Gakuen Mafia EP01-EP03 [ENG SUB]

i just wanted to make a cute pick up line with a joke about being horny ;c

this old gem:

drinking game: every round kiyoko lives take a shot
no1s getting drunk ever

I got reject. :( But being friends is all great~

I HAVE NO IDEA HOW I BECAME THIS GAME'S HEART BREAKER

[@Kotakia MY POOR, POOR EMOTICONS. I just wanted to show the world alca-sensei uvuing with a knife!! Is that too much to ask?!

@nautilus IDK, you're fairly tall... I think you could loom over people.

Regarding recruitment, that's a pretty scary number. I don't remember if I've ever played a game where it's been announced... If I have, I probably erased it from my memory because of ~trauma~.

Personally I'd wait until someone's clear, but I understand Chi's point about it being obvious (I mean, who else would you recruit?) as well as nautilus's about quieter players getting investigated. I'm leaning toward her comment here about recruiting a strong player, though if the investigator is anything like me they'd want to investigate strong players asap so they know they can trust them. I guess it depends on if you investigate to find scum or people to trust. /shrug

Also, Tiki only loves bridges.]

plotstickers wrote:@nautilus IDK, you're fairly tall... I think you could loom over people.

...

Also, Tiki only loves bridges.

Both of these points, especially the first, are pretty accurate.

Though, Tiki does have affection for his pet, left alone back in his house.

The troll toll is hearts.

uMM OK the recruitment really caught me off guard because I really wasn't expecting that kind of thing to happen on a day phase??? I don't have any concrete thoughts on this yet, but I think some of the theories that were brought up seem interesting and must be studied deeper. For the sake of compiling information (and organizing my own thoughts tbh), these are some proposed theories & questions raised about the recruitment:

Things About the Recruitment:

S-SORRY if i left out any relevant information?? I'll admit I backread a little fast because it's already late and I'm getting really sleepy. As to other events, I was wondering if the "mysterious voices" can be hints to anything?  I mean, we have seen mysterious voice 1, 2 and 3 on the N0 trailer, and now we've seen 4 and 5. What feels the funniest about this is that mysterious voice 5 is clearly the recently-recruited mafia member but...

Wouldn't that person be mysterious voice 7? ??/ ? And also there's the mention of food and that? ?? kinda makes me think of a particular player? Or m-maybe i shouldn't try to read too hard into rollover...

Look at that lovely cinnamon bun spec.

I don't think we should read too deeply into flavor. I think while alca might reveal event hints, she wouldn't straight up give away who the mafia are.

The 4 and 5 prolly refer to the fact that mysterious voices 1-3 already appeared in the N0 rollover (clarification edit: I meant that alca's probably just continuing the numbers and these don't correspond to actual mafia members).

More edits: Also a clarification on the N0 flavor since I helped write a little bit of it. It was written before any alignments were rolled, so there's nothing in the N0 flavor that hints at alignments, though no promises for any of the other flavor text.

I mean the mysterious voices scene clearly refers to the recruitment, but I'm doubtful that we'll be able to tease out information about the players themselves.

Speaking of the flavor text, if Alca is staying true to anyone's characters with it (which could be a nice touch for the RP and story stuff, though I could see it negatively affecting the game aspect by giving out extra bonus out of anyone's control), one thing's for certain...

Jai hasn't been any of the speakers. XD

Also, hmm...cookies...if they're homemade, I wonder if any, li'l home economics junkie who takes food very seriously was one of those voices... Though still, probably dangerous to read too much info the flavor.

Oh hey, nice, on topic ninja post, Kiyo!

This is basically rehashing my previous post but I'd be pissed as hell if I gave my character a speech quirk and then rollover straight up said "hey this mysterious mafia member has a specific speech quirk I wonder who it could be"

And the fact that alca is pulling the rest of the flavor straight out of things we've actually said in thread a) is really cute actually, and gives us little scenes to work with for the visual novel, and b) indicates to me that she's possibly afraid of revealing too much information in rollover and thus is giving us snippets that we already know aren't indicative of alignment.

So tl;dr I wouldn't be concerned over flavor. (At least the flavor alca wrote, no comments on fanfic flavor)

There were about five posts while I wrote this, so I'll read them in a moment...

Okay, available now. Time to invest some thought into this situation and respond to what others have to say. I'll tackle this in chronological order, I guess, and offer some thoughts of my own at the bottom.

Kotakia wrote:Ok so going back to 'no clears yet' thing, this makes me believe the recruiter was someone under scrutiny. If they die, they don't get to recruit so it's very important to do it as soon as pressure starts building up

This got addressed by others later on,  but I'm not sure if there was really anyone under enough scrutiny just yet. At most, we had AliceofOz as the main point of contention, with Ezreal, Rasei, and Kiyoko all mentioned to some degree or other based off of the rollover text analysis and ensuing discussions. I don't really think any of these had much to worry about. Alice probably had the most heat on her due to nautilus' line of inquiry, but nautilus did later sort of back off (granted, this was after the phase ended). If there were more votes on any one person, I think this might be more likely.

nautilus wrote:- The person recruited is either a strong player or someone who was cleared by events in the thread and unlikely to be investigated in the future
- I agree with the fact that the recruiter is probably someone in the thread who wanted to act ASAP, but I disagree with the fact that it was someone under scrutiny. This is largely because it seemed like the thread was going to run into no lynch really quickly, so... no one was really close to being lynched. If I had to argue, I'd say the person with the most scrutiny would've been Alice, but she didn't seem to be in any immediate danger.

Given my statement above, I'm inclined to agree with the latter half of this reasoning, but I am not certain with regards to the first half. I see it as... hm... I suppose the problem with mafia as a game is always dipping into WIFOM this and WIFOM that. With only a couple of people (mostly Kiyoko, due to the NK on her) immediately removed from suspicion and thus "cleared" to some degree, how likely are mafia to target one of these people if it's such a narrow pool for us town to quickly check? I guess it'd mean detective roles might have to double-up actions N0 and N1 on the same targets, possibly, and all information gained from D1 is kind of in limbo.

However, as Kiyoko says here...

Kiyoko wrote:I don't think we should completely disregard all reads from N0/D1 because even if anybody could have swapped over it's still only one person and the rest of the reads are still valid (even if we don't know which ones they are.)

In the end, only one person was swapped. At worst, only one of the previous likely-town reads would be contradicted, but it does place an asterik next to each of these names in the interim. Additionally, since a lot of people are suggesting T3tsuya might be a neutral with a harem condition (which is possible), it's worth noting we at least know it wasn't a neutral that got converted or targeted, which makes me even less likely to suspect T3tsuya in this case (granted, he's completely unconfirmed, so we'll have to wait and see).

Thus, it's probably best for us to keep an eye out for actions and interactions going forward surrounding those people we least suspect after D1 and see if anything feels off or contradictory, just so we can avoid the mafia WIFOM "Hah, they won't check these people since it's obvious", but not invest too much onto it that we ignore the rest of the pool of players... if that makes sense? Because I also agree with the idea that a person flying under the radar might be suspected. In response to:

nautilus wrote:I guess the only caveat is that players like that would tend to be investigated or suspected in-thread (e.g. inactives and what not), and that ruins the purpose of turncoating? like, detectives or other power roles will generally trend towards acting on quiet players for more information because they lay low and don't give up a lot of info

I don't think it necessarily defeats the purpose of recruiting, especially if this player is made into a vanilla like some people are thinking (I have never had a game with one, so I don't know standard procedure if they keep roles or not). But let's say someone with lower activity or completely out of scrutiny is chosen. If they ever get outted/lynched for any means, that's just an, "Oh, hey, we got a lurking mafia" and we might dismiss them as always having been mafia... and still suspect some prominent players, since naturally you would expect mafia to go for a strong player. In other words, by choosing someone rather low on the list, you create more pressure for players on the top of the list to fend off suspicions while still bolstering your numbers. Bonus points if this player is vanilla and can be lost without much worry.

Note that I still think it's very important to consider strong players since mafia would obviously benefit a great deal by removing them from the opposition and adding them to their ranks, but my point is that there's still an advantage regardless of who you add. And in the end it's a pretty powerful swing to effectively kill one and add one to your side.

... As to how they were selected, though?

Kiyoko wrote:Thoughts on mafia being able to pick anyone at all in thread to convert vs. mafia having to wait for a specific condition to convert and just kind of accepting whoever they get? I've seen both kinds.

Kiyoko wrote:- Straight up mafia can choose someone to recruit, usually the person they recruit is vanilla after that
- Mafia can choose when to activate the recruit but can't choose who they recruit (e.g. it's RNG'd)
- Turncoat where some action (usually trying to kill them) results in that person switching to the other side
- A YOU ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD kind of thing where mafia sets up a condition and the first person who triggers it is auto-converted. (I feel like there was one like this in one of the vdex mini games?)

So... I'm of two minds. At first glance, I would think a recruiter turning someone into vanilla mafia absolutely ruins the game for this victim, especially if there's no counterplay like seems to have happened (I.E. There were only two phases and it seems to have near instantly triggered?). That just seems... rather lame to me, and I don't know if alca would include something like that. But on the other hand, would it really be fair to include a recruiter role where the recruitee keeps their ability? What if mafia nabs the doctor or vigilante or stunner or something ridiculous? That could just get way too snowbally. I guess logically, a recruitee would have to get turned into vanilla, or at least have restrictions placed upon them to some degree.

Moving along, for this game we have two main methods to consider: Role and Relationship. Role is pretty easy to fit into the flavor. Inviting someone to your clique or club or secret society or whatever the mafia are in this game. Relationship? Some others have mentioned how the town might end up wanting to join the side of their lover as part of the relationship role. It does feel a bit strange that such a powerful role is linked to a secondary mechanic, but on the other hand... hm. Some thoughts to consider:

1. What if the person that got recruited can't attend meetings, or might not even know they got recruited?

2. What if the person that got recruited would swap back to town after they break up, or their partner dies?

I'm not sure how feasible these are, in the end, but they're not far-fetched I think. That said, it would severely limit the pool to people that already entered relationships--and to that degree, if it were recruit-via-relationship, would it have been instant or delayed? In other words, would it be the result of a relationship that formed on D1 or N0?

This kind of enters into the realm of something I touched upon while discussing T3tsuya x Fanfiction where it seems far too obvious for mafia to have these abilities linked to something that can so easily backfire on them. I don't really know how to consider this going forward. I think I saw nautilus (was it?) comment that the N0 relationships should be safe, and while we saw a handful mention their D1 confessions, it's highly possible a mafia might've slipped a confession in and it went completely unmentioned. I mean, that's obviously a real threat.

But stepping away from relationships to answer Kiyoko's list...

Of the four possibilities, I think it'd be A or B. If C, though... I mean, we did see that rollover text of the black haired boy being threatened by a menacing figure. But he kind of seemed to be dead or dying?  I did notice that no one mentioned that flavor text in relation to recruiting, and while it is probably unlikely given the tone of what was said, it might be worth keeping in mind. But again, that falls into the realm of: Isn't this far too obvious? Especially since there are only two targets, and one was jailed (and thus couldn't be NK -> Converted, presuming jailing wasn't related to the conversion process) and the other is in a relationship with someone that may or may not be able to investigate them.

... tl;dr: I feel like given how it seems to have happened during the day phase, it's probably an untraceable "pick someone" to recruit, be it deliberate or randomized. But there's a chance it might be connected to relationships? Goddamnit I am getting into my own head and confusing myself at this point. But um... one final point I want to cover, to be thorough...

ezreal wrote:I'm not really sure how to put this without disclosing an amount of information that'd be detrimental to town but I have role related reasons to be really ??? ?? ?? ? ?? at the idea of a maf-sided recruiter

I won't pressure you to reveal more, but this really stands out to me. Thus...

alcasync wrote:Also this flavor has no clues in it, but future flavor text might! Anyone who can affect flavor text in a big way is already aware of it.

Source

@ Sensei: Can you confirm that the ratio of 7:15:2 is 100% accurate and that if 6 mafia-aligned and functioning players (this does not include millers or reverse-millers) were killed, in any and every order, the game would not be over until a 7th mafia were killed?

@ Sensei: Can you confirm that the ratio cannot be tampered with by any means?

@ Sensei: Can you confirm which parts of the rollover text are able to be modified by those with the ability to do so? That is to say:

1) Can the quotes/episodic section be modified?
1a) If so, can only this section be modified?
2) Can the rollover log section be modified?
2a) If so, can only this section be modified?

Worth a shot, anyway.

I will not confirm or deny anything about flavor text or ratios!

Yowch.