PyPokemon 2 [Game Over: This Was a Triumph]

[Snark]

PyPokemon 2



Players:

Spoiler:

Players:
1. jimbobmacdoodle
2. emlightened
3. Esthr
4. adnapemit
5. Carlington
6. SirGabriel
7. mpolo
8. dimochka
9. Sabrar

Replacements:
1. Madge
2. ConMan

Setup info:

Spoiler:

1. Speed: 5-7 day Days. 2-4 day Nights. Weekends run the clock down half as quickly as normal days (ie Saturday+Sunday is considered 1 real life day). Deadline extensions given when needed. Lurkers will be replaced.
2. Bastardry: Minimal or none. If present, will be for balancing reasons and editing pre-game.
3. Setup: Closed. Each player sends in 3 Pokemon choices (anything here) by PM upon signing up. Upon game start, players will get the choice of 3 different roles based upon their 3 Pokemon choices. Multiple players being the same Pokemon type is possible.
4. This game has one town faction. The town faction wins when all anti-town factions are eliminated. Their win condition is "You win when all threats to the town have been eliminated."
5. This game has at least one anti-town faction. Anti-town factions win when town and all rival anti-town factions are defeated.
6. This game may or may not have third-party factions. Their win conditions may or may not coincide with town/anti-town win conditions.
7. There are no spoiler-reading or PM-listening type roles.
8. Multiple players may have the same role.
9. No role is guaranteed to be sane.
10. No role may self-target or target dead players unless otherwise specified.
11. Role reveals are made the morning following death.

Standard Rules:

Spoiler:

Voting rules:

1. Votes and questions must be posted in bold and on a new line, like this:
   
   Vote: Snark
   
   You must unvote to change votes, in bold and on a new line, like this:
   
   Unvote
   Vote: Snark
   
2. When someone gains a majority of the votes, they are automatically lynched, and daytime automatically ends whether or not the mod is online to declare day-end. Posting after the hammer vote is not allowed, even if the hammer-vote was accidental.
3. If deadline is reached and no player has a majority of the votes, then the person with the most votes is lynched. If the votals are tied, then random.org will randomly select one of the tied players to be lynched UNLESS all players are voting and exactly 2 players have votes placed on them. In that special case, there will be no lynch. If you don't understand this, please ask for clarification.
4. You can vote to "NL" (no lynch). If "NL" gets the majority of the votes (or wins a tied votal), no one will be lynched.

Posting rules:

1. No posting in this thread unless you are playing in it.
2. No talking about this game except in this thread or in an appropriately titled spoiler in the discussion thread.
3. No editing your posts. For any reason. At any time.
4. Do not lurk!
5. You may post in thread during the day phase but not the twilight phase. If the deadline for a day passes, then it is automatically night, whether or not the mod has had time to make a day-end post.
6. You may not quote directly from your role PM or anything else from the mod. Paraphrasing is fine.

Death rules:

1. You’re alive until the mod tells you that you're dead, by PM or in thread.
2. Once you die, you may no longer post in this thread, but you may read spoilers in the discussion thread. That is your consolation prize.

Private Message rules:

1. You can ask the mod questions by PM if you'd rather not ask in thread.
2. No PMing other players concerning this game unless your role specifically allows it and you CC the mod in every communication.

[Snark]

<this post intentionally left blank>

[Snark]

Kanto is up in arms about a mysterious force present in the town. Can the Pokemon of the city find the force before it finds them?

No need to confirm

Deadline in 6 "days" and since weekends count down half, that actually means exactly 7 days.

9 alive, 5 to lynch.

[SirGabriel]

Does anyone object to a massclaim of what Pokémon we rejected (not their role powers, just the Pokémon names)? I don't think that would actually give anyone any useful information, I'm asking more out of curiosity.
I do think that a massclaim of the Pokémon we chose is a bad idea, as that could give scum too much information about role powers.

[emlightened]

My Pokémon role powers weren't very relevant to the Pokémon, but then again, I didn't exactly choose an Aracanine. I'm fine with a mass roleclaim of rejected Pokémon, but I don't think it'll be very helpful.

[Sabrar]

No objection from me, although I don't really see what that would accomplish. Then again I'm flavor-blind so I have no idea if abilities could be really figured out based on the Pokemon name.

[Esthr]

I'm up for it, if no one objects. It gives us a good idea of what powers might be in play.

Setup speculation. The last game I played also had 9 players: 2 mafia and 2 weak power roles. Assuming that was balanced, there are probably fewer town because of the stronger power roles this time.
- 6 town, 3 mafia - A mislynch and night kill bring this to 4:3 LYLO on D2, so this seems unlikely.
- 6 town, 2 mafia, 1 serial kill - Two night kills seems excessive for 9 players.
- 6 town, 2 mafia, 1 independent (jester or survivor) - My bet. This feels like the most balanced setup.
- 7 town, 2 mafia - Might also be possible, but balance would be skewed towards town.
A cult seems overpowered in a game this small.

[emlightened]

It would only give us a good idea of the powers if we revealed roles rejected, not just Pokémon, which is what SirGabriel suggested. I can see an advantage in claiming rejected roles, except that if people reject power roles, then it will help the scum be able to tell who is more likely to have a power role.

Maybe only reveal one of our rejected roles, if we do decide to reveal them?

[SirGabriel]

Revealing rejected roles might not be a bad idea, depending on how balanced the roles are. If everyone's rejected roles are equally useful/equally useless, then it doesn't really help scum any more than it helps town. The potential problem would be if someone rejected a really powerful role, while everyone else rejected junk, then they would be turning themselves into a target by revealing that information, and likewise would be turning themselves into a target if they were the only player who refused to reveal.
How about this: reveal the Pokémon you rejected and their role abilities, unless you rejected a really powerful role in favor of an even more powerful one, in which case you lie about what the role was that you rejected. Normally I'm opposed to townies lying, but in this case it might be the best way for us to get information from the rejected roles without turning our power roles into targets. What do you think?

[emlightened]

I'm fine with that.

[dimochka]

How about this: reveal the Pokémon you rejected and their role abilities, unless you rejected a really powerful role in favor of an even more powerful one, in which case you lie about what the role was that you rejected.

I don't like this. It allows people to make things up and confuse us further. With that being said, I don't mind revealing my two rejections.

Also, I'm a PGO.

[Esthr]

I think giving anyone a chance to lie is asking for trouble. Scum will likely use that as an opportunity to add confusion. Revealing only one of your rejected roles is preferable to that.

[jimbobmacdoodle]

I don't have a problem with revealing my two rejections, including their abilities, either. I'd been thinking of suggesting it before day start anyway. I'm pretty sure every character is a power role, and from my point of view, all three of mine were roughly evenly balanced.

If multiple players submitted the same Pokemon, would they all have the same ability?

This might be relevant, if someone posts a rejection that doesn't match with someone else's chosen or rejected character, but only if we agree not to lie with this.

With 9 players, I'm guessing we have 2 scum, possibly with an independent. 3 scum would mean LYLO D2, assuming a townie kill and a mislynch D1/N1.

@dimochka - why did you select PGO, and then claim it? Claiming of course discourages people from using abilities on you, but that is useful for scum as much for town. Claiming PGO makes it a pretty useless ability from town's perspective (assuming you aren't lying, and you don't have some super-impressive ability that means you need to stay alive). IGMEOY.

[Snark]

If multiple players submitted the same Pokemon, would they all have the same ability?

Not necessarily.

[dimochka]

@dimochka - why did you select PGO, and then claim it? Claiming of course discourages people from using abilities on you, but that is useful for scum as much for town. Claiming PGO makes it a pretty useless ability from town's perspective (assuming you aren't lying, and you don't have some super-impressive ability that means you need to stay alive). IGMEOY.

I claimed PGO because I don't want power roles to target me accidentally and because I found the other two roles too vanilla for my taste (if we decide to share, you'll see). There are likely more town roles that can target me than scum roles. I also won't have any other powers for a while but once I do it'll be very helpful to town. For now I'm basically vanilla PGO.

[Carlington]

Hey, as is becoming a pattern it seems, I'm just making a quick check-in post because I'm busier than expected. I was expecting a confirmation phase but I suppose choosing is confirmation enough. I have no objections to any kind of massclaim either, but it does seem like it would help scum just as much as town, if not more. If there's some great reason for it that I'm not getting, I'd appreciate the learning experience as this is my first PyP style game.

[adnapemit]

I'm fine with revealing the rejected Pokémon. I'm actually really curious what everyone picked.
I'm not sure about revealing the roles, maybe just one would be ok. Although I guess if no one else sees a problem with it then I might be overthinking it.

@Sabrar: How flavour-blind are you? It's possible to have no interest in Pokémon and still know a few things about it. As for whether one could work out abilities from just a name, then the answer is yes...if you know your Pokémon well enough.

[Sabrar]

@adnapemit: I picked up a couple of things through cultural osmosis. What I remember from the top of my head and without looking anything up is that there are some weird little balls that can be used to capture the Pokemon and then they are somehow trained to fight each other. The only species I would recognize is Pikachu (what a surprise) and that he (it?) has some kind of lightning-shooting ability. And that's it. I've looked briefly into the previous Pokemon game to get an idea and I also recognize some of the names (Ash, Team Rocket) but I don't think they apply here.

Claiming PGO makes it a pretty useless ability from town's perspective (assuming you aren't lying, and you don't have some super-impressive ability that means you need to stay alive).

This is exactly why I don't like PGO's claiming super-early (and why I didn't do it in Secret Santa). It's either a really good way for scum to avoid investigation by cop/tracker, or it's the truth but now scum knows to leave you alone or you're lying because you have a very powerful ability as Town. It creates confusion and wine, also it allows scum to focus on you trying to appear helpful while distracting the rest of us from actual scum-hunting.
What you should have done in my opinion (assuming you're honest) is to wait until close to the end of the day and judge by people's reaction how likely it was that you would be targeted by town. If you're not about to get lynched and then you come out as PGO it would have appeared much more genuine.
Anyway the best result for a PGO is to go down in flames, killing a scum in the process as trading 1-for-1 is super beneficial to us. Claiming it usually prevents this outcome.

Regarding the reveal of the specifics of the discarded roles I'm with dimochka and Esthr, no lying. Revealing only 1 is more preferable but still I don't see how that would help us.

[mpolo]

Flavor-nearsighted, here. (Vaguely know about the Pokemon-phenomenon, have seen the first episode of the cartoon, chose my Pokemon from a list of the "100 best pokemons".)

I have no problem with claiming the rejected roles/powers.

I'm wondering about emlightened's implication that we might have had vanilla roles to reject. Though maybe the meaning was just "more powerful" roles, rather than just "power" roles. For the record, I am assuming that all roles were "power" roles.

Depending on how the town roles stack up in power, 9:3 is not unthinkable, but 9:2:1 is probably more likely. That 1 might also be a "mafia supporter" type role, I suppose.

[emlightened]

My roles weren't power roles of the type of doctor/cop, but something I considered weaker. I don't expect any of the roles to be vanilla, but a cop role is considerably closer to a 'power role' than a PGO (hence my word choice). I'd expect that the roles that a player got would all be roughly as powerful as each other, when compared to another player's.

I think that revealing a single role each would help us get a better idea of what sort of roles are available, but I don't think it would be very helpful for scum or town.

I think most players have agreed that sharing one role is fine, so if nobody objects, I'll do that in my next post.

[jimbobmacdoodle]

I'm willing to believe dimochka that he gains new abilities later on, as one of my rejections' abilities changed come D3. Not that it's any guarantee that he's town. I could see reasons for town or scum to lie and claim PGO at this point, if they are trying to buy time.

A rejected role mass claim will hopefully give us more to talk about (e.g. why would town reject such and such a role). It might prove very interesting to look back on as well once we get a better idea of the selected powers as well.

[SirGabriel]

It seems like no one objects to revealing the names of both and the powers of one of our rejected Pokémon, so I'll start:
I rejected Smeargle and Shedinja.
Shedinja could, once per night, target a player with a kill. However, that kill would fail unless my target had already targeted me with an action earlier in the game. (Seems to me like a useful ability in a large game, but unlikely to be helpful in a game this small. Without giving any details, the same was true of Smeargle's ability.)

I can testify, as someone with flavor knowledge, that although powers are related to Pokémon in some way, they are not really guessable based on just the Pokémon name, and have nothing to do with the Pokémon's abilities in the video games (at least for the ones I submitted). I chose three very unique Pokémon (Smeargle can learn any attack in the game through its attack Sketch, so there are some strategies that no other Pokémon could pull off because no one else can learn all the moves needed; Shedinja only has 1HP but is immune to all attacks that are not super effective against it), and none of the three abilities had anything to do with the Pokémon's in-game abilities.
But then again, maybe the abilities for some more mainstream Pokémon are more predictable (if I was scum and someone claimed to be Chansey, I would assume they were a doctor and kill them).

[Sabrar]

I rejected Axew and Rapidash.
Rapidash was an alternate Jailer. He is supposed to love running. The flavor was that each night I would go on a long run with someone I chose to take with me, so they would be unavailable for any actions they perform or that would target them. This would tire me out however and I would need to rest for a night before I can do it again.
Personally I never would have arrived from 'love-to-run' to Jailer, also it's a bit weird for me that we would go on a run together but I wouldn't be protected in the same way. I suppose that's for balance reasons, still it disturbs the flavor a bit in my opinion.

[adnapemit]

I still think you could guess but you really have to know pokémon like a pokédex (Ok I wouldn't have been able to guess the one for Rapidash). I think the roles are based of the more unknown traits like those found in the descriptions of the pokédex.

I rejected Mew and Aurorus. Mew had the power to create a fake role for investigations. Rejected because it's not useful as town.

[jimbobmacdoodle]

I rejected Metapod and Ditto.

Due to his hard shell, Metapod was immune to all forms of kill, including the lynch, for the first two days and nights. After that though, he evolves into a Butterfree who has no usable abilities and dies if voted for. I'd have tried to draw the night kill and got it wasted on me, but I felt he would be too fragile come D3. I could have claimed my "don't vote for me or I die" ability, which might have been enough to stop people voting for me, but if and when LYLO comes around, I lose us the game if I've made that known. Basically, they were too much of a liability in the late game for my liking.

Anybody who isn't flavour-blind won't be surprised by Ditto's ability. Suffice to say that I was concerned that there was a reasonable chance that it wouldn't be all that helpful. Not that my chosen character necessarily will be either, but it sounded more fun if nothing else.

[emlightened]

I rejected Mew and Eevee. Mew had a different power to the one above; namely they could make themselves invisible and immune to all night actions at will, but only if under three people targeted me. I rejected that role because it felt unlikely that I'd end up being the target for a nightkill, and felt that my other choices were more likely going to be helpful.

[jimbobmacdoodle]

@emlightened - why did you think you wouldn't be the target of the night kill?

[emlightened]

Mainly because my meta has put me as scummier than the ideal target in the past, and I wouldn't have a power role that claiming would get me likely killed.

[emlightened]

EBWOP: I don't think I'll have time to post tonight, so see you all tomorrow.

[SirGabriel]

Due to his hard shell, Metapod was immune to all forms of kill, including the lynch, for the first two days and nights.

I actually considered submitting Metapod, since a Pokémon that can't learn anything but Harden must have some kind of protective ability. But I thought Shedinja might have a better defensive ability, and instead he had no defensive ability at all.

[Esthr]

I rejected Gardevoir and Delphox.

Delphox has the ability to night kill someone in the future. For example, on N1 I could target a player for N4 and they would be killed on N4. However, I wouldn't be able to use a night action two nights in a row.

I rejected it because I probably wouldn't make a very good vigilante, and I wasn't sure how the time-travel mechanic would be useful.

[Sabrar]

Can the more flavor-savvy players draw some early conclusions from the rejected roles so far? I know we're still waiting for a couple but given the usual activity levels I observed in my previous games the sooner we start speculating and actual scum-hunting the better. Also there are always a couple of lurkers (either intentionally or because IRL issues) so waiting until everyone claimed is a bad idea.

[SirGabriel]

Can the more flavor-savvy players draw some early conclusions from the rejected roles so far? I know we're still waiting for a couple but given the usual activity levels I observed in my previous games the sooner we start speculating and actual scum-hunting the better. Also there are always a couple of lurkers (either intentionally or because IRL issues) so waiting until everyone claimed is a bad idea.

Not sure how useful this is, but if I had to guess, I would say jimbob and emlightened are non-legendary first-generation pokemon, and Esthr is a psychic type not from the first generation. I could be completely wrong, and even if I'm right that tells us pretty much nothing about their powers, but that's the best I've got.

[Esthr]

SirGabrial - Shedinja - alternate vigilante, Smeargle - ?
Sabrar - Rapidash - alternate jailer, Axew - ?
adnapemit - Mew - miller/godfather, Aurorus - ?
jimbobmacdoodle - Metapod - invulnerable until D3, then very vulnerable, Ditto - copycat ability?
emlightened - Mew - immune to up to 3 night actions, Eevee - ?
Esthr - Delphox - alternate vigilante, Gardevoir - ?

The fact that the same pokemon can have different abilities means there's not much hope in guessing someone's exact role, even knowing their rolename. I think the most we can do with this is evaluate why these roles were rejected.

As a side note, I was expecting a few abilities to be super-effective/not-very-effective depending on the target player's type, but that doesn't seem to be true.

[Esthr]

EBWOP

I like to think the lack of rejected investigation roles means we'll get some decent results on D2.

[dimochka]

I rejected mewtwo and zapdos. Mewtwo could anonymously message people (plus a more public 1-time action), whereas zapdos could create a thunderstorm that would have no effect except announcing that I'm Zapdos and have no other powers. This should hopefully better explain why I went with the 3rd choice.

[mpolo]

I rejected Charizard and Zygarde.

Charizard could "torch" any person that he targeted, as well as all others who targeted that person. Any person who was torched a second time would be killed. I considered this to be way too much carnage, and likely to take out doctors, cops, and the like. As a result I rejected it.

Zygarde had a very nice 1-shot power that really only made sense for the late game. And I didn't feel like I could count on getting to the late game.

[Snark]

Deadline in ~6 days.

9 alive, 5 to lynch.

Votals:
None

[SirGabriel]

Since we have nothing else to go on,

Vote: emlightened

for rejecting an ability that sounds like it would be much more helpful to town than scum.

[emlightened]

I've only got a couple of minutes to post, but I can't help but notice the irony that I chose my role based on an expectation of dying by lynch, if at all, and I'm getting voted for my choice of role.

I also half-expect to get targeted by a cop, and it's a waste of a result if I'm invisible when investigated.