My Little Pony: Friendship is Mafia

[IHateMakingNames]

I may have associated things in my head to make you extra mafiay. Though Bard definitely did it multiple times.

Gregness, I think your rep during the game technically counts as outside game communication.

[greed]

Yeah, in retrospect I should have been more active from the get go. But by the time I realised this, conversation had become so dense and there had been calls for me to talk more, that I figured I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I had you pegged as Mafia day 2 as well so must have been something sketchy. I think I had a bard/you link as well.

It was pretty hilarious watching IHMN peg all the mafia and then the town just faf about massively and nearly still fuck it up. I was rooting for RPG to SK you all.

[Ryanderman]

I think I just have no poker face.

And that list of reasons why I was inactive for the first day I gave to Snake, absolutely true.

And the timing of one of my posts, immediately after Snake called me out, that drew suspicion to me, entirely coincidental. I was writing the post while he posted.

Oh well.

[Solid Snake]

WALL OF PINK TEXT TIME
(I know you missed this)

IHMN was definitely MVP, but Geminex actually was a fairly close second in my book. For what it's worth, before I died N2, I was 100% certain those two were Town, but they were the only two I had definitive pro-Town hunches over. (Karesh, admittingly, would have totally been pro-Town if Sifright actually played his role well. I'll give Sifright credit for improving as the game went along, but throughout much of D1 and D2 his play was disastrous.)

But yeah I pretty strongly alluded one point at D2 to the fact that I was convinced Gem was Town, didn't have to do the same with IHMN because the limitations on the role ensure the role itself is almost certainly Town. Was shocked to see Earl go after Geminex, partially because Geminex was obv-Town, but also partially because Earl totally could have just announced his role and given Geminex time to defend himself, and partially because I had just asked for a one-day reprieve to state my actual suspicions and defend my record in detail and Earl totally destroyed my chance to do so by ending the Day.

Based on the fact that Earl ended the Day when he did, I was convinced Scum was going to kill me that night and prevent me from articulating my suspicions, which was basically what happened. (Although it may not have actually happened for that reason.)

I'd also like to point out that I made a totally serious post D1 in which I went something like 5 of 7 in calling out anti-town roles. Just sayin'.

Unfortunately, this is kind of a bad game to assess my play properly because neither D1 nor D2, the two days in which I was alive, actually ended with a legitimate lynch. So both days ended with my votes on people I actually didn't want to lynch that Day, because that's just how I play the game. Never give Scum too much ammunition to want you eliminated, that's my philosophy; and when given a strong Power role I almost always try to act scummy enough so that Scum feels comfortable letting me live. Some, albeit not all, of the "WTF are you thinking Snake?" moments were inspired by that exact philosophy. Given my ability to defend myself, as Town I often prefer to act "too ambiguously scummy" as opposed to "too obv-Town" because it's easier for me to defend from lynches than to defend from nightkills. I wanted Scum to mistakenly believe that I was an asset for them to keep around until I laid the gauntlet on them.

All things considered though I'm actually shocked so many other Townies did apparently buy into a "Snake is dangerous scum" narrative. Protip: As scum I would not have dared to prevent an IHMN lynch by giving IHMN the chance to copy-paste an accurate description of his claim; even assuming I correctly deduced the limitation, I totally would have taken advantage of the legitimate excuse of "ANNOYING PONY GIFS!!!" to waste an otherwise productive Townie. I wasn't kidding when I kept noting that.

What else? (Nearly) everyone really was playing a poor game before I showed up and I'm glad I stirred up some activity even if I rankled a few feathers in doing so. Mafia made a clear mistake in actually setting up Nikose to take the fall after eliminating me; a one-to-one tradeoff like that is never an effective Scum strategy. Nik needed to find ways to support my lynch that didn't leave him as such an obvious target for PO / Vig / lynch attention the minute I flipped. Nik also hurt Mafia somewhat by claiming that I had to be the SK, which ultimately led him to claiming a ludicrous pseudo-inaccurate PO role to justify his intuition. Problem there was in doing so he also was indirectly making the case that I couldn't be Mafia, which meant he introduced "pro-Town" evidence beneficial to me while simultaneously gunning after me. Another Protip: In a game this large, Town should never deliberately attempt to lynch the SK as early as D2 because the SK still has a high chance of hitting Cult or Mafia and the Mafia is the far greater threat. If you happen to lynch the SK by chance while hunting anti-Town Mafiates that's fine, but if you narrow someone down to "either SK or Town, but definitely not Mafia," you do not lynch that guy D2.

Or better yet, Mafia, if you set it up so that you're strongly pushing for my lynch and you're articulating a case that I'm scum? Don't nightkill me. The minute you do, everyone who strongly pushed my lynch or indirectly supported its underlying thesis becomes a suspect. Let Town waste a lynch on me, and in the interim keep articulating that my survival despite the odds and despite my activity is further evidence that I'm Scum. If anything, you really should use your Nightkills to PO-hunt and/or Vig-hunt.

And people who used the Bookie thing against me in some meta argument that I pushed for D1 to end the way it did because I was scum are stupid and deserve to be called out as stupid. I'd have made the exact same argument whether Scum or Town, because as someone who's hosted Mafia games before and is a vet I'm capable of detaching myself and actually discussing host decisions impartially.

Closing Thoughts: All in all I thought this game was frankly balanced in Town's favor because of the lack of Town 'Nillas. 'Nillas tend to exist in games for a reason, despite how legitimately 'boring' they are; giving every Townie a Power role creates balancing issues. Yeah, it's true that we got lucky in killing off the entire Cult N1, but it's equally true that Scum actually lucked out in killing the Reviver for reasons entirely independent of any knowledge of his role N2. Even if Scum had killed a Townie instead of a Cultist N1, I would have been able to revive him N2 unless I was Roleblocked, which only further displays a power imbalance. Then there's Sifright's role knowing who Fluttershy was, leading to the exact issues I presented in my Karesh / Sifright summary around D1 or so; giving Sifright and Karesh the ability to be confirmed together by the PO N1 is dangerous, particularly when Karesh can't be night-targeted and when killing Sifright would confirm Karesh to Town, who the Mafia could then no longer lynch or kill.

Add to that the fact that if Earl's role went to a more competent Townie it would have led to an immediate Dayvig kill of an anti-Town role, add to that the fact that if Bookie hadn't "cheated" we might have actually lynched an anti-town role D1, and add to that the existence of a Vig with multiple night shots (if not unlimited nightshots) and an SK who's going to hit Mafiates with as much impunity as Townies, and Scum needed tons of power roles themselves to even remain remotely competitive.

All in all, it's telling that Scum lost this game so easily despite the fact that most Townies played a rather poor game. I don't blame Scum for losing this because I'm not convinced the Mafia had the slightest of chances from the get-go, the number of early mistakes Town made just gave them hope.

EDIT: Also, it thoroughly saddens me that Fenris never repped me despite all my activity in this game. Fenris Y U NO LIEK ME

[Revising Ocelot]

Also gotta say that it was cruel for the PO to be replaced by me AKA Pessimist Idiot Extraordinaire. I suppose an inactive PO is worse than a moronic active sane PO... barely. I was so hilariously, stupidly wrong on too many things.

[Geminex]

Hey, you revealed oron and greed. Lucky, maybe, but you totes saved the day.

Also, reading Snake's post, it does seem like the game was kinda skewed in favor of town, but I'd kinda like to think that was balanced by the town's lack of experience.

To expand on that, I think it's great that Fenris cut out the vanilla roles, cause giving everyone something to do is that much more interesting, but if game balance was a problem again in the future, I think some roles could be more like IHMN's: Detrimental.

Still interesting, certainly, adding a bit of variety, but rather than overpowering the town, you can weaken some townies to balance out the extra power of others.

[IHateMakingNames]

It was town favor by roles, but the lack of alignment/role reveals on night kills hurts the town. Well, in theory, since the mafia were background characters and ponies with lines were townie. But most people didn't realize that.

I believed the Karesh/Sifright claim immediately, since no one counter-claimed Fluttershy. If Karesh really wasn't Fluttershy then those two would have been mafia and we'd have easy lynches.

Once Snake died I had to take over as the townie trying to win. I was so afraid that the PO would get night killed since no one was listening to me, and if the PO died I was certain we'd lose.

[Geminex]

since no one was listening to me

To be fair, you lose a bunch of credibility if you're talking in pony gifs. Like, you were right, and now that you can actually be coherent, you sound very authoritative, but that was not the case back when you main form of communication was adorable ponies.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by IHateMakingNames

I believed the Karesh/Sifright claim immediately, since no one counter-claimed Fluttershy.

I would have bought into that myself if not for the fact that as Host I tend to always try to level the playing field for Scum by leaving a couple main characters as safe roles for them to claim. (In the Homestuck Mafia game, Dave, Jade and Vriska were major characters who Mafia could claim.) In the end, though, I'd have had no problem buying into Karesh if not for the fact that Sifright's D1 and D2 play was dodgy as hell, and Sifright tied himself to Karesh with his claim.

I'm surprised that Fenris cast all the major characters as pro-Town, because it effectively (as you noted) nullified the value of not knowing the roles characters possessed when they were nightkilled. And the fact that Fenris, for example, established that Rainbow Dash was the Vig (and that Zecora had the power to revive) via flavor text ensured that everyone would know at least those roles once they flipped.

EDIT: I disagree with Gem on the pony GIFs thing; ironically my confidence in IHMN as Town skyrocketed with the GIFs as opposed to without them, as the limitation (once I confirmed it) proved he was almost certainly Town, I felt comfortable trusting nearly every one of his suspicions. Admittingly, it also helped that IHMN seemed to be one of the few Townies with a firm grasp of the fact that I was Town and trying to help. As for the GIFs, I found most of them quite easy to follow and I actually think IHMN would have been worse off if he actually typed out every one of his thoughts, as Scum would have an easier time manipulating his text than manipulating GIFs and there would be more room for misinterpretation of IHMN's logic. Words are easy things to twist.