Live Action Mafia

First of all, I am unsure if the conscript can be the last remaining mafia, if so, I think we could win via the following method:

Poison Krue and Megan, slaughter the weak on Casey, rogue kill on Ping. If I hadn't fucked up the use of scheme we would have that too. I get lynched. The next day, regular or hitman kill w/kaboom on Eric Yang, Lily is lynched by tiebreaker. This works even if both Jugalde and Victor, who have not been very active, vote correctly both days. Dgrazian, Michikyo, and my fake ID would make it 3vs3. I'm fairly sure that the remaining prophet is either Krue or Ping, so Dgrazian and I would both avoid them.

That said, I feel like town deserves the moral victory. One day's worth of an incorrect lynch and a few leaked roles should not determine the outcome of game, even in a game this short. Mafia should win by being sneaky and manipulative, not being able to power through an early endgame.

Normally I'd just be willing to play it out, but as Dgrazian and Lucy can confirm, I do not think that would be good for my physical/emotional health. Dgrazian also agrees that resigning is a good idea.

As a result, I would like to apologize to Zach: I fucked up, and I'm sorry things turned out badly for us as a result. I'm also sorry that I'm not playing this out. You were the best fellow mafia I could have asked for, and our time plotting/scheming was one of my favorite parts of this game. You put in a LOT of time for this game, and I am extremely impressed by your dedication and strategy, especially for a new player.

I also would like to apologize to Michikyo for screwing things up for our side and for not giving you the chance to really be roguey. I'm sure you would have been an awesome person to work with.

Although I might end up GMing, I will not be playing in the next game.

Katie, you were great as mafia. I thought town was so screwed last night when Maura died and no one was coming forward as the receiver holder. Conscripting Dgrazian in front of me was such a gutsy move, and I really admire you for doing that.

Thanks, everyone, and thank you, Lucy and Miranda, for an excellent, thoroughly enjoyable game.

This game was so exciting. Watching from the graveyard, every time I thought I had the future all plotted out, suddenly someone (town or mafia) would do something brilliant and unexpected, making me completely reconsider what I thought the outcome will be. Thank you all so much, this game was absolutely excellent.

This was a fantastic game to run. There was so much genius gameplay from both sides and I'm impressed with everyone.

As a first time mafia player, this was a really fun game, thanks guys!

When will we get to see the mafia den/graveyard?

From the "Game Over! Town Wins!" thread:

Basically, the spot where I really screwed up was telling Zach to accuse Shi-ke with the receiver. While I was fairly sure he wasn't gay knight or innocent child, the thought that he was prophet crossed my mind, and I did not consider it enough. And honestly even if he weren't prophet, I think making an "at least one of these two is mafia" situation was bad anyway. Killing Maura, particularly when we knew she didn't have the shovel, was a bad idea as well, but the Shi-ke thing was the really terrible move.

What we should have done was:

A. Not killed Aradhana - She said she would give the mic to someone else if mafia didn't kill her, but with Zach having the receiver, that was fine. As it turned out, game had no backups, and so Aradhana wouldn't have gotten any more information from being alive. It still would have been pretty risky though to bet on that, and a publicly revealed innocent child being alive would be bad as well, although she did trust me.

B. Killed Aradhana with kaboom - Maybe we wouldn't have even had Zach and Maura swap items in this scenario, since it would have let Zach stay out of the spotlight even more. The downside of this is that Dgrazian and I were the only people who knew Aradhana had the mic, and so this would have made Dgrazian uber-suspicious of me (though it would have been possible that another mafia kaboomed Aradhana on a good guess.) Still, Dgrazian being actively pitted against me would have been a situation I would have wanted to avoid. If we killed him at that point, I would have looked even more like a mafia. So basically we would have been forced to keep a correctly suspicious Dgrazian alive, which would have been bad.

C. Hired a hitman on Aradhana - Only option for this would have been Santiago, who I unfortunately hadn't realized was on my side. Even if I would have known he was from the start, I think that this still would have been the most implausible scenario, because I would have needed to hire him the day before, which I wouldn't have known to do, because Aradhana only sent her message about Santiago being with her after day end. I don't even know why I'm still listing this as an option.

D. Accused someone other than Shi-ke (AKA a non-prophet). This would have still put Zach into direct conflict with someone, but if we didn't kill Maura, I think we would have gotten the someone else lynched first. The problem is, we would have no way of knowing that Shi-ke was any worse of a choice than anyone else. Shi-ke was an experienced player and a reasonably high threat, and so in the absence of role information, I still think he was the right person to accuse, if we chose to accuse someone. Again, I don't know why I'm listing this as an option.

Looking over the choices now, I think I should have gone with A. It's the non-intuitive choice (because it means letting someone live vs killing them), but A leaves me more trusted (via Aradhana), rather than more mistrusted (via Dgrazian). We still would have had Aradhana with a slaughter the weak charge, and since we had two, that wouldn't have even stopped us from putting a charge on Casey (ironically, something we only figured out we should do because we were trying to kill our rogue). If Aradhana was coordinating smite choices, I doubt either Zach or I would have been at the top of the list. Additionally, a few people might have ended up suspicious that she was conscripted by her being left alive.

Anyway, I basically took the worst of a few bad options.

Once we planned to accuse Shi-ke, him being prophet would have screwed Zach over that night whether Maura died or not. The problem was him also wanting to smite me. My options for getting out of this were much more limited. In chronological order of when I could have used them:

A. Once at ET, when Dgrazian was asking opinions for who, out of Zach and Shi-ke, we should lynch, I could have said Zach. Although I didn't know Shi-ke was a prophet yet, I might have been able to realize that with all the psychology tricks Dgrazian pulls, it might have been better to not link myself to him. Still, I don't know if I would have been able to turn on Zach like that. Shi-ke would have still ended up smiting someone, probably Lily, and so Zach would still die and I would have been under suspicion. I think I would want to conscript Lily soon afterwards. This ends up with one mafia dead and one under suspicion.

B. At one point, when Dgrazian pulled me to the side to ask me personally what I thought about the lynch decision, I should have conscripted him. It was semi-public, but I think it would have worked as long as I did it quietly. Again, I didn't know Shi-ke was a prophet coming over at that point, but I think it still would have been a good idea just from the perspective of getting some more help pushing the lynch decision. Dgrazian probably would have pushed Shi-ke to smite Lily at that point. Zach would have died, and Dgrazian and I probably both would have been under some suspicion.

C. Once it was apparent that Shi-ke was coming over, try to conscript Dgrazian. This is what I actually did, and basically the worse version of B, although I had more information to make me come to that decision. Unfortunately, I had run out of opportunities to get Dgrazian alone by then, and I was forced to gamble that Lily was rogue in order to have a chance to conscript him. She wasn't, which outed all three mafia. We still could have tried to brute force a win, but as I said earlier, even if it worked, I think that's against the spirit of the game.

D. The actual, golden option, which I didn't consider until later. Sneak out the back door of ET, and intercept/conscript Shi-ke before he arrived. Instruct him to come in, act like he is about to smite someone, and then actually kaboom Dgrazian. This would have been perfectly inline with Shi-ke being mafia from the beginning; if he's going to die, he might as well claim prophet so that he can get a chance to kill Dgrazian, the biggest threat in game. Shi-ke would inevitably have been lynched, but then we lose only one mafia, Zach looks like he is innocent, and I am under less suspicion since I advocated that Shi-ke would be lynched over Zach. The next day, we take out Elaine, Casey, and Lily. We would also get a scheme and rogue kill. Basically, town would have no hope, and no real answers for who any of the mafia are.

I instructed dgrazian to open the door for me a little in advance of me getting to ET so that he would be able to spot any shenanigans going on before I got to ET. I also figured that if he was conscripted, it was quite possible that he may try to intercept me as well, so I gave him a higher ETA than it would have taken for me to get to ET, so that I could wait for a little and see if anyone left ET to try to intercept me. I also took a slightly roundabout route, in case someone decided to intercept me some distance from ET's doorway where dgrazian couldn't spot me.

That makes me feel better then. I was worried that I had missed an amazing chance to win game.

Hmm, if I had known that, I think I actually might have gone with my choice anyway. If I had to have picked a second choice for being rogue, it actually would have been Michikyo (because of her sketchily not giving away the shovel), but Lily was acting sketchy enough that I think I would have placed the chance of her being rogue above the chance of me being able to successfully intercept and conscript you when you were specifically trying to avoid that.

Did you end up coming from the north or the south side of ET, by the way?

Of course, I could have killed Lily on the spot if we weren't going to bet the game on her being rogue, but that would have been a tough one to explain ("Lily was killed in her and Daniel's room") And we'd still have shike coming over determined (presumably) to smite ksedlar.

Curious shike, were you in fact going to smite ksedlar? As of an hour earlier, I wasn't quite sure whether I wanted Lily or ksedlar smited more. I was leaning toward ksedlar but it was close. It wasn't until seeing reactions to the Zach-shike beef that I started to feel very, very strongly that ksedlar was mafia and I absolutely wanted her smited.

Yes, I think we should have killed Lily in your room. Specifically, I should have killed her, using the regular kill for the day, and then you should have scheme-killed Shi-ke.

The only problem was I was roughly 40% sure she was rogue, and if she was, killing her would have been really bad for us. Maybe I should have tried to bring up, say, Nathan instead, scrapped the "hoping for rogue" thing, and then just done the two kills. Zach still would have died though, and Dgrazian and I would both still look sketchy as hell.

Also, in response to point B, I believe I had already made clear to shike at that point that he was to smite you, Katie. It probably would have been very suspicious for me to do an about-face at that point.

Darn. Hmm, I think I would have wanted to just publicly kill Shi-ke then before he could say smite. Zach and I both would have been outed, but they could only lynch one of us, and the other would kill Casey + Elaine (or just let her die) + someone else, while you make a scheme kill and Michikyo makes a rogue kill. Meanwhile, you are slandering my name and everything I stand for. I give fake ID and medkit to you before day end, of course. Also, if I'm not the one lynched, I can try to bang-kill you, just for show (you might want Zach to come to ET and do this anyway, while killing someone else of course). This would leave only 5 townies. I think you could probably win against that, even without using poison. Regular kill, wager a guess on Krue being prophet and get Ceres to hitman kill her, and you're left with three townies. If we set up tiebreaks in advance, we win the vote and the game.

I think there are two numbers mafia need to worry about:
Number of townies minus the number of mafia
Number of bits of information revealed to the town.


Recent mafias have been great about the first, but haven't done well regarding the second part.

I'm still curious as to why I apparently set off so many people's sketch-radars. I don't think I made any in-game decisions that were clearly sub-optimal for town. Psychologically, I didn't try particularly hard to look innocent, but I definitely also did not consciously try to look sketchy. Anyone have feedback, for my edification?

Katie, you probably should have just killed me after conscripting Daniel in front of me. Even if I actually was rogue, I would only be good for 1 kill. It really wasn't worth the risk to let me live after seeing that. Better yet, you could have waited until you could conscript Daniel without any witnesses, or just picked a different conscription target (me, perhaps).

Also, I totally called the fact that Andres wasn't actually mafia, and that Katie was sketchy (as I had expressed to a number of people before last night's events).

I was actually sketched out enough by ksedlar that if I didn't believe so strongly that "no lynch until there's hard evidence" is correct strategy for town, I would have called for ksedlar to be lynched. As much as I believe that that is still correct strategy, I am quite pleased that psych/soft suspicions were so game-deciding this time.

Lily I will try to get you lynched every game. In all of the games where we've both played (5, by my count) we've been on opposite sides.

Likewise, aok. =P

No, you guys have played 7 total games together (counting this one), and you have been on the same side twice. In Fall 2012, aok was conscripted mafia and Lily was town, you were both town in Spring 2013, you were both town in Fall 2013, Lily was rogue and aok was town in IAP 2014, aok was conscripted mafia and Lily was town in Spring 1 2014, Lily was mafia and aok was town in Spring 2 2014, and aok was godfather and Lily was town this game.

Lily and I are actually more opposed, since we were only on the same side in Fall 2014, which makes 1/5 games.

aok and I, on the other hand, have been on the same side in all 5 games that we've played. So, clearly I should trust aok in spite of how sketchy he will inevitably look.