Mafia 56: Scout Camp

[worcej]

lol, massclaim

Im still surprised my charm-approach worked and everyone (except the people vanishing on the game) was convinced to claim day1 eventually.

Say what you will, but it definitely and completely did break the setup.

100% this. As someone who GM’s and as a player, watching a game get broken is heartbreaking.

[Hellenic Riot]

Anyway - as this game ended so fast it's really failed to use up as much of my furlough time as I had hoped. When's the next one?

[worcej]

I agree, this game was certainly broken by the massclaim, it wasn't just poor scum performance.

Macca was luck.
Flash was a terrible slip.
Donny was mechanics.

Jamie was certainly doomed - I was going to push him over Bismark for the lynch based on his play.

BB could’ve gone the distance, but oh well.

[worcej]

Anyway - as this game ended so fast it's really failed to use up as much of my furlough time as I had hoped. When's the next one?

I think Chaqa+EMC are next.

I hope both Durga and yourself play again!

[Durga]

I agree, this game was certainly broken by the massclaim, it wasn't just poor scum performance.

Macca was luck.
Flash was a terrible slip.
Donny was mechanics.

Jamie was certainly doomed - I was going to push him over Bismark for the lynch based on his play.

BB could’ve gone the distance, but oh well.

Was it luck? Or was it xorxes' great instinct? And my great wisdom of choosing to follow his great instinct? :)

[Chaqa]

I felt really bad subbing out, but I really never was able to read any of day 1 outside the first 8 pages or so. We had a major family issue this week unexpectedly, and it kinda ate up a lot of my time...

When I came back, it was a massclaim and my frustration was quite real. In the end it seemed more prudent to sub out as a protest and since I hadn’t read anything.

I’m boycotting any setup that is able to be broken by mass claim going forward. They’re not fun and they aren’t mafia. They’re boring and anyone who has been pushing for them should be ashamed they continue to ruin games.

[Chaqa]

Anyway - as this game ended so fast it's really failed to use up as much of my furlough time as I had hoped. When's the next one?

I think Chaqa+EMC are next.

I hope both Durga and yourself play again!

Well. We were, but I thought I’d have more time. Let me and EMC touch base and we’ll post soon.

[worcej]

I agree, this game was certainly broken by the massclaim, it wasn't just poor scum performance.

Macca was luck.
Flash was a terrible slip.
Donny was mechanics.

Jamie was certainly doomed - I was going to push him over Bismark for the lynch based on his play.

BB could’ve gone the distance, but oh well.

Was it luck? Or was it xorxes' great instinct? And my great wisdom of choosing to follow his great instinct? :)

Still sounds like luck lol

[Hellenic Riot]

Anyway - as this game ended so fast it's really failed to use up as much of my furlough time as I had hoped. When's the next one?

I think Chaqa+EMC are next.

I hope both Durga and yourself play again!

As far as I am aware I am furloughed until the end of July, so I'll probably play in the next game. Not sure I'll have time once I finally go back to work though.

[BunnyGo]

I do believe that is the worst scum team I have ever been on.

Noob Macca was dead before I even joined the game, Donny just deciding to shit his pants in the middle of the road as soon as he was the lead wagon, and then two - count 'em - TWO consecutive scumslips, courtesy of Flash and Brain.

Dear me, I'm glad that's over.

Plus Chaqa's poor performance meant you had a really hard time getting yourself out of the scumreads too. That was a rough game for scum.

BOB!!! YOU LIVED TO END OF GAME WITHOUT BEING KILLED BY TOWN!!!

[worcej]

I felt really bad subbing out, but I really never was able to read any of day 1 outside the first 8 pages or so. We had a major family issue this week unexpectedly, and it kinda ate up a lot of my time...

When I came back, it was a massclaim and my frustration was quite real. In the end it seemed more prudent to sub out as a protest and since I hadn’t read anything.

I’m boycotting any setup that is able to be broken by mass claim going forward. They’re not fun and they aren’t mafia. They’re boring and anyone who has been pushing for them should be ashamed they continue to ruin games.

I think the trick is you cannot have over 25% of the town slots as PR’s - it has to be below that threshold to de-incentivize the claims.

[Hellenic Riot]

I felt really bad subbing out, but I really never was able to read any of day 1 outside the first 8 pages or so. We had a major family issue this week unexpectedly, and it kinda ate up a lot of my time...

When I came back, it was a massclaim and my frustration was quite real. In the end it seemed more prudent to sub out as a protest and since I hadn’t read anything.

I’m boycotting any setup that is able to be broken by mass claim going forward. They’re not fun and they aren’t mafia. They’re boring and anyone who has been pushing for them should be ashamed they continue to ruin games.

I think the trick is you cannot have over 25% of the town slots as PR’s - it has to be below that threshold to de-incentivize the claims.

That or some sort of mechanism to make roles unconfirmable.

[rdrivera2005]

I do believe that is the worst scum team I have ever been on.

Noob Macca was dead before I even joined the game, Donny just deciding to shit his pants in the middle of the road as soon as he was the lead wagon, and then two - count 'em - TWO consecutive scumslips, courtesy of Flash and Brain.

Dear me, I'm glad that's over.

Plus Chaqa's poor performance meant you had a really hard time getting yourself out of the scumreads too. That was a rough game for scum.

BOB!!! YOU LIVED TO END OF GAME WITHOUT BEING KILLED BY TOWN!!!

By the way, sorry for any comment directed at you Bob. I was mainly trying to get a reaction from you.

[Vecna]

I felt really bad subbing out, but I really never was able to read any of day 1 outside the first 8 pages or so. We had a major family issue this week unexpectedly, and it kinda ate up a lot of my time...

When I came back, it was a massclaim and my frustration was quite real. In the end it seemed more prudent to sub out as a protest and since I hadn’t read anything.

I’m boycotting any setup that is able to be broken by mass claim going forward. They’re not fun and they aren’t mafia. They’re boring and anyone who has been pushing for them should be ashamed they continue to ruin games.

I get where youre coming from, but its an issue with the setup if its breakable by massclaim, not with the players pushing it.

Mods and that silly mafia council that are approving setups just need to pay greater attention to that.

As a rule of thumb id say if more than 1/3rd of the town roles are some sort of non-vanilla claimable PR, the setup should either be closed or have specific mechanics in place that punish claiming your role/flavour.

[Vecna]

closed setups are more fun to begin with anyway.

Give scum that freedom to get creative and make up their own fake-roles to claim

[xorxes]

I was very confused by how my tape recorder worked, BTW. I thought that my action had failed D1 because I was Cool Guy B, not because I didn't die.

[rdrivera2005]

I felt really bad subbing out, but I really never was able to read any of day 1 outside the first 8 pages or so. We had a major family issue this week unexpectedly, and it kinda ate up a lot of my time...

When I came back, it was a massclaim and my frustration was quite real. In the end it seemed more prudent to sub out as a protest and since I hadn’t read anything.

I’m boycotting any setup that is able to be broken by mass claim going forward. They’re not fun and they aren’t mafia. They’re boring and anyone who has been pushing for them should be ashamed they continue to ruin games.

I think the trick is you cannot have over 25% of the town slots as PR’s - it has to be below that threshold to de-incentivize the claims.

Either this or any other mechanics that make massclaim not advantageous to town.
You can't blame town to use massclaim if it favours them.

[Squigs44]

Thoughts on the game:

The Mafia team did not lose because the setup was against them. Macca and Donny were lynched for their own scuminess, not because of mechanics. Flash and Brain were lynched because of their own scumslips (a misunderstanding of mechanics if you want to blame the mechanics).

As far as mass claiming and mechanics, go, this game was not "broken" by a mass claim. I would not have gone with this setup if I thought so. In a mass claim, the optimal thing for mafia to do is what the mafia team basically did (minus the scumslips). If you claim one of you as a JOAT, one as a FAE, and the rest VT, you only give town 4 auto-clears (which is how many clears you would normally get in a cop/doc/tracker/vig type set up). You then have three pools of 30-33% mafia. While this does give town an advantage, it is far from breaking the game, and you also have to out your PRs, resulting in your PRs being killed quickly.
The argument used in this game could also be used to advocate for a mass claim in a game with a Doc/Cop/Vig/Tracker type setup, since a mass claim there would increase your odds of lynching mafia at the expense of losing your PRs. The slight difference here, is that the trade might be a little bit better for town in this case then the example I just gave.

So I wanted to see how much of an advantage a mass claim gave town, and how much of an advantage a Doc save or Cop Scan gave to compare the two and see if the mass claim was worth it. I put together some code that simulated games with random lynches among viable candidates, and some PR actions, etc. While random lynches may not seem like a realistic way to decide lynches, this is an exercise in math, and random lynches simulates the game well enough for us to see whether an advantage is gained. I set up my simulator on a 17 player set up and weighted the "random lynches" appropriately so that a 17 player set up ended up with a 50/50 win rate (which is the win rate expected for that set up and the win rate we have typically seen on webdip over the first 40 games at least).
After setting up my simulator, I ran it several times with different variables and outcomes. In a 20 player setup with 5 mafia, no massclaim, and no PRs, the mafia had a winrate of 68.5%, about expected. When adding a massclaim, the win rate of the mafia went down to 52%. This obviously shows that a massclaim like you did does give town an advantage. However, I did a simulation with no massclaim, but a successful doc save and a successful cop scan, and it tanked the win rate of mafia to 44%. Thus, getting a guilty on a mafia and getting a doc save to stop a kill is better than having the massclaim. Of course this model ignores the fact that town could have had a copscan or doc save even with a massclaim. So I did several simulations comparing everything, and I found that the massclaim is worth approximately 1 additional doc save or 1 additional cop scan. JOATs could also be put under the category of a doc save if their RB or Bulletproof vest stops a kill, or a cop scan if they get a tape recorder to work. I think it is reasonable to assume that hiding your PRs will give you an additional use of their power.

Tl;dr - While a massclaim is beneficial to town, it does not break the setup and its worth is approximately equivalent to 1 extra successful PR action, which is what you are sacrificing with a massclaim.

I will not be GMing on Webdip anymore for several reasons. Starting with my obvious inability to guarantee that I will be on for phase shifts. I have fun in designing cool game mechanics and that apparently doesn't work here on webdip. For a setup to survive here, it has to be almost vanilla.

[rdrivera2005]

closed setups are more fun to begin with anyway.

Give scum that freedom to get creative and make up their own fake-roles to claim

I don't like it too. I got screwed as 3rd party last game because I didn't know what to claim.

[Squigs44]

For people suggesting that PRs should be vanillaized if they claim, that would not have helped here. The PRs powers didn't actually cause any scum to be lynched or any NKs to be stopped.

For people suggesting that roles should be unconfirmable, that would not have helped here. No one was able to be confirmed in this game, it was just a lack of CCs that confirmed people.

For people suggesting that less than 25% of the game needs to be PRs: This is the only thing that would probably stop webdip from massclaiming.