ESPIONAGE: Round Four (Spy & Informants Win!!)

[seed12]

@Jd- : I wanted you two to stop fighting for no reason and I didn't want people to vote for Fujiwara, you or me because it would only make us lose... but we still lost :S I also wanted to see reactions.

[bash7353]

Okay. That was just one of the things that really baffled me. I complied with Day 1's orders in a way that I thought was very obvious and yet Day 2's orders said you didn't see anyone do. That Ansai was the other Informant I only learned when I saw dumytru's phase change message revealing him to be. At that time I thought he had just failed to identify himself altogether. But when someone quoted his only post I saw that he did. But I went back and saw that Togop mentioned Ansai not being on his list even before that. But when I said that I was joining Togop in voting Ansai I could've known already, but I just hadn't paid enough attention during Day 2 to realise that.

[Togop]

OK, so, my actions during the game:
Overall, I can't say this was a good game - it had way too many inactive players and I killed the detecve the second round by sheer luck. Anyway, here's how my game went:

Edit: Obviously, the orders for each day as lisd below are the orders the informants received at the beginning of the day, not the ones I sent in during the day.

Day 1:
Execute conan-chandesune - No reason to execute him, but a random kill here and there usually helps the spy. So it wasn't really a no-kill
Order

Hello,
I'm spy Togop.
Until I identify you, I'll be calling you Chris and Alex.

Hopefully, in day 1, I'd like:
1) Chris to identify themself by including the words "finally" and "now" in their first post during day 1.
2) Alex to identify themself by including the words "however" and "live" in their first post.
3) During day 1, I'd like each of you to choose somebody and play as if that person was the spy (i.e. protect them instead of me the same way you'd normally protect me). Choose someone who needs protecting (for example, if there are nominations, could be one of the nominees).

Don't abuse the following, since it's likely to blow your identity, but if for some reason you want to send a message to me, encode it using this tool
http://www.tools4noobs.com/online_tools/encrypt/
use
key: jdsuperspyguy
algorithm: Des
and inrporate it into some post of yours.

Now, googleearth identified himself as the informant in the very first post, but I missed it. I can blame the fact that I'm playing through a mobile browser that doesn't have a search function, or my laziness for not trying a different browser to make sure I haven't missed the IDs, etc. Since there wasn't anyone to defend, bash didn't follow instruction 3.

Day 2:
Execute Stopwatch - I picked her because I found her to be a dangerous civillian based on her posts. I didn't know she was the detective, or that she suspected me personally.
Order - repeat the order day 1 as I don't know who you are.

When I revealed that Ansai wasn't on my list I wasn't drilling for information. I was genuinely hoping to start a discussion, and I wanted to give my informants someone to defend as per point 3 of my order. It proved unnecessary, as Jd- and Fujiwara started fighting each other and bash chose to defend them... There was a slight risk that I'd pick thedetective, but I figured I'd take it - worstc ase, I'd try to convince you I'm informant and so there's no point to kill me.

Then Ansai identified himself, but I didn't see it either. I'm not sure how did I miss it - I remember seeing the "finally", and then checking for "now" and not seeing it.
Bash re-identified after I had already gone to bed so I saw it after phase change.

Day 3:
Execute dumytru - no need to kill anyone at this point.
As such, my order for day 3 remained the same. Day 3 I had arguments about Jd- being informant and by extention bash being or Yuri spy. I figured voting informant bash would secure my position as a civillian day 4.
I find Jd-'s posts on that day illogical, eps. his refusal to answer to the crutual question I asked about his strategy: who did he think the spy is, assuming Fujiwara was voted out and proved to be an informant.

Day 4:
There was no order or kill.
My vote for bash was mostly for consistency with day 3. I actually voted as announced in case bash wanted to vote the same as me...

[Jellitto]

@Jd- : I wanted you two to stop fighting for no reason and I didn't want people to vote for Fujiwara, you or me because it would only make us lose... but we still lost :S I also wanted to see reactions.

I have to say that Jd- and Fujiwara had already stopped fighting at the time of your post and that your post didn´t help your side at all. As I said, I couldn´t understand your motivation to post that if you were a civilian. As for wanting to see reactions, there are other ways to do so.

[dumytru]

About Orders:

If there are two Informants, then the spy can send an order for Informant #1 and another for Informant #2, but both orders are sent as a whole.
So both informants get the same message. It's up to them to decide which order they execute.
That caused some confusion this round, so the rules may need to be updated.

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GM's Diary

I thought I'd also keep a diary, but due the fact that I was away from my computer the last two days, the diary contains only Day 1 and 2.

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Prep Phase

The Spy is Togop and one of the Informants is googleearth?
The other Infromant is Ansai, and it's his/her first game.
The Detective is Stopwatch. I wonder how this'll turn out.

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Day 1

Ansai isn’t posting anything at all. This may turn out bad for the Spy.
Stoppy is investigating Togop. Ha-- not bad. But knowing investigate only proves the innocence of one of the players investigated--- Is Togop a suspect or not?
PhantomWriter is inactive. He might get arrested in the near future.
Togop and googleearth are joining the tie; maybe to clear any suspicions. I wonder if it’ll work. Last time I was suspected because of that.

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“I thought it'd be easier to be impersonal and obiective as a GM, but it's not.” Why did I even said that. Jd- must’ve realized someone didn’t send the vote.
Oh well, three more minutes.

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Oh oh oh! Togop sent the orders for Day 1. He didn’t noticed googleearth’s id message. This is gonna be tough.

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Day 2

Ha—Conan-chandesune got arrested. Now it’s like a no-kill Day 1.
Togop, the spy, said that Ansai (infromant) isn’t on his list. (note he still has no idea who are the informants).

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Okay, being GM is can be way too fun. Togop nominated Ansai for the vote and protected Stopwatch.

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Lol, I’ve been looking for something in the topic and noticed Togop said this: “I'll play too. Give me the spy .”.
You probably know, but it was completely random! It’s funny it turned out this way, though.

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Okay, Ansai finally replied. And successfully identified himself. Will Togop notice is this time? But even so, it’s kind of too late to protect him now. (he already said he's going to vote for Ansai)

---

This is getting annoying, yet awesome. Togop is going to kill Stopwatch, and Ansai might get arrested.
But why didn’t Togop noticed the ID message?!. Oh well. Can’t wait for the Phase End.

Tonight (Day 3 Phase End) I’ll be on my phone, so it might take a while to post the results, but yeah.

Later edit: Sorry about that, I was late indeed (my phone was acting and I had to type it three times).

As for the rest of the time, I was kinda annoyed that two civilians were fighting, and the Spy was considered to be innocent.

---

That's about it. It may be boring compared to a Spy's or Detective's diary, but who knows~

[Jd-]

@dumytru / Togop: Nice work! Was fun to read from other perspectives.

I'll post a message about inactivity when I have a bit, just to get the wheels in motion on resolving that before we get to a Round 5. Round 5 will presumably begin sometime after the current Mafia forum round is over, but we're gonna have to discuss inactivity first.

[miakakiri]

I really was trying to be active and play. Just... the timing wound up not working. ~_~* Everyone seems to talk starting around 8am, and the earliest I usually get up is about 10am. I try to play at night, but since people aren't talking then, there's not a whole lot I can do. *pout* Then everyone gets annoyed at me for failing to participate in the game.
Yes I realize that's a weird sleep pattern for where I live. Archi works from 3:30 in the afternoon until midnight, so we both tend to have a sleep pattern that involves waking somewhere between 10am and noon (normally) and crashing around 3-5am.
I really was trying to play. I am sorry that I managed to screw up and be inactive the whole time.

[Togop]

I was actually thinking at one point to quote one after another Ansai's and bash's messages containing "finally" and "now", hoghlight those respective words, and suggest that that has something to do with the identification and thus bash must be informant 2... Then I could have made the case that Jd- would be spy. Jd- was arrested day 4 anyway, so it didn't matter.
Anyway, I was afraid someone would realize something like that would be too hard to notice if you don't know what you're looking for.
So... I'm wondering what would have happened if I had done that.

[Jd-]

I've unfortunately fallen ill with some flu-like symptoms, but I am here to talk inactivity briefly!

About Inactivity: Please Read

This round, we had EIGHT PLAYERS out of 15 that were inactive for multiple phases throughout the game. That, for those playing along at home, is over half of the starting amount of players. That's just not something we can really deal with from a balancing or gameplay perspective.

Espionage was created specifically as a way to get community members--both new and old alike--into interacting in a fun and interesting way that's really unique to our collective forum here. Mafia is and always will be a trademark game that was developed into its current, very unique incarnation, by the community and for the community. Espionage came out of the idea that we could create a game that brought it back to the basics a little with a different concept that would be appealing to both new users and veterans both.

We're all getting older and we're all coming and going between various life commitments. The real reason I came up with this game was to get one more chance to interact with everyone in a special way that otherwise isn't always readily available--playing these types of games with like-minded people in a comfortable environment is not something you can find just anywhere. At some point in the near future, we'll all be too spread out and withdrawn into other avenues of life to really have this opportunity available. Right now, though, we have the chance to have some fun and challenge ourselves and interact with people, even within the community, whose paths we may never otherwise cross. The rounds of various community games we've played over the years have been some of the most fun I've had online, and it would really be a shame to see more rounds fizzle out in the same way.

So, what I'm asking is: Please consider devoting at least a little time each day as a game is going on if you do join. It doesn't require very much; even just one post per day to show you're out there and casting a vote is enough to at least give your prospective teammates an idea of where you stand within the game.

[Jd-]

New Voting Concept: Campaign Voting

[This concept is up for potential inclusion in a future round. Click here to discuss it in the central topic if you like.]

Until now, all rounds have used the typical "most votes gets arrested" idea that's pretty common in games with voting electorates at their core. I had two ideas that I think could change things up in a fun way. Foremost, everyone would now--in both of these concepts--receive something like 5 votes to allocate to fellow living players during any given phase.

This concept is tentatively known as Campaign Voting. Each player would assign their 5 votes to any living, non-arrested players that are not themselves. Additionally, we could make it so that your 5 votes could all be allocated to one person, or would have to be spread out. There would be a penalty for not voting, in some form (either as a natural result of not forming any alliances to protect yourself and thus having no support, or a penalty similar to the current one).

Of course, there are two ways to really do this: Either we make it so the player that receives the most votes is arrested like before, OR we change it so that the players that receive the least votes are up for an arrest. In other words, we would eliminate ties, and the GM would randomly arrest one player from the lowest amount should any ties occur.

The New Method: Whoever receives the least votes is immediately up for arrest (ties result in a random arrest from the players that receive the same lowest amount of votes), meaning you are responsible for campaigning for votes for yourself in order to survive for the game. Now, we have to consider that this makes it easier for the Informant/Spy to hijack votes as they could always protect each other and would be able to always vote each other in support. However: This would also be shown to the civilians in the voting tally, as the Informants would have a lot less ability to hide themselves without publicly supporting their Spy. Naturally, this means the Spy and Informants have to both get involved in the discussions if they want to survive.

The Classic Method: Whoever receives the most votes is arrested like before (ties result in no arrest), meaning you would be campaigning to have yourself left out of anyone's votes. It would probably be best if you had to spread out your five votes instead of dumping them all on one player. I'm not actually interested in this method, but am including it for the sake of covering all bases.

Of course, this new, alternative method to voting is a real danger and threat to inactive players. While they are being inactive, they would not be able to forge any voting alliances to secure enough votes for themselves to continue in the game. At first glance, it may seem like it's harder for civilians to do a targeted arrest, but it does ensure that inactive players have minimal impact on active civilians being arrested just for being active. Once someone is found suspicious, players could campaign for others to drop their vote support for that player.

---

There are pros and cons, but I think there's a lot of fun to be had here. What does everyone think? There are some additional things we could try to throw in, like making it a real "Election" in which the person who does get the most votes is given a special ability (maybe similar but less powerful than Investigate) or something. Just some ideas to float out there.

[Kaito Lady]

its over already?! D:
*missed everything*
anyways, congrats to the spy and informants!

[bash7353]

Okay, here's how the game played out for me.

So, Day 1 began with me receiving my orders from Spy Togop. Include the words however and live in a post is what it said. After trying out a couple of different phrases I came up with a post that I thought would make it pretty clear to Togop that I'm one of his Informants. In order learn the other Informant's identity, I carefully read what everybody else had posted and scanned it for key words, but apparently no one besides me had used them. Weird... Because of that I concluded the other Informant is probably one of the players that didn't say anything at all over the course of the phase.


Day 2's orders are telling me that no one had identified themselves. I was pretty surprised to read that since I had, but I thought doing it again, or hinting that Togop should carefully re-read everything was too risky. So I had no choice, but to accept that the Spy had not become aware of my identity. That was probably also the reason that there was no kill at the end of that phase, is what I thought at the time. When Togop said that Ansai wasn't on his list, I obviously knew he was lying, and I didn't know exactly where he wanted to go with this, nor what he'd want me to do.

Then Jd- and Fuji started accusing each other. I didn't know who the other Informant was, but as both Jd- and Fuji posted multiple times during Day 1 and the keyword didn't appear anywhere I was pretty sure they were not playing for my team. In case one of them would end up arrested at the end of the phase, and to me it looked like that was probably going to happen, I could gain some trust if I had defended them. Also, Togop's orders said to defend someone other than him, so I just went with that. I said I was gonna vote Ansai because he's unlikely to be the Detective not expecting anyone other than Togop to do so as well. Because Fuji told people not to vote Jd- after all, I was expecting a lot of players would go with Jd-'s voting suggestion and Fuji would end up arrested at the end of the phase.


The phase change announcement starting Day 3 surprised me very much. We already killed the Detective. I did not expect that. Pretty good news for us. Ansai getting arrested I didn't think would happen either, as I said I expected Fuji to go prison. And finally, that Ansai was the other Informant surprised me as well. Did not see that coming. From that point forward it was just Togop and me. Two more phases in which Togop has to be prevented from being voted. I thought what we had going for us was that no one had really suspected him or suggested him to be voted at all.

Jd- went on about how Fuji is the remaining Informant, so the first thing I considered doing was this: We agree with Jd- and arrest Fuji whose role I already knew would be revealed Civilian, and the following phase we'd try arresting Jd- since he had been wrong about Fuji being the other Informant. I wasn't sure if that would really work, though. No one voted Fuji with Jd- last time, so I was sceptical people would this time. I wanted to make sure that people wouldn't randomly bring up Togop's name in case they disagreed with Jd- and didn't know who to vote.

So I went and accused Jd-, which I realised people were probably not expecting. Quite ironic what I did there, actually, arguing Jd- is probably the Spy because he's being disruptive when being disruptive was the goal of that very post. I wasn't sure how that post would influence how the phase would play out. Would people go with me and vote out Jd-? Would people think I'm being suspicious and disruptive and vote out me? I didn't know. I thought both outcomes would be pretty good for us, though. But that the outcome of that phase would be a tie, the single best thing the evil side could hope for in that situation, I certainly didn't think that was going to happen.


Day 4 was pretty easy compared to the other phases. Fuji and Jd- agreed to not say anything at all over the course of the phase, so I thought 'Well then, I guess we don't have to either...'. I just said that I'd vote Jd- again, Togop seemed to agree and said he'd vote me again. Then we just watched everything play out.

[shinichi'sapprentice]

Spoiler:

it was pretty disappointing when Jd- agreed to keep quiet. if he was on the bad side, then.. wow, he did it again.
when Fujiwara suggested to keep quiet.. if he was on the bad side, then.. that was a pretty bold move he did there.
Togop's actions were so much Togop-ish.. he used it to his advantage so awesomely, he won..
i did not see googleearth as an informant..

i understand that the round was painful because there were a lot more inactives.. but it's a lot more painful when people started giving up and said, fine.. i'm town, kill me if you want.. i hope Jellitto is ok.. she did an awesome job, too.. and the gamemaster too.. Let's support the campaign on being more active!!