up playing out caused it to feel more like a hindrance than a power.
I would like to preface this by stating that I am not the best player to give feedback here, because I tend to find in my own experience that medium-power setups distract me from what I really enjoy about Mafia. I prefer either a high-power setup where the mechanics are the main focus of the gameplay or a completely unobtrusive setup which allow the gameplay of Mafia itself to shine. I usually stick to vanilla games here for that reason. This gameâs design philosophy was never going to be especially to my personal tastes.
However, here it felt that the added game mechanics usually impacted the game when town power roles hindered the villageâs ability to make the decisions they wanted. This is the downside of most town vote manipulation as a mechanic, in my opinion: most of the time, the village knows what they want, and unless it immediately results in the execution of a wolf, anything more complex than a double-vote ends up creating confusion and preventing the collective desired outcome, which is usually a downside in and of itself. Directly interfering with the villageâs main source of agency allows for a vote-manipulation-based setup to be âworse than mountainousâ despite being balanced in a way that a lot of other gimmicks are not able to be.
Where did mechanics directly affect this game? The most notable cases I can think of:
- Leafiaâs ability causing her to die over Magnus (which did benefit the village, but which was not vote manipulation).
- Kiirumaâs ability causing the tie between Ishmael and SultanOfSlam, which did technically save SultanOfSlam (who was ultimately not misexecuted, meaning it did benefit the village), but that tie likely never would have existed in the first place if Kiiruma were not trying to use his negative vote, and it caused Kiiruma to come under undue scrutiny because he had misunderstood game mechanics.
- beancatâs ability restricting the execution between Kiiruma and herself, which forced a misexecution.
- SirDerpsAlotâs ability causing his execution to fail, causing players to try it again in Final 3 and losing the village the game.
None of the vote manipulation abilities helped their owners improve their position in the game, despite the roles seeming to be positive utility. On one hand, each of these individual incidents was a direct result of the village failing to play competently around these mechanics, which is our own fault. The three incidents here were all due to clear blunders: misreading a role, gladiating a villager, or snap-voting a player whose role ability had just been proven and which really warranted additional consideration. For that reason, it is difficult to assess how much responsibility the setup should bear here. However, many of the roles enhanced the impact of these individual blunders while providing a reward that was simply ânot worthâ removing collective agency in this way, both from a player perspective and from a game design perspective.
From a player perspective, a Gladiator is only positive-utility if a player believes they are better at finding wolves than the rest of the village (but not able to present these cases in a convincing enough way to get them executed without mechanics). It is difficult to use in a way that feels effective. Playing against a negative-utility Gladiator doesnât especially provide a sense of satisfaction to the wolves who benefit from it, as it will usually feel like village incompetence rather than wolf competence (with exceptions: a wolf convincing a village gladiator to target the wrong player is interesting, for example).
From a game-design perspective, a Gladiator can often frustrate all players in a game when their main avenue to affect the game is restricted due to a single playerâs decision. When a Vigilante misfires, it does negatively affect the entire village, but it does not directly feel as if something has been âtaken awayâ from the shooterâs teammates. The Vigilante got to make an additional game decision, and only indirectly removed decisions from everybody else (by shortening the game, which usually only takes impact later). When a Gladiator selects a villager, all other players lose their ability to make an especially impactful decision on that game day. The misexecution is a foregone conclusion. Everybody else loses their chance to shine.
Several of the other roles in this game worked in similar ways, restricting the villageâs decision-power rather than enhancing it. Anti-Gladiator prevented certain players from being executed, and I only ever thought to use the role to either prove I had it or remove a previous voting restriction. Senator caused the hammer that the village intended to be subverted in favor of SirDerpsAlotâs sole will in a way that I feel even he would not have preferred, as it led to a village loss. In my opinion, these roles did not provide interesting enough gameplay incentives to their owners to be âworthâ messing with the core of the game of Mafia (and potentially removing the fun).
On the other hand, some roles in this setup did not feel to me like they fell into this category of ânet negatives on player agencyâ. Those were the ones that I think were able to interact with the game of Mafia without taking anything away from it. Vanity Eater provided agency to its owner (when to use the role and how to use their vote) without removing it from everybody else (as its effect was public, predictable, and reactable). Vote Lender was technically negative-utility, but it allowed its owner to make a decision (placing trust in another to double their vote and seeing what they did with it) and enhanced its targetâs decision-power. Vote Gambler⊠is difficult to evaluate, given how it played out this game.
As an additional note, the interaction between so many roles having largely public, neutral-to-negative-utility effects and the anti-claim was unfortunate. The Gladiator and the Anti-Gladiator did not need another mark against their usage. I feel this setup could have had a better-thought-through process of anti-claim mechanics. It felt like the anti-claim was there just to be there: it was not threatening enough to have major impact on the game, but it did make it harder to use roles with public effects, and because all its details were public, there was no mystery for the village to solve. It was clutter.
The takeaways from this⊠while I do not actually subscribe to the theory that creating more decisions is always pro-fun, nor do I subscribe to its corollary that removing decisions is always bad, I believe game mechanics that restrict player decisions versus mountainous should be something that are added very thoughtfully. It is always worth evaluating whether the presence of a game mechanic makes a setup more or less fun than its absence. Vote manipulation very easily falls into the latter category if it is added in a way that makes the vote-counts muddy and the executions arbitrary-feeling.
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Thank you for your feedback. I now see some things I could have done to improve this setup:
- Switched Gladiator with Gladiator Alter (Chompsâ fakeclaim), as the Alter version wouldâve given everyone their collective agency.
(I probably would have had to add a clause to reset the VC upon activation as well, lest someone gets hammered within the first half of the day.) - Given the Gladiators anticlaim-immunity upon activating their ability. I disagree with your feeling of the anticlaim existing solely for the sake of existing, as it did play part at Day 5 and caused Frostwolf to die. However, your feedback does make me think that the Mafia should not get easy extra votes from anticlaim.
You said that the anticlaim did not have any major impact on the game, but I consider that as a good thing, because the normal anticlaims simply did not work out. I had to create a new form of anticlaims as an alternative when I was designing this setup, because âthe originalâ anticlaims were too strong or too weak: -
- I could have chosen Vigilante, but that was too strong as it would remove a Townie for using their role.
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- I could have the good olâ Vanillaizer, but those were obsolete against 1-Shot Gladiators, who already become pseudo-Vanilla after using their abilities.
- Switched Senator for something -anything- else. The roleâs raison dâĂȘtre has been wasted as it was meant to fool Townies into thinking that the role is inherently evil as it is a role that only Mafia could have according to MU. I heavily disagree with that line of thinking, so I put the Senator in this setup as a lesson of âroles do not imply alignmentâ.
Unfortunately from what I see, nobody was thinking about Derpsâ role being unlikely to be a Town role, so while I am happy that nobody is following the mindset of âroles imply alignmentâ, the role ended up being nothing but a hindrance in the sense that it is a fully passive role that doesnât give its user any control over their own powers.
Random Thoughts
Leafiaâs ability ended up not interacting with any vote manipulations despite having the potential to do so. However, it wasnât as if she was the only one to have a non-vote related ability. Sultan and Magnus had investigatives, and Ishmael had protective.
Kiiruma having misunderstood how his ability works when the name of the role is âVote Lenderâ is âan issueâ beyond my scope of responsibility.
I donât think I could have improved Anti-Gladiator. I wanted to have two Gladiators and one fake Gladiator; it was yet another case of âwhich one of us is evilâ and âshould we risk anticlaimâ? However, given that normal Gladiator hindered Town, and Gladiator Alter was an unusable fakeclaim, perhaps I shouldnât have gone for this triple Gladiator gimmick, and replaced Anti-Gladiator with something else. âŠhaving that said, I donât think the role is that bad compared to the normal Gladiator.
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Thats true, he could pick one of the voters against him will be executed instead right? He choose wrong too.
The next day after, he was slow to take initiative in F3.
No, it was the vote cannoneer