Pokémon Mafia 2 - Sign-Up Thread

Revin said:
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Hello, my name is Sonic McQueen. I am a normal and well-adjusted individual.
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As the body of Shmilbert, the private investigator from Unova laid motionlessly on the grounds of Johto following his second demise over the course of the investigation, something astonishing proceeded to happen; He began to transform, and then leapt back onto his feet!
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"That's right, I wasn't actually a private investigator pretending to be Hilbert, the legendary Pokémon Trainer of Unova! I'm actually a Mr. Mime going by the name Matchlock, at your service! I was still happy to have been of use in expelling the majority of those wily bandits from the sacred grounds we've walked across for the last few dsys, though, and if you ever need a Mr. Mime to snuff out crime in the nearby future, you know who to call!"

And with that revelation, our brave Mr. Mime dashed off into the sunset, towards new adventures on the horizon.
 
Oh, yes. If you'd like to be added to mafia chat, react to this post with
Sad
(sad).
If you'd like to be added to spec chat, react to this post with
Thinking
(thinking).

If you'd like to be added to both, react with
Wow
(wow).

Nine will add you when he is able.
 
Ariella the Dryad has arrived!

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Ectruteak City is completely pure. You have done an amazing job!

Wait, where did everyone go...

Achievement complete! And Good Riddance!
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And Good Riddance!
Completely purify all Mafia players from your game, until the Dryad is satisfied!
 
Team Rocket's blasting off again!

Thanks all for playing! Had a few bumps in the road with KG endgame overlap, player burnout, general life busy-ness, and even mafia players dying really early as seems to be pokemon mafia tradition lol, but I hope everyone was able to have at least some fun or learn something from the experience at any rate.

Also want to give huge shoutout to Pito for handling all the story stuff as well as general host stuff while I was unavailable, I feel like it made the game much better from a presentation standpoint and making it less exhausting for me to handle personally, so thanks Pito!

Maybe next pokemon mafia the mafia side might finally have a shot at winning lol
 
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And thus concludes this most dreadful chapter… I am truly relieved that we have brought these evildoers to justice, and honored to have played a part in this righteous cause.

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I ought to admit, I came to this place seeking nothing more than peace due to my own personal grievances. And yet, somewhere along the way, I found myself rather taken with the company here, and began to relish my involvement in this investigation. Ah… How curious. I find myself in rather good spirits now.

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Hmm… Perhaps a future in private investigation is awaiting me! Ohohoho!
 
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"Congratulations, you guys! You managed to expel all of the wily bandits from the sacred grounds we've happened to have called our home for the past week or so and safely secure the artifacts so they could be properly unveiled in the end! I'm really proud of all of you, just as much as I'm proud of myself for my involvement in expelling all of those dreadful outlaws!"
 
Hahahahah...perhaps I was misguided in my predictions....
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Solarus:
But as the sun rises once again, so shall I!
But be not worried my friends, I have seen the error in my previous judgment. None of you are wicked in your belief of other gods, rather I worship a singular being that holds dominion over a single aspect of our world, still worthy of praise but there is no reason to recognize the power and status of other gods as a result. So forgive me for my previous actions towards you unfortunate few.
 
Fun game all around! Obviously I was on the winning team, so take any commentary with that in mind, but I was satisfied by the structure and game flow this time around. After how many hiccups the first Pokemon Mafia encountered for one reason or another, I'm glad this one completed in a relatively smooth flow. I do feel bad that both replacement players were thrust into the role of Mafia, but there's not a lot to do about that

I'm also happy with the pool of roles, and extra appreciative that it included some oddballs we don't regularly see. The Mafia had a very intimidating suite of powers, and had they not had an unlucky elimination d2, there definitely would've been a lot of room for coordinated attacks on innocent players. I meant it when I said I was shocked that there were more Mafia powers in play, and I wish that disguiser/janitor could've seen the full utilization that that combo of powers can allow for. God I love janitors

Same is true of the reviver! Super didn't expect them to be in play this game and that was a lovely surprise. I didn't expect it for the miller either, though I have to say that I really feel like FWD got the short end of the stick with that one. I truly didn't anticipate anyone being powerless in this game, and thought that the miller claim had to be cover for something else. Pairing with the vigilante, watcher, or even doctor would've at least given him something to do. Typing that out made me imagine a world where he was a miller-bomber, and looking intentionally suspicious could've been to his advantage to detonate someone else during the day. I dunno, I think the man should've had something else in a role madness game - but I do understand not wanting to stack anything else for the innocents with a reviver in play

I am admittedly a bit bummed that the game came down to a confirmation role claim circuit, and that the Mafia didn't have a better defense for it. I didn't intend the endgame to shake out that way when I first claimed vig, and I was hoping that our predictions weren't the easy route to victory. Of course, this comes down to Mafians being prepared for that kind of thing happening... but I wonder about how fair of an expectation that is in a role madness game where there are potentially new(er) players joining the pool, and we don't have a dedicated role catalog pinned anymore. Recently, I've been having a lot more encounters with the game Blood on the Clocktower (which everyone should give a go sometime, and you should especially voice your interest in Fanta's thread if you want to see it played here). There are two ways where the gm in BotC helps out the evil team when it comes to role claiming:
  • Every player is given a "script" of roles that are potentially in play. Players don't know which ones the gm has included, but anyone is welcome to reference the full sheet and see what is potentially on the table, as a fake claim or a real power
  • The demon (BotC's godfather role) is shown three bluffs at the top of the game, which are three roles that are included on the script, but are definitively not owned by any other player. It's up to the demon to disperse this info amongst the evil team, and for the whole team to decide how they want to utilize these bluffs
The Mafia in this game were given bluffs of sorts with the blank character cards, but the characters on those cards weren't especially helpful when it came to role power claims, which are really what inno players would be after. I can't say that the BotC way of doing things would work for every game, but I'm still curious about the potential for Mafia to receive more info upfront that would set them up long term for better success - especially when remembering that offered fake claims could still be counteracted by innocent information roles. It might be worth trying out in a smaller role madness game in the future

All in all, great hosting, and a solid run all the way through. I'm excited for the Mafia to never let me live this long into a game again :dry:
 
To comment on my own thoughts about how the game balancing went, in terms of role powers I think the biggest mistake was probably the mafia roleblocker / silencer combo, it sounded powerful in theory but had the unintended side effect of giving the roleblocked player a verifiable way of confirming that they were in fact roleblocked, and making it seem pretty unlikely that the mafia would spend a turn roleblocking and silencing one of their own, making the silenced player seem more innocent. There's still some potential mindgames that could be played with this, as was pointed out during the game, however in general a normal roleblocker probably would have been less disruptive for the mafia side itself.

I think Rose is right in that the miller was probably a pretty boring role to receive, I initially envisioned the role as being connected to a time traveler power (hence Celebi), however decided against it with the lower player count + already having a reviver. Also thought that maybe we're not ready for that level of role craziness yet lol. Sorry for the boring role fwd but everyone going insane over what kind of mind games you must of been playing and then getting shot by the vig despite being completely honest was pretty funny.

I like both of the clocktower roleclaiming solutions, with role madness games the mafia team usually end up with the issue of needing to claim something since obviously everyone has roles, and giving the mafia team some bluffs sounds like a fun solution. The point of giving the fake role cards with unused characters was more to prevent there being any unfairness for the mafia team not being familiar with the game theme and avoiding any "flavour" claims, however I didn't consider the idea of giving them the original roles that I had assigned to those characters for fake claims, and now I'm kind of wishing I did. Giving the players a larger pool of possible roles is also a decent idea, although it would require creating more roles than normal and considering if all of them would actually fit with each other in one game. I think I'm more fond of the "x number of bluffs" idea but an open rolepool works too.

I think maybe it's finally time that we made a new standard mafia role list thread to replace the old one, might start working on one after this now that I'm still in a mafia mood. And maybe a standard ruleset so that I never need to type one up in an OP again lol.
 
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Honestly I had fun being the basic Miller. Not only did it let me play a kind of funny RP, but it put me in a position to subconsciously give everyone varying degrees of mental illness because I'm always mafia and there's no way I'd have a role like that. Very much still enjoyed what I got to play of this game, but at the same time I do think that neutral Miller should probably be avoided. While it wasn't in this case, I feel like Miller is kind of a tedious meme role most of the time and is largely just unpleasant to roll.

Miller as a downside to an otherwise strong role is great, Miller alone just makes you a chump
 
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And so the evil that had been plaguing Ecruteak City has finally been banished. Good work to everyone for fighting against the mafia and countering their claims. It is also most admirable that my role as reviver helped delay the massacre long enough to subdue them.

I do hope to see all of you again someday. Until then, this is Hariyama Deluxe, bidding you all farewell.

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This was a pretty good Mafia, all things considered, and it was nice to finally survive until the end and have the innocents win after who knows how long. Not much to say other than me echoing the stuff about the Miller being underpowered and us needing a general role list thread.

Good game, everyone. And who knows? Maybe in Pokémon Mafia 3, the Mafia will finally win.
 
Oh also it was brought up in mafia chat but I figured I should wait until after the game ends to address it properly;

When it comes to assigning players their roles, personally I prefer to put everyone in a randomised list so that roles are completely random. There's a few reasons why I prefer to do it this way:
  • It prevents meta-gaming over who you think I as a host would assign which player certain roles to. (imo this is the most important reason)
  • It means newer players have the chance to use and learn how to navigate more powerful roles, rather than constantly being stuck with uninteresting ones.
  • Giving the powerful roles to "good" players also means it would be more likely for that role to die early before it could get used to its fullest potential, diminishing how useful the role would be anyway, so deliberately balancing a game this way ends up being kind of counterintuitive.
  • I realised after typing all this that Blof was referring to bulletproof-type roles rather than stuff like cop which kind of makes more sense, though it still leads to my next point:
  • While it's still entirely an option to hand-pick which roles you give to which player, if you did this everytime people would eventually pick up on it and start making judgments based on who's hosting, whether intentionally or subconsciously. Obviously not a problem if it's your first time hosting and people have no idea about your hosting style, but it's not a very sustainable way of balancing games in the long term.

With that said, I did make one exception to this rule for the sake of balancing which was making sure that the mafia team had at least one experienced player on it, which ended up being Revin who I swapped roles with for another player's. (which again, was rnged from a pool of select players.) Additionally I probably also would have rerolled completely if the mafia team ended up being made up of three experienced players as it might have ended up being a bit too one-sided. I don't mind revealing this because people usually metagame this to be the case in most mafias anyway, and I think the pool of players that could be considered "experienced" is wide enough that you usually don't end up with just one of them left by the endgame, as well as who you would consider to be part of this pool of players is left up to interpretation in the first place. Also its entirely possible that I might do a game with purely just newbies as mafia just to throw everyone off at some point because it'd be funny.

Sidenote but why did old mafias ban "metagaming" when that's something that's literally impossible to do lol
 
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Agumon will return...




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Fwiw, my Revin vote wasn't a full joke vote. I saw the roleplay and thought, surely the mad lad isn't going to do it again. My vote on Coco was a genuine mistake because I skimmed the thread and that was the name Revin wrote in his post in the game thread. XD


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General thoughts on the game:
- Nine and Pito were good hosts. Always on top of phase changes and getting the story out. Cannot fault them.
- Piggy-backing Rose's thoughts, I think this game really showed off some of the drawbacks of role-madness Mafia. These roles are meant to help the innocents catch the Mafia, but it makes the game favour the innocents too much. This is why 'no mass-roleclaiming' is a rule. However, it's a bad rule that is ill-defined and impossible to enforce. What is a mass roleclaim? 3 claims? What if the Mafia just takes all the claim slots with fakeclaims? Your only way around it is to have a bunch of Vanilla characters in the mix, or as other folks suggested, have some roles un-assigned.
- I think giving the Mafia two roles each was a good way to try and counter-balance the innocents, even if some of the combinations didn't really work. But it still can't compete with mass roleclaims. I kinda disagree with the host providing fakeclaim cards - the Mafia can use their imagination. I guess it helps for themed games where the players may not know the source material. With regards to Blood on the Clocktower, only the Demon/Godfather gets the fakeclaims and then has to establish a discussion with the other Minions/Mafia. It's a small difference but it does matter. Also, in BotC, all the roles are defined in the scenario, so players know what can possibly come up.
- I also agree that 'no-metagaming' is a dumb rule. I think it came about because some folks were sussing people on patterns from earlier games and others thinking that was unfair and irrelevant. Players should learn that if something happens in one game, it won't necessarily happen in another. But also, people fall into patterns, and I don't think social observation should be punished in a social deduction game. Eg: Sussing Revin purely on his roleplay is a metagaming tactic. It is additionally, very funny that he actually turned out to be Mafia, even though I would have never seriously pushed for a lynch on Day 1. I do agree that snooping on the 'DM activity' is lame because it is something 'outside' of the game and the players.
- I agree Miller is a bit of a dud role. It's usually more effective after the player has died, because that confirms a lot of information from within the game. It just sucks for the player with the role because they can't reap the benefits. BotC does improve this because dead players can still participate.
- I personally found my role a bit of a dud as well. I'm not sure how I was meant to make good use out of one-way comms when I had no other means of getting secret information. It seemed like a role made purely for shitposting. That is funny, but I'm not sure if that's what you were going for.


Also, thank you, Rose, for shouting out Blood on the Clocktower. I wasn't going to use this thread to promote my own, but it is a good game to compare it with. BotC was designed to keep the role-madness of Mafia, but also keep the Minion/Mafia team OP as they should be. (Please drop your interest in the thread, thank youuuu).


Anyway, that was a lot of words. Thanks again for hosting, Nine and Pito! The feedback is more on the drawbacks of this style of Mafia game, opposed to the actual hosting which I think you two did a good job at. I look forward to Pokemon Mafia 3 in 2031. (Or Pokemon Blood on the Lavender Tower???)
 
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