Mid-Range Game 22: My Little Perfidy

[xxGaea They/Them, Fae/Faer]

Ahh, I really enjoyed this game. All of the write ups you did were amazing, Hero. Thank you, all, for a great first SE game. I will most certainly be coming back for more. ^^

I would like to nominate @The Flash and @BrightnessRadiant for the CR, because both of them did an amazing job keeping with their chosen roles, in my opinion.

Edited June 14, 2017 by Crimsn-Wolf
fixing spelling errors, typing on mobile is hard

[BrightnessRadiant she/her]

Thanks for a great game @Herowannabe!!  It was so much fun!! I'm glad that almost every pony actually joined in with all of the RP! This game was so much fun to play! I'd like to nominate Flash and Bridge Boy for all of their awesome RP! If I could vote for three people I'd vote Ecthelion too! I had a blast RP with you guys! 

I was happy to be the holder of magic, especially since I was having a hard time choosing between pegasus for flying and unicorn for magic...but I got to have both in the end! 

Also a huge thanks to @Seonid for all of the planning we got to do! It was awesome to have a confirmed village pony to work with 

Edit: haha I loved reading the elim doc!  apparently all my RP with @Bridge Boy helped me to live longer lolol...so thanks!  also fyi I wasn't ever as trusting of y'all as I let on hehe it was funny to read the elims all saying they thought I trusted them...I guess I'm better at hiding my real opinions then I thought hehehe. I felt honoured to be talked about so much in your doc heh 

Edited June 14, 2017 by BrightnessRadiant

[Jondesu he/him]

Huh, first time I've seen a draw.  And @Herowannabe, were you implying in the RP that Schitzo is actually also a Changeling hiding among those kidnapped, and he and Jeeves will still work against everyone?  That's…odd if so, but cool.  Schitzo just might need to have a doctor check out his twitchy ear first.

Sorry I kinda didn't participate as much as I'd like, ya'll, and dropped the ball on the RP after a bit, but good job to everyone, both teams included this time!  We didn't let the Changelings win, even though we didn't really win either.

[Steeldancer he/him]

I would like to nominate myself  and brightness. I especially appreciated her taking care of Wormy after i got lynched. Which you guys lynched me after i went to bed, but whatever. This was a fantastic first game, I loved playing as an elim, and I will definetly continue to play SE. 

[DeTess she/her]

2 minutes ago, Jondesu said:

Huh, first time I've seen a draw.  And @Herowannabe, were you implying in the RP that Schitzo is actually also a Changeling hiding among those kidnapped, and he and Jeeves will still work against everyone?  That's…odd if so, but cool.  Schitzo just might need to have a doctor check out his twitchy ear first.

I read that as the real Jeeves and Schitzo still being captured by changelings, and these two being changelings that have replaced them. This was a draw after all, so it shouldn't all go the pony's way.

Edited June 14, 2017 by randuir

[Jondesu he/him]

Just now, randuir said:

I read that as the real Jeeves and Schitzo still being captured by changelings, and these two being changelings that have replaced them. This was a draw after all, so it shouldn't all go the ponie's way.

Ah, I like that.  Poor Schitzo, though.  He needs his daily dose of wildflower tea to ward off his heartburn!

[BrightnessRadiant she/her]

Oh and also some other thoughts...

@The Flash I kinda started suspecting you when you defended and believed frozen mint so much...I kinda felt like you actually knew she was village because you weren't lol...I mostly thought that way because I did the exact same thing for Ecthelion in the last QF when I was evil heh. (Your welcome for Wormy )

@Ecthelion III sorry for lynching you! I was convinced that either you or BB were evil and I chose wrong..hehe apparently my "evil instincts" were telling me to go after the non evil lol. I suppose the "Eternal Love Triangle" must always have an evil among them haha 

Oh and I've played 5 games now and my rank is now Oldblood so I figure I'm officially no longer a newbie haha yay 

I've been good 3 times and evil 2 so those are kinda weird odds lol..if I'm evil in the next QF that would just be hilarious 

 

Edited June 14, 2017 by BrightnessRadiant

[Herowannabe he/him]

18 minutes ago, Jondesu said:

Huh, first time I've seen a draw.  And @Herowannabe, were you implying in the RP that Schitzo is actually also a Changeling hiding among those kidnapped, and he and Jeeves will still work against everyone?  That's…odd if so, but cool.  Schitzo just might need to have a doctor check out his twitchy ear first.

Sorry I kinda didn't participate as much as I'd like, ya'll, and dropped the ball on the RP after a bit, but good job to everyone, both teams included this time!  We didn't let the Changelings win, even though we didn't really win either.

Yeah, that was @randuir's suggestion in the Spec Doc. I was trying to figure out how to narrate a draw, and he suggested that the Ponies get the Elements and the kidnapped ponies back, but Plot Twist! The Changelings secretly replaced the captured ponies with Changelings, so they're still hiding among the population. 

[Ecthelion III he/him]

I'm a bit disappointed nobody read my parting words...I thought after my actions, BB had said some pretty out-of-the-box stuff and I tried to cast a bit of doubt on him. Guess not *shrug*

Edited June 15, 2017 by Ecthelion III

[BrightnessRadiant she/her]

@Ecthelion III We were suspicious of BB, but we were afraid of hitting kindness cuz we figured an Earth pony had it, and we knew it was either him or DA. And then when there was no kidnap on one cycle we figured the last elim was probably inactive. That's why we lynched DA instead, but it didn't work out.

[Elenion he/him]

2 hours ago, BrightnessRadiant said:

@Ecthelion III We were suspicious of BB, but we were afraid of hitting kindness cuz we figured an Earth pony had it, and we knew it was either him or DA. And then when there was no kidnap on one cycle we figured the last elim was probably inactive. That's why we lynched DA instead, but it didn't work out.

One tactic that I would suggest for future situations like that is to take the active suspect first. If BB had turned out village, DA couldn't put in a kidnap due to inactivity, so the village takes DA the second cycle for the win with one Element left. But going for DA first gives BB the final kidnap opportunity that he needed.

[BrightnessRadiant she/her]

@Elenion yeah I realized that would have been better...but after the game was over hehe  Guess you learn something new every game!

[Elenion he/him]

11 hours ago, BrightnessRadiant said:

@Elenion yeah I realized that would have been better...but after the game was over hehe  Guess you learn something new every game!

Exactly. I've been around for a good amount of time, and I'm still learning new tactics!

[Steeldancer he/him]

So is everybody voting for me and brightness overall? 

[Madagascar]

Unfortunately I wasn't able to sign up for this, even though I was hoping I'd be able to since I'd used my cosmetic role thingy to help make it happen. But it was fun watching it all play out! Hope everyone had fun!

[Herowannabe he/him]

4 hours ago, Madagascar said:

Unfortunately I wasn't able to sign up for this, even though I was hoping I'd be able to since I'd used my cosmetic role thingy to help make it happen. But it was fun watching it all play out! Hope everyone had fun!

I didn't know you were watching the game! We probably could have had you step in as a pinch hitter for one of the players that went inactive. Or if not then I could have at least given you access to the spec doc. Something at least. 

Anyway, thanks again for making this game happen @Madagascar! It was hands down the funnest game I've run so far.

[Seonid he/him]

I quite enjoyed myself in this game @Herowannabe! Thanks for running it.

[Herowannabe he/him]

Hey guys, I was going to spend this evening writing up my thoughts on the game from the GM's perspective, but instead I've been preoccupied because we just found my cat! I'm very thrilled (and exhausted now- it's 1:30am) and SO relieved. I'll try to get the GM post up sometime in the next day or two. EDIT: spoke too soon.  

If you haven't cast any votes for the CR competition, now is your last chance to do so. 

Edited June 21, 2017 by Herowannabe

[BrightnessRadiant she/her]

@Herowannabe Hooray! *Fanfare!*  Congrats on finding your cat!

[Steeldancer he/him]

@Herowannabe so whats up? 

[Herowannabe he/him]

11 hours ago, The Flash said:

@Herowannabe so whats up? 

Sorry, real life has been taking priority. I'll try to get the promised post up tomorrow or Saturday. 

[Steeldancer he/him]

8 hours ago, Herowannabe said:

Sorry, real life has been taking priority. I'll try to get the promised post up tomorrow or Saturday. 

Ok no rush. Just curious. 

[Herowannabe he/him]

Okay, here we go (finally):

First off, let's take care of the Cosmetic Role prize. Or well, prizes, because it looks like we have a tie. So congrats to @BrightnessRadiant and @The Flash! I'll be working on making a picture for each of you as I get the chance. I don't know how quickly I'll be able to get to them- Real Life is crazy at the moment, but I promise that I will get to them eventually, one way or the other. I'll post progress updates as I have them, too. Do you have any requests for a particular scene you'd like illustrated? If not I'll pick one that I feel is suitable. 

---

Next up, my well-organized rambling and haphazard thoughts on the game from the GM perspective. 

Short version:

I am REALLY happy with how this game turned out. If I get the chance I will happily run it again. 

Long version:

So this game began earlier this year when the CR prize for AG3 was the ability to authorize a non-Sanderson themed game to be run. That got me thinking. I was basically at the top of all 3 GM lists, so I could run a game pretty much whenever I wanted, and I already had a Star Wars themed game lined up, so I could have just run that. I wasn't particularly happy with the mechanics for that game yet, and I had been watching a lot of MLP with my daughter, and I started thinking that a MLP game could be fun. I didn't want to pick between Star Wars and MLP, so I posted a quick concept idea for each game and let the CR winners decide which, if either, they thought would be fun to run, and Madagascar picked the MLP game. I confess that I was pretty happy with that choice.

As for the mechanics- I had been tossing around ideas for having publicly-known roles for quite a while, because I thought that could be fun. They had to be something interesting but not game breaking, especially if they fell into the hands of the Eliminators. That's where the Unicorn/Pegasus/Earth-pony abilities came from. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out and how they impacted the game. However, if I were to change any one thing about this game it would probably be the pegasus ability to cast secret-votes. It can be a cool and powerful ability in the right situations, especially if several Pegasi' coordinate with each other, but the general gameplay mentality on the forums here is that hidden votes aren't helpful, so it didn't get used much this game (@Alvron gets special mention here, because he the one player who used his secret vote more than his regular vote!). If I were to run the game again I would probably make the secret vote mandatory for pegasi (but that only goes so far because nothing is stopping players from announcing their secret vote in thread anyway) or come up with a different ability entirely. 

Because I already had the public-abilities in mind, I wanted to keep the special roles fairly simple and vanilla. I decided to not give the Eliminators any special powers because if you play Mafia or Werewolves you know that (for the most part) they don't have any special roles, and it works just fine in those games. However, I was nervous about making it balanced, so I did several things.

First, I worked in flaws/vulnerabilities into most of the special powers: Honesty couldn't tell lies (a huge restriction in these games, as I'm sure you know). If Loyalty got kidnapped their protect target would get kidnapped too, making it risky. Kindness wasn't particularly good or bad as a power, just interesting, and Generosity had no direct benefits- only downsides. And of course Magic had the extra life, but once Magic was eliminated all the other powers went away. 

Second, I made the Changeling win condition slightly easier by only requiring them to eliminate the 6 ponies with special powers. The main reason for this was to prevent the village's ability to set up a Mayor. In other words, I didn't want (for example) the pony with Magic to reveal herself and get the Loyalty pony to protect her and then just ride out the game with the Changelings being unable to stop her. By only requiring the Changelings to eliminate the ponies with powers, combined with Loyalty's flaw, it made mayoring a very risky tactic. Anyone who tried it risked the Changelings finding and eliminating the Loyalty pony and taking out 2 special powers in one go.  

Third, when figuring out how many Changelings to have I rounded up to 5 instead of down to 4. I was really surprised by how many people thought that there would only be 4 eliminators this game. Both in the spec doc and in the game most people thought there would only be 4, but I had to just sit quietly and bite my tongue as they were discussing it. But I never at any point before, during, or after this game thought that there should only be 4 eliminators. With all the special powers being in the villagers' hands and with the potential for mayoring (even with the risks involved), the Changelings needed just a little bit of an edge. So I rounded up to 5 eliminators. Now, I admit that that might have created an unbalanced game, except for point number four. 

Fourth, I chose only new(ish) players to be eliminators. This was done purely by accident. I haven't been particularly active on SE over the past year or so, so I've kind of lost touch with who has played dozens of games and who hasn't. My only real guide stone was who played AG3 and LG32- the only two games I've played in recent months. So when I rolled for roles (heh heh) and saw Ornstein's name, I thought he was one of the "experienced" players. Also, I don't know why, but I thought I remembered Bridge Boy from before so I assumed he was a more experienced player as well. And thus it was that I accidentally seeded the Eliminators with a bunch of players that had each only played a handful of games. 

But balance-wise it all worked out- remarkably well, as shown by the fact the game ended in a draw. It really could have gone either way any number of times. This makes me very happy, because the first two games I ran ended up having some major balance issues. 

Let's see here, what else. 

Oh, I mentioned this in the Spectator doc, but in case anyone missed it, as the GM I noticed a number of potential strategies and tricks that could be employed based on the flaws I built into the special powers. To name a few:

• Loyalty can be used to protect other players, OR (especially if you think you might be kidnapped soon) you can use it to target players that you're suspicious of and potentially take them out with the built in dead-man's-switch. I would have loved to see the Changelings find and kidnap Loyalty only to have Loyalty take one of them down with him.  Really, I'm sad that Loyalty was eliminated so early on. Such potential there. 
• The Element of Generosity's rules allowed for a couple different ways you could use it to pseudo-scan players. Props to @randuir for discovering one of them- probably better than the one I saw before the game began. The version I saw worked like this: pass generosity to a pony you think you can trust, and tell them to hold on to it for 1 full cycle and then pass it back on the 2nd cycle. Changelings automatically pass it the first chance they get, so if someone holds on to it for a full cycle you know they're not a changeling. My method was probably a little safer than Rand's, but much slower, so probably not as useful as Rand's method ended up being. 
• On the flip side of things, if the Changelings (or anyone else) were thinking about it and paying close attention, they could have started narrowing down who held Honesty. Honesty can't lie without losing their powers, so they can't claim to be any other role. So if the eliminators paid attention to who claimed roles (whether true or not) and perhaps encouraged a little role-claiming, as well as looking for any other statements that would have been untrue for Honesty to say, they could have started narrowing down the possibilities for who Honesty could be. 
• Lastly, this game is really set up to encourage making role-claims (whether true or not) if your head is on the chopping block. I'm really sad that nobody really did that- especially the two ponies with powers that got lynched early on. If you're about to be lynched, you might as well tell everyone your role and hopefully get a cycle or two longer to live and help your team. And even if you don't have a power, if you're up to be lynched, why not fake having a role? I would have loved to see one of the Changelings who was on the chopping block use this tactic and claim to be the pony with Magic- yeah, it will probably backfire on you in a cycle or two, but if you're going to get lynched anyway then what have you to lose? And there's a good chance you might be able to ferret out who really holds Magic (or one of the other powers) in the process. 

 

Anyway... what else... The cosmetic roles and RP were all fantastic! Thanks to everyone who ran with their role and had fun with it, it sure made it an enjoyable game to watch/run. Along those lines, the write ups were a lot of fun to do, too (especially when I was able to find suitable pictures online to inject into them). I really loved when I was able to run with a player's RP and work it into the write-up in fun and interesting ways- which was true for most- if not all- of the writeups

And I'm happy that for the most part people stayed at least somewhat active. We had a couple players drop off, but overall it went really well I thought. I had considered working in some sort of incentive to stay active / disincentive to go inactive directly into the rules, but I didn't want to make them too complicated so I ended up not doing it. But I think it turned out just fine in the end. 

Last of all, let me just thank you guys one more time for playing this game. It was a lot of fun, and you all made it that way. Thanks for the fun RP, thanks for participating and playing, thanks for all the patience and kind words and encouragement when real life got in my way, particularly with my cat getting lost. You guys are the best, and it has been an honor to be your GM!

 

[xxGaea They/Them, Fae/Faer]

I am happy that this was the game that got me back into playing mafia. I'm sorry that I wasn't very active while I was alive, I just wasn't sure how to go about pretending to be a villager since it had been awhile since I'd played any mafia-style games. I loved reading all of your write-ups, and all the rp of everyone as a whole--you are all so creative! I hope to participate in any future games that you run, Hero. c:

[BrightnessRadiant she/her]

@Herowannabe. Oooo yay I won!  congrats to @The Flash as well! *high fives (tbh I poured a lot into this game with my character cuz I really wanted to win...I'm not sure why...just for fun lol )

Thanks for a great game Hero!!! This was so much fun and a hilarious twist on mafia! I would play it again in a heartbeat!