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Yvonne

The Jelly Bean Mafia

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2/3 wasnt bad ;)

 

I guessed them first, though I went with Aqui1a, Rez and Peeps. Aqui1a for his quietness, didn't feel like Drahkon was mafia. Also I think he meant suss as in prove, I just said peeps and Rez because of their silly jimbob lynch, felt they were clever enough to know that was silly. I also voted Rez as opposed to Drahkon :p

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And yet I always remained suspicion-free :heh:

 

(Also, I just noticed aqui1a was bluffing about the Orange Bean. Son of a...)

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Great concept, nice and fresh. Lost for most of it, but that's how it goes I guess. Well done mafia!

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Thanks again everybody, I'm really pleased with how the game played out, and how it was received!

 

Initially it was meant to simply be a setup that limited night powers, so there would be more wiggle room for mafia to lie and to force town to look beyond their own results for the best lynch. After ReZ suggested the theme, the rest of the mechanics kind of wrote themselves.

 

I made the powers a mystery initially to prevent an over co-ordinated town from breaking the game (eg, everyone investigate the person to your left), and I decided to include the indigo beans to balance out the strength of the discovery of the brown bean's function. In retrospect this choice may have made a 4 person mafia a more balanced choice.

 

I liked how the game developed through stages as a result of the setup;

Initial discovery and testing of beans,

Spending of indigo and brown beans,

Bean depletion and discovery of specials,

Analysis, reveals, endgame.

 

The way the indigo mechanic played out to undo the town was quite satisfying, starting with the initial deception, Jimbob's hilariously unpredictable investigation play, and ReZ's great spin that somehow allowed him to survive through the rest of the game.

 

Something interesting about this game type is that the endgame becomes a lot more complex. You can't fully get rid of redirectors, roleblockers, double voters, so at any time the power can swing either way, and if you get an inactive mafia member it's potentially possible for town to come back even if they have less players than mafia, if I remove the endgame rule that is. It almost happened in this game!

 

As the game went on, eat phase blended into night phase, but I think it was important to set it up that way at first anyway for clarity. Once people got the hang of things they started sending targets as they sent beans, which made things go more smoothly.

 

Interestingly, the bean bag was stored on file and could potentially have been depleted. It started with:

8x transparent - check a player's beans

15x brown - alignment check

12x light blue - redirect

20x blue - track

16x orange - reverse track

15x yellow - roleblock

10x green - protect

15x violet - jailkeep

10x crimson - double vote next day

10x red - eat two beans next day

 

And the specials were:

4x lapiz - lie check a post the following day

8x turquoise - steal a bean from another player

4x aqua - slap the cup from someone's hand

3x pink - make one substantial post any time after death

7x dark green - pick three beans

5x yellow and black stripe - find out the colours of beans a person has eaten

 

indigo - pose as town

white - kill

 

Seeing how the game played out I think I would balance the number of each bean type a little differently.

 

Good things about the game:

  • Ability to lie with relative confidence
  • Plenty of information to work with
  • Important decisions to make every day for every player
  • No one getting stuck with one role
  • Analysis encouraged

 

Bad things about the game:

  • No assured role elimination was tricky for mafia
  • Fluid roles mean no way to hunt for specific role types
  • Maybe too many mafia members
  • Certain bean mechanics were poor (red beans were almost useless)
  • Roleblocking was rarely successful as half the time people were picking new beans anyway
  • Confusing mechanics for casual play
  • I didn't have enough time to keep up the flavour text, so the plot never continued.
  • Getting crappy beans is crappy!
  • RNG element reduces reliance on skill, but tolerable trade off

 

I think for Jellybean mafia 2 I'm going to address how the mechanics affected the standard roles and adjust them for balance, and I think I will include clear instructions on how different powers interact in the initial post to avoid that sort of confusion. For example, roleblocking did not affect the crimson or the indigo bean, which may not have been immediately obvious.

 

MVP town @Esequiel

MVP mafia @ReZourceman

Edited by Yvonne

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Having played The Jelly Bean Mafia as my first online mafia game was quite confusing at first, but still amazingly fun. :)

 

This analysis (lol I actually wrote 'analasys' first, wtf is wrong with me) helped me understand everything much more.

 

Can't wait for the second installment!

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Something else to consider perhaps is that the setup enables the mafia to be able to kill players based on their perception of who's more skilled and who's participating more rather than power based killing?

 

Not sure how this could be encouraged against though without taking away from the format?

 

I enjoyed reading your write-up Yvonne. Thanks once again :)

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