I think Lissa played it correctly tbh.

GG all, we're gods etc etc

 

Gggg

 

This was really fun tbh. As far as mechanics-heavy setups go this is a really good one, feels like a puzzle and I think we did some great traditional solving as well. Despite being in the poe it was a really positive experience and I'd play with yall again

 

hooray good morning and gg

 

For the record, I AM Ramona Flowers irl and I DO change my avatar every game.

(I haven't changed my hair in a while tho. Fucking covid.)

 

Yikes what was so wolfy bout my entrance >>

 

thoughts! thoughts! thoughts!

 

Thoughts, Thoughts, Thoughts:

After being made known of a game I wasn't aware existed, this setup is 25 wins and 25 losses across all sites that have run it to my knowledge. It is high powered, but swingy and a bit snowbally. Unfortunately on DLP it is 7 wins and 2 losses, due to a combination of insular site meta and fewer mechanical fuckups (by town, at least. Vaimes still rands wolf sometimes).

With that in mind I think I'm going to slightly tweak the setup in order to make it more wolfsided next time it is run on DLP. This is harder than it initially seems due to the way so many roles interact, and the core principles of the setup - everyone having a role that is decently impactful/fun, no flips, blah blah.

The obvious target is the Priest/Acolyte combo. Straight up removing acolyte is something I've considered and straight up discarded, due to how integral that burden of knowledge is to wolves actually finding the Priest, as well as redundancy in confirming Priest death. Wolves being able to claim Priest has appeal, but when they only need to hit one role to do so, I think it swings pendulum too far other way and is even swingier, so that's discarded.

Making Priest odd night only could work. I've toyed with idea of making it a tracker instead but think that's meh in this setup.

Another tuning knob is the number of confirmable roles. It was really brutal in this game with Fluff (judge), Nutella (dob) and Grapefruit (leeroy) being potential misyeets that were all...not actually misyeets due to roles. Leeroy in particular is something I'm considering scrapping and replacing with another role that is not confirmable. I'm not fully sure what to replace it with yet, as it's not really a killing role, protective, or information, per se, and could just be a net benefit to town if it's remotely strong.

Removing Lump is something that automatically comes to mind to people, but I think that's a poor idea for a variety of reasons. 1) It won't actually change anything. Town will just pick a fake-lump, someone else in the PoE to converge roles on and generate the pseudo-clear + auxiliary role benefits. 2) The double vote is of very, very low importance tobasically any game of TH that has ever run. 3) It removes a highly flavorful and fun aspect to d1/the game. I think removal doesn't actually impact town win rate but does impact game enjoyment, and that's kind of a loss/loss.

Making Lump immune to being targeted or something has same problem as removing it, people will simply pick someone else to converge roles onto.

Powering up wolves in some way I considered, but have mostly discarded - the game is high powered and swingy enough, adding more power to the game isn't the solution I don't think, removing it is. Thoughts considered were Last Stand components, either through kill power or activating all roles the night only one wolf remains. Or something. I'm a little hesitant to incentivize bussing mechanically though, since I think that generates gameplay that runs counter to pure solving and dayphase play - someone makes a good read and a good push, and gets pushed for it because bussing benefits wolves possibly - bussing exists but I don't think I want to introduce that.

The real problem with the setup "balance" is, well. The players. You guys know each other so well that at rand there's going to be several people who just are never getting misyeeted in a game. Anytime there's effectively 3-4 town peeks on n0, the setup balance gets drastically swung. Not entirely sure how to fix that, either. Anon games help, but can't really run those on DLP. Infusions of fresh blood help, but you fuckers tend to railroad them into the ground because they aren't immediately town read due to knowing them so well, and sometimes they rise to the occasion, and sometimes it's just a shitty experience.

None of that is intrinsic to this setup, though the margins are narrow and it opens it up to being a lot more punishing to rand rng, if the few people who are pushable at rand get confirmable roles, game is effectively over when I open the thread. And that feels bad as wolves and as the host.

I'll keep thinking of ways to tweak this setup, am open to brainstorming, but I want to keep the core identity of tinyhunt the same, and caution against making changes that will snowball to how other roles work.

As for things about this game specifically - town played fairly well. Wolves played better than the stomp would indicate, but the rand was brutal. There being literally nothing Ara could claim, with only dead villager being the publicly known Priest, is game losing. Losing a wolf d1, kill bouncing n1, then getting the info that a second wolf was redchecked n1 was backbreaking both to morale and win chances.

Want to give props to Visor for subbing in, and to Waco for trying to make the best of it in wolfchat by helping with role hunting and trying to deny town spew after the red check. And of course to Ara for doing what she could, but it was an unwinnable situation at that stage.

Thanks to everyone for playing, especially our new-to-site folks!

 

Well, as grapefruit and I said in-game, your initial post was strongly contradictory: you expressed a townread of two players for their analysis of Cobalt, but they both had had opposite conclusions as to what it meant for him. It seemed weird to lump two posters expressing opposite conclusions together and read both town for it, while your read of cobalt earlier in the post was that he was "a bit ehhh". I suspect that as town you'd do more to try to put those thoughts together, make the puzzle pieces fit, so to speak.

I think what really got you in trouble, though, was just going quiet. The two of us suspected you for that post, but most people didn't (admittedly, two people jumping on you at the exact same time is probably pretty scary). A lot were distracted by other things. I find that if you post enough, you can talk your way out of early suspicion, though, and people will accommodate a little strangeness. However, if you clam up and stop responding to things, it's basically impossible to avoid suspicion.

Playing scum is hard, though. I went 0/4 in my first 4 forum scum games, it's not something that comes naturally to most people. The only way to improve is experience, which is tough to come by in forum games. Some of that, necessarily, is going to involve falling on your face a bit. Just have to keep trying.

 

I honestly just thought her posts looked like wolf posts. Couldn't really tell you why. Shrug emoji.

 

Unfortunate, not my best play; congrats town!!!

Sorry I couldn't bring it home, that was a bad day 3!!