Fugazi

Galen considers thoughtfully the wares displayed in front of Gnomeo's toolshed. Greetings, gnome. Buying is not something I have done in a long time, but I'm told Heroes have been politely asked not to um... borrow anything from Eubric's merchants. The public image of Heroica and all that. So there, have 5 gold for a bedroll -- I guess one can't go adventuring without one and I seem to have misplaced mine somewhere. G:30-5=25

I'd love to take part in your mafia badboytje, but I'm away for about 10 days late March and I don't believe I will have regular Internet access. I do look forward to following this one from the bleachers though!

A grim man silently walks out of one of the (many, many) dark corners of the Heroica Hall. His appearance is generally unremarkable, and none of those seeing him materialise could tell if they've seen the man before or not. There's a faint smell of alcoohol about him, but his gaze is steady and intent. Without a word, he walks to the board at the bottom of the stairs. He spends an inordinate amout of time staring at the scant few notes pinned on the board. Finally, without signing his name he turns around and mutters to himself: Guarding guards? Hmphh... He then walks away towards the back of the Hall until his silhouette is lost in the shadows once more.

I applaud the font choice, it looks very Babylon 5-ish to me! I can't tell where the planet comes from though. And congratulations to the new regulators!

I'm sure it's delicious though!

This was very clever, and proves as we discussed recently that role PMs should be as plain as possible, without any information that could help resourceful townies abuse circumvent the rules! Perhaps it didn't make any difference in this game, but it's probably something that future hosts should keep in mind for the sake of fairness. Of course! For me, it was not the vote switching but rather the verbal sparring with def that made me trust you. No scum in their right mind would put on such a show on Day 1 that would be sure to attract the attention of the investigator. Of course when the strange results of those who targeted you at night came back it only made you look townier and at that point I was quite confident that you couldn't be scum. Did I really say that?

Happy birthday to you both, have a great day!

Not that I have the talent to take part in a Technic competition, but I do have a theme suggestion -- everyday objects. Recreate a toaster, a washing machine, a typewriter, a vynil record player? There are many opportunities to integrate power functions and approximate the actual workings of common objects, and it would be interesting to see how Technic builders manage to recreate non-automotive shapes with the available parts. It would be a change from the sempiternal 4-wheelers!

Yes, I'm quite positive that my views on the balance are tainted by the end result! And I certainly don't think that this setup was an impossible endeavour for us. We made more than a few mistakes which could have been avoided, and they all added up to our defeat. I can't say it was impossible to figure out that the mirror cloak acted as a Nexus -- for many reasons we were unlucky that it redirected to me on that first night, one of the reasons being that we then assumed it only redirected to scum. However, figuring out the precise mechanism which would aim the nexus to a specific target was an impossible task! No kidding

Thank you very much for the extensive description of the game mechanics! I think the concept was very sound and well thought out. As you said, in different circumstances the result could have been very different. Had we prepared more solid claims early on for instance, we wouldn't have lost two players so quickly and we could have survived two more days -- possibly enough time to achieve our aim. Though I agree that this game was similar to a standard game with 24 players and 5 scum, in my opinion there still was a major difference. All virgins, so 10 townies out of 19, could be cleared by 3 night actions (investigator, Flavour Cop and Cherrinator) instead of only one (investigator). And while the result of an investigator could have been disputed for a day or two (were he insane or naive, or investigating a framed player) no one ever doubted the accuracy of the results of the Flavour Cop or the Cherrinator. Well everyone thought at some point that Prof Flitwick might be scum, but it's the case for most of the townie roles in any game. Anyway, my point is that I think the town had more tools to clear their members than in a standard game. So why did we have a protector?

Oh, yes! I remember now what happened! This was the first night we were planning to kill you, so I was trying to get you to switch the protections around somehow and not use the cloak on yourself. You wanted me to protect Sandy (which I wouldn't do in any case) but I pretended not having sent in my action in the hope that you would still want to change your plan. We were a bit desperate and I was running out of ideas. During the extension we decided not to kill you after all, so it actually played in your favour! There were family obligations but there were not the only reason I was confused!

Once more, thanks to Pandora and Rufus for hosting this exciting game! You did it in a thoroughly professional way, paying great attention to details and gracing us with beautiful visuals. I hope this experience was as enjoyable to you guys as it has been to us, and that we will see you host again in the future! And thanks to all the players who have made this an exciting and challenging mafia! Congratulations to the winners for a very solid game, the rapid organisation of town making things very difficult for us scum. Hinckley has been exceedingly efficient gathering information and keeping (most of it ) to himself while fending the initial suspicions caused by the cursed cloak. You never gave up being paranoid -- including sending your valuable information away when you felt you were in danger -- and it made all the difference once you were gone. Then Cornelius stepped in your shoes very efficiently and stopped listening to my lies the minute Hinck was dead, and to my limited knowledge did a thorough job of picking up the pieces and clearing the remaining players in a methodical manner. We had hoped to break the town momentum by killing Hinck, but it never happened. And this game did prove what def has been saying all along -- when every townie is intent on finding scum and is paying attention to the game, there's no way scum can win! For those who would like an explanation for the night kills, here's a quick summary of what was going on behind the scenes: Night 1: Rick - Despite what has been mentioned, this choice was not simply metagaming. The town was already much too organised by the end of Day 1, with probably half the players already claiming to Hinckley. We knew it was going to be a difficult game, and we wanted to strike at the heart of the forming town resistance. The choice was between Cornelius and Rick, as we had suspicions both were Virgins. Rick was the less forthcoming one in private, and we thought less likely to attract protection. Night 2: def - For a while we actually thought you could be the investigator! We also knew who protected you, so we thought that killing you would cast suspicion both on the town protector and on Hinckley who was organising this protection. All this while getting rid of either the investigator or a Virgin, it was all win. The only problem we hadn't foreseen was that targets of our blocker were given specific 'results' which actually helped them clear themselves. Probably something to do with being bitten by a snake? It took us a while to realise it and from that moment our night block became a much less interesting option. Night 3: Waterbrick Down - We had focused on Virgins until that point, but then realised that despite our inside information the suspect list was getting too short too quickly and that we wouldn't be able to dodge the numerous night actions for much longer. We didn't know for sure who the investigator or the vigilante were, but we were also afraid that one of them would be watched. So killing the watcher was as much a way to avoid being seen protecting TinyPies, as paving the way for killing the investigator later on. No, we didn't know whether the High Priest would be able to ninja his way past the watcher's gaze, since the watcher's target wasn't the High Priest himself but someone else. It wasn't a risk I was prepared to take when we had already taken many others with variable success. I guess this is a good a time as any to echo Hinckley's frustration with his role. We had this High Priest who had no obvious action in his role description, but eventually figured out that he was an ascetic -- a role I knew nothing about until it was mentioned by Hinckley or Cornelius in a town PM thread. So we went on assuming that the Mafiawiki description of the ascetic applied, and this made the High Priest immune to night actions except kills. We might have guessed that he could not be seen targeting someone, but being inexperienced we didn't want to chance it. Had we known this, and that the High Priest was also immune to night kills, our strategy would have been different. While on paper the mysterious roles seem like a good idea, in actual play they probably result in more frustration than anything else. Night 4: Hinckley! - We were actually prepared to kill you on night 3 -- the action PM was sent -- then changed our minds! I tried my best in private to make you protect someone else with your cloak, but when it became obvious that you wouldn't we changed our plans. Back then we didn't know that we could have killed you anyway. You probably wouldn't have passed on your information to Cecilie and Cornelius, and we might have had a better shot at confusing the town. Oh well, it's easy to see our mistakes with the benefit of hindsight. Anyway, the reason we killed you was obvious -- your trust in me was dwindling fast, and you were about to spill your info to other townies. Which you did in the end, an extremely wise move that we had desperately attempted to prevent. Unfortunately for us, this negated most of the benefits we hoped to draw from your death. Night 5: fhomess - It was either you or Cecilie, and we chose the wrong one! When the real investigator came out of the woodwork, we quickly pieced from private conversations that it would be either you or Cecilie. But I was so sure that Hinckley was trying to steer me away from fhomess with what I thought was a faked slip-up, that I pushed for killling fhomess. I should have paid more attention to the public thread instead. On top of that the Cherrinator came and stole a Virgin from us. Getting rid of the Cherrinator at that stage was trivial. You were by far the most unprofitable kill for us! While we're on the topic of the town investigator, I have to take all the blame for TinyPies' fake investigator claim. I was the one pushing TP to claim to Hinckley when he was asking around. There were many reasons why by that time in the game we thought there was no proper town investigator. One of them was that the number of known townie actions was high enough that it only left about 11 spots for Virgins, and we needed to kill 10. Another night action meant that we had no leeway and had to kill all of the Virgins, while avoiding the roaming cherrinator. Plus we also had get rid at least of the protector and the mirror cloak in order to kill all of the Virgins. That seemed just like too heavy to be balanced, and the townies already had two investigative roles: the Flavor Cop and the Cherrinator. All in all, it seemed reasonable to think that there was no true investigator in the town line-up. Moreover, when def was killed and turned up Virgin we considered the idea of one-shot investigative actions spread around the town, which would have kept the Virgin numbers reasonable while giving town a chance to find us through investigation. In any case, at the time it seemed like a worthy risk for TinyPies to claim investigator, but it soon became obvious that I had made a major mistake. Night 6: Scubacarrot - You were the only remaining Virgin that the town didn't know we knew about, so you were the least likely to use attract protection. We knew we were history, but we wouldn't throw away our last chance to take out a Virgin! So this pretty much wraps up my comments. I know Hinck thought I was suspicious for not following the game and not being online as often as I normally am during a mafia game, but in real life our youngest baby was (and is) giving us a hard time and I was pretty much sleep deprived for the whole game. Some nights I was just too tired to think straight or take the time to reply to my private messages, and some nights I just didn't have the time. I know there are bits of information I just forgot to communicate to my scum mates in good time. I'm sorry for that, and hopefully everything will have settled down in time for the next game!

Have a great birthday Scouty!

Hey Bob, I followed the link in your signature to this thread I missed when you first posted... Ah, the memories! I'm glad to notice that Deputy Chief Scott is still standing duty! It's great to see more of Lexington, a city of drama and mystery! Plus, I'm a long time Trek fan so I enjoyed the story. Reminds me of ST:IV and many installments from the original series visiting "alternate Earths". Thanks!

Ah, such a moving conclusion to an exciting day! Moar please!

Foogilla Gorilla - A play on Magilla Gorilla, my code name in Pandulfus' Mafia game! I love it, can I credit Kiel Hinck again? Oh, and list updated.

14. Jameson42 - 1 16. soundwave_sw - 1 24. sdrnet - 2 27. dede_la_fee - 1 Great entries by all!

I'm sorry to hear this Hinck, please take care. We'll be around whenever you're ready. After all delays are part of the Red Moon tradition, without them it just wouldn't be the same!

I wish it weren't so. It seems to me like insults have been a much more important part of every game recently. It hasn't always been so, has EB Mafia become too competitive? Friendly insults between people who know each other well are one thing, but nowadays it seems like inexperienced players are quite often the target. I know it can be considered a strategy -- it's just not one I feel comfortable using and I'm not sure I like the tangent our games are taking. EB is supposed to be a friendly place and it seems like roleplay has become an excuse for overstepping the normal limits of acceptable behaviour. And this is not directed at one player specifically, we all know it's a spreading issue. Somehow I feel like repeating myself, I'm sure I wrote something very similar a couple of months ago.

+1 to White Fang, thanks again my friend!

Have a great one KimT!

Pandora and Rufus, thank you for letting me take part in your wonderful game! This was a thoroughly enjoyable experience thanks to impeccable hosting, beatiful MOCing and your great sense of humour! I look forward to the next installment of 'Hole in the Desert' And go town!