KOFF'S PROFILE

oh, ninja'd.

okay, if we're all on the same page then i nominate rabitz LET'S DO THIS SHIT

i'm also inclined toward rabitz since he follows the MO i described closer than any of the rest of us. he doesn't fit the bill as closely as yds, but he does share the record of not contributing anything to the witch hunt, despite posting relatively frequently. not the soundest reasoning, i know, but if history is any indication, the mafia usually rank among the least progressive players.

(in-progress update: i also like how he tries to justify everything ym said about him. looks like somebody feels cornered!)

also if we do mislynch tonight, there's still a chance, at least, that the doctor (if he exists) can protect the night's target, provided he doesn't get roleblocked as well... and provided he wasn't the target of our lynch. so, y'know - at least there's some hope.

isn't not lynching not an option, though? i thought we had to lynch someone in order for the day to end.

since that's the case, then unless the cop has a lead for us, we should try to clear as many names as possible to maximize the odds of a favorable lynch. if the brothers and the cop come out, that's three names we can trust (provided we decide to trust the cop), and four if the cop names us an innocent. from there we can look at the remaining (hopefully three) names and just go from there.

first things first, though, i agree that the scripter should reveal himself. i'm reasonably certain that a mafioso won't try to impersonate him since the real scripter can always counter-claim, which means, like the example with the brothers i described earlier, that one of the claimants must be scum, which puts us in a good position when lynchtime comes around.

i'll save my instinctive finger-pointing for the time being, but i do have my doubts about one or two folks...

oh god i didn't even realize we had started

okay let me get caught up


edit: okay, so it's day 1 with no information and nothing to go on. rather than rushing to make a lynch, maybe we should use this plan to discuss short- and long-term strategy before we start down a path we can't retrace. some plans are best enacted immediately as if we wait too long we may lose a key player in the meantime,

like in the last game, i still think it's wise for the planners (if we actually have them) to out themselves so that we have two names we can trust. the consequences of this move can only be beneficial: by knowing the planners we'll have two names we can trust to give objective advice free of ulterior motives, and two names we can safely cross off the suspect list.

one point that was brought up in the salem witch trial game was that the mafia could easily impersonate the brothers in order to gain safety from lynching, but this was dismissed as a non-issue. in fact, i think we concluded that it would be a bad move for the dark side since the real brothers/planners could simply counter-claim, and then since two of the four claimants are guaranteed scum we'd have a fifty-fifty shot of wiping them out; at worst we'd lynch two bad guys in three days.

so i'm pretty sure that there's no downside to this course of action, but if anyone sees one, please speak up. and do it fast, because if one of the planners dies while we're goofing off, there's no way to confirm the other. and that would be lousy.

also, still waiting for the answers to jericho's questions.

Personally I think I like the Chrono Trigger approach where half the team has good healing spells, and everyone can use at least a small amount of healing/defense. That gives the player enough real options that they don't feel boxed into any one setup. And if you combine that with bosses that punish excessive turtling, then the player doesn't feel compelled to make a team that has all the healers.

I don't really think the FF9 method (two of your eight characters are great healers, a third one can become a good healer extremely late in the game, no one else can heal at all) is satisfactory. I'm not actually sure what I dislike about it. Maybe it was just that the two main healers were extremely similar and so it didn't really feel like a meaningful party choice. But somehow I feel like giving everyone the ability to heal is a good idea.

I like the Chrono Trigger approach, too, more than any other approach for a choose-your-own-party game, because of how much flexibility it gives you. If you want the burden of healing to fall entirely on one character, you can do that. If you'd rather have multiple characters split the load, you can do that too. If you're really worried, you can have a dedicated healer AND two supplementary ones - or you can have none at all and just go all-out on offense. It gives the player the fullest degree of freedom in delegating the roles in his party, allowing him to play however he pleases. Also, since healing is a situational consideration (unlike attacking, which is always necessary), a typical i cast cure and that's about it white mage finds herself with nothing useful to do 75% of the time, which, as we all know, is boring. CT clearly avoids this by having complex and versatile healers who do more than just cure - even Marle, whose offensive options all suck iirc, can still augment the party's damage output by way of her dual techs, and thus finds herself with a use even outside of healing-intensive boss battles.

The FF9 method, on the other hand, pales because it only gives you one option: entrust all the healing duties to a single character. Even though you get two different white mages, the division of labor is the same - one person heals full-time, the other three dish out the damage. There is only one play style. And unlike in Chrono Trigger, FF9's healers couldn't do much besides restore HP. Their summons were mediocre at best, largely inhibited by low damage/cost ratios, and their support spells were, of course, of little value in regular encounters. Thus if you wanted any substantial healing on your team at all, you had no choice but to carry around the dead weight of a situational character. Ultimately I think I picked Eiko since, late in the game, Holy and Half MP gave her something handy to do between Curagas.

Giving everyone the ability to heal is not a bad idea, I think, but you have to be careful about how you do it. If healing is too widely available, it ceases to be a consideration for the party-building process, which means that choosing your team is a more simplistic, less meaningful task. This is especially true of games like FF6, wherein any character can cast the best heal spells at relatively little cost (as opposed to, say, FF5, wherein the privilege of White Magic will cost you a precious ability slot). Restorative spells are so abundant and accessible in that game that the player, in picking his teammates, need never worry about who exactly is gonna keep his party alive. It's luxurious, sure, but it detracts from the diversity of the cast, the importance of party-building, and the challenge of the game. Frankly I'd avoid either extreme (the other being the dedicated healer) and stick to either the Chrono Trigger model (limited healing distributed between characters in different amounts) or the FF5 model (unlimited healing, but at the cost of other abilities).

If the dedicated healer (or any dedicated character at all, I suppose it could be said) has any place at all, I think it's in games like FF4 wherein you have no choice over who's in your party, or like FFX wherein every character is situationally useful and you are expected to employ each of them as circumstances dictate. In either case, you aren't punished for not using the healer because you can't not use the healer; they're always technically in your party.

edit:

Why waste someone who does healing and damage equally on just healing, when you have someone who can heal much better than they can do damage, if they aren't going to be damaging anyways?

One thing I disliked was that white mages in FFT had access to holy. An attempt to diversify the role perhaps, but it was one of the strongest attacks it the game and hit the final boss for maximum damage. I'd rather be punished on the offensive end than have a role that does everything.

Mm, I take back what I said about dedicated healers not having a place in choose-your-own-party RPGs. I sat in on my friend's economics class and her professor was actually saying something along these lines. I forget all of his fancy economic terminology, but what I gleaned from him is that, for instance, a White Mage with Holy makes a worse healer than one without it, since for the former to cast a recovery spell, he has to give up all that damage that Holy would have done. The Holy-less mage's cure spell is relatively much cheaper, since he doesn't have to give up nearly as much.

So I guess the idea behind the dedicated caster is not just that their healing is stronger than that of any other character's, but also relatively cheaper. Any character who opts to heal instead of attack chooses to sacrifice damage for health; dedicated healers merely have the benefit of the best exchange rate.

Uh, I don't really know where I'm going with this, now. Guess I'm just musing. Hm.