Are You A Hitman? 2 - DAY 6 | GAME OVER - Hitmen Win

I'm drunk

O.Caruso signing off

Well played my hitmen brethren o/

Well, as a bit of an experimental take on the AYA..? game, it went well. Aside from the reason I had to change the Hitman win condition.

See, once player numbers were locked in, I ran a prediction to endgame without accounting for ability cards to find the right amount of hitmen for the game. The initial plan was the same for the locations. Starting at 1, then an additional one per five players. With 15 players, that meant 4 locations and testing 4 for hitmen. So I ran the predictions, and it looked perfect. Citizens could win on either Day 6 or Day 9, with Day 9 also being the most likely day for the hitmen to win. So I went with that. Then the finale of day 3 comes along, I go to look at those predictions again. Rather than Citizens:Hitmen as a ratio, I'd used Players:Hitmen, meaning those predictions were for a game of 19 players rather than 15. Without the change so that the Hitmen needed to kill all citizens, there was no other chance for the Citizens to make an impact before they lost with the kill on Day 5.

Discounting that, everything went as expected. The ability cards could have perhaps come in earlier to make a bigger impact on the game, as well as make it so that a random person would be given it as long as they had chosen a location. Them going to the first to a location seemed against what I wanted in having the locations be the driving factor of the game.

It was also nice to see people playing around with the experiment, seeing what worked best for finding the Hitmen. It just so happened that in the second phase, the Hitmen took full control of things, making it rather difficult for the Citizens to do anything. Though maybe everything I've said previously played a part in that.

Thanks to all who played. Was a lot of fun running. If ever an AYA Hitman 3 comes along, the same ruleset will likely be used.

All the best fellow hitmen, sorry the game was quiet for villagers. Felt we had it in hand so didn't really need to engage in thread.

Whilst its easy to say the village had a poor game, the truth is the hitmen played a blinder.

Well done done to every one of you! This was your win and you deserved it.

I will say that in using names from the Hitman franchise, I had to give Denster the obvious name. The man who likely has a record for number of characters played who have been killed, Sean Bean, whose Hitman character of Mark Faba is known as The Undying.

So who was who?

Herdanos wrote:So who was who?

All in the OP.

I'm quite surprised I wasn't targeted more. The odd bit of suspicion but after killing on day one and Faba bring completely inactive I felt like an obvious choice for the lynch.

I'm surprised I was targeted as much as I was. I literally did nothing and got lynched lmao

Looking at the list of who was who I guessed who mostly everyone was, but the ones I messed up was I mixed up Dan and Aaron for some reason.

G. Vholes wrote:I have a feeling O Caruso is a hitman.

He posted a very helpful post pointing out very suspicious activity. Of course, as a hitman, he knows who is and isn't innocent so he's more than happy to point out a villager going to the wrong location, or suggesting that Ingram is statistically likely as he was in 2 death locations.

He came in early and claimed The Beach. Obviously everyone wants cards but the Hitmen really want them. He warns everyone else from going there under the pretext of "making sure the beach stays open" but really all this does is concentrate all our players among 2 other locations giving great coverage for his killing teammate. They'll close a location soon enough, they don't need to focus on narrowing them down too much at this stage, especially if you can de facto shut the location down by going there first and claiming anyone who follows you is suspicious.

He was also in the group who had the second killing.

Guessing I was killed as I wa sspot on here eh.

Edit: also I genuinely did get busy on that day, I was gonna choose the beach last minute as I was so sure at this point.

gg folks.

Feels like, without the aid of special roles, the town was somewhat feckless in their approach, lacking ideas and logic.

IMO Town needed to realise that due to the dynamics at play, the thing the Hitmen wanted to avoid being stuck at a location either alone, or with one other player. We had to choose who was going to make the kill by 11am and were stuck with that decision. As a result it was unlikely that we would put our destiny in DarkRula's randomiser to chance but I don't recall anybody mentioning this and if you analyse the locations choices, you'll see that very few players always chose where to go, the few being mostly us, The Hitmen.

I think the numbers were in our favour, I probably would've had three, or maybe even two Hitmen and removed the consecutive killer rule. That said, I think we played well, pretty optimally, there were times where deep(!) discussions were held over how to proceed on a couple of days, mostly how to manage the risks around the card gimmick.

See you all for the next one.

Drumstick wrote:gg folks.

Feels like, without the aid of special roles, the town was somewhat feckless in their approach, lacking ideas and logic.

IMO Town needed to realise that due to the dynamics at play, the thing the Hitmen wanted to avoid being stuck at a location either alone, or with one other player. We had to choose who was going to make the kill by 11am and were stuck with that decision. As a result it was unlikely that we would put our destiny in DarkRula's randomiser to chance but I don't recall anybody mentioning this and if you analyse the locations choices, you'll see that very few players always chose where to go, the few being mostly us, The Hitmen.

I think the numbers were in our favour, I probably would've had three, or maybe even two Hitmen and removed the consecutive killer rule. That said, I think we played well, pretty optimally, there were times where deep(!) discussions were held over how to proceed on a couple of days, mostly how to manage the risks around the card gimmick.

See you all for the next one.

C.Ingram wrote:As it looks like I might be dying when it comes to 6PM based on the number of votes I'd just like to ask people to be wary of people both being overly helpful but without any actual substance and also people hiding in the background not really adding much.

There are a few people I'm suspicious of based on the above, but I'm not really sure naming them will help much as once I'm dead even if they're not hitmen the hitmen will likely leave them alive to keep them in suspicion in the thread.

My main point that I'd like to make is I think based on the rules of the game (which I thankfully finally understand) - I'd be wary of actually picking locations to any actual citizens outside of specifically one player per location. The hitmen will want to pick locations and try to target people they deem to be the biggest threat. If nobody actually chooses a location then they can never target anyone specifically unless they get very lucky with their target being placed with who they want to make the kill.

Starting tomorrow it seems the first person to pick a location will get a bonus card with a random ability on it. I'd say that if you are a citizen we want to get all of those if we can so try and be the first to select a location. If anyone who has been semi-inactive or not very helpful tries to take a location first despite not posting anything else they should likely fall under some kind of suspicion as it's very likely a hitman, however it might also be a citizen heeding my advice. I guess the question will be if the people taking the cards tell the thread the information they have and how they choose to use the card.

If any of the major players seem to get a card and someone else picks to go in the same spot as them be very wary of them. My advice would be one person goes to each location to get a card and everyone else waits to be assigned randomly. If anyone is joining a location second they might be eyeing up a kill on whoever joined first so make sure to keep an eye on anyone who does that.

If you are a genuine citizen and you're not sure what's going on/you don't have any actual suspects make sure you're at least contributing in the dicussion or we will lose in the end. The hitmen win if everyone stays silent, they already know who the good guys are so why not use your voice and working together you can share as much information as you have with the thread and that makes the uninformed majority into an informed one guaranteeing a win.

From my final post in the thread.

I will say I loved your insistance to make sure everyone voted their own way and not with a consensus. Ironically that would've actually been really good for the village but nobody did it anyway

I played bad. Like always.

I would also like to say I was absolutely carried by the other 3. I tried to do my part but the dynamics of these games absolutely throw me, maybe I'm not clever enough for them hahaha

Curls wrote:I would also like to say I was absolutely carried by the other 3. I tried to do my part but the dynamics of these games absolutely throw me, maybe I'm not clever enough for them hahaha

I'm not sure that's fair! I thought we made a solid team with everyone playing their part

DarkRula wrote: using names from the Hitman franchise

Yep, didn't know this

Thought I'd add a few more comments.

Obviously was chuffed to see out the win, and to do so without losing any of our number. Cheers to Huw, Nun and Drum for being an excellent team, and big thanks to DR for running the game!

I don't really think I called many of the villager identities correctly (beyond Qikz - sorry Qikz). I thought Mommy was Denster, Aaron was Sprouty, and Sprouty was Ob Bob. I don't know if any of you deliberately tried to copy the traits of others to conceal your own identity?

Like Drum has said, we never left our location to chance, and we were fortunate that nobody noticed this as a pattern. The day one list also helped us enormously, as we knew where everyone would be, and so knew in advance the best person to choose from within our team to make that kill.

We (well, I) did briefly panic when Bagnato was renamed Gonif, because Bagnato was the only non-Hitman in the first group. If the village had redone its grouping in alphabetical order at that point, we'd have been well and truly shafted.

Drumstick wrote:I think the numbers were in our favour, I probably would've had three, or maybe even two Hitmen and removed the consecutive killer rule.

I do agree that, in terms of balance, things were weighted in our favour from the outset. Having fewer hitmen would probably have been fairer.

The main changes I would make would be to bring the cards in from the outset (or at least from the second day) and to make public the number of hitmen from the start. I had interpreted the OP as implying that the cards were the only "special" roles available to the village, so to have these withheld until we'd already killed off a third of the playerbase (and then we made up 40% of the remaining players) made things extremely difficult for the village.

The fact that the village didn't know how many of us there were, also worked in our favour. On days we didn't want there to be much activity, we basically stayed quiet; on days we wanted things to happen, we all posted and made moves in the thread. I am guessing that most people thought there would be two or three hitmen, so never thought to analyse these kind of trends (as why would you expect such a large bloc of players to act in tandem?)

Aaron was spot on about me, but unfortunately (for him) only said so after having publicly agreed with me about everything until that point I don't know whether my (over)reaction post helped me avoid further scrutiny, or whether it was because we were able to move the thread along elsewhere.

Regardless of balancing, Rula remains an impeccable narrator and a good gamerunner. I would propose that for his next game he reboot AYAW in its "classic" GR form. Make the rules and numbers public in the OP and stick to the original ruleset (PMs allowed, PM spying allowed, daily mayors with immunity, seers and witch doctors and all the rest) and I reckon you'd get 30+ players - old heads excited to play an old game, and all the "new" members we've gotten since then who've never played the "classic" version (and who roll their eyes when we refer to it as such ). I think it would play out really interestingly!