Ideas behind the setup:
*The Mafia cannot control their kill - Comes from a really old mountainous game where in lieu of a Mafia factional kill, the mod just killed whoever had the fewest posts. The Mafia still won that game. I thought it would be neat to do an update of that in a not-mountainous game, and since times have changed, change it to whoever has the largest deviation from the average post rate - basically whoever felt most disruptive to the game state. Overall I'm pleased enough with how it turned out; while it probably would have been better for game health to always snipe whoever had the most posts, that would have made the mechanic less of a hindrance to the Mafia than would have been preferred.
*A more Town-sided game than usual - Times have changed and that sort of thing is in vogue. Plus I'll admit I kind of resent being told that my games are scum-sided as a rule, no matter what the win rates say. The game actually got MORE Town-sided after review; there were originally two Town Trackers and two Town roles with information (yes, more Mafia Trackers than Town Trackers). Ultimately I'm not going to say the game was handed to the Town, because of the next two ideas.
*Information as currency - So I'm actually kind of livid about reading a respected Mafia theorist say that Neighbors are worth almost nothing for Town power. Child,
please
. In my day Neighbors were DIY Cops. Giving players information and saying that all but one of them are Town is something that in theory should be worth zero and in practice can be swung for a lot more. I must confess the slight variations in Role PMs were sorta-kinda-not-really along these lines as well (honestly that was more me being extra and limiting the damage massclaim could do w.r.t. comparing the exact wording of Role PMs) but Porkens got this right.
*The Mafia could undo the Town-sidedness if they act proactively - I gave the Mafia damn near the entire setup; the only things I didn't tell them were how many Trackers there were and exactly what the outlier role did. They knew that there were almost-only Trackers in the game (and thus there would inevitably be a clusterfuck of a massclaim, and they could likely also deduce that the game would reduce to Trackers vs. non-Trackers), they knew that there was an additional role in the game they could fish for (and, without a guarantee that it was a targeting role AND knowing that a massclaim would occur in this game, they had a lot more leeway than in most any other game to NOT use their Tracks in service of where they wanted to be in the massclaim), and they had the text of every "ordinary" mod info in the game so they could claim their own without worrying about repeating something that I had already given out. A proactive scum team could turn this game into a nuclear wasteland of WTF.
*Revelations - It's been said that people are easiest to read when something surprising happens. This game was designed to facilitate those moments.
About what WASN'T planned...
*The swing warning - More than most games, this game was reliant on players using their roles to their fullest potential. This is most obvious with the Mafia's ability to prepare for what was going to happen as mentioned above, but it also includes what the person who drew the enabler role did. (cfj wouldn't let me pass the setup unless that role survived to Day 4 more than half the time. While I have had a hinge role die N1 before, I was ready to take that risk again.) As we saw in this game, large numbers of Town Trackers could result in bad news lategame if the Mafia was unable to get rid of them somehow.
*The mechanic - I didn't realize until deep into the game that the setup-review copy of the mechanic did not perfectly overlap with ROLE FIVE. What I and the reviewers thought, and what I explained in the Dead Thread, was that if the Mafia chose not to kill, there would be no automated kill. This contradicted ROLE FIVE and, if the Mafia had not killed N5, I would have had some explaining to do in the Dead Thread. But it didn't come up. Point being that I played more fast and loose with this setup than I probably should have.
*The mod info - I would like for someone who understands sentential logic to take a look at ROLE NINE and specify very precisely what it DOES say and what it DOES NOT say. Multiple times. In many font sizes and many colors. I'm receptive to the suggestion I got after the fact that this would have been a good place to have redundantly restated the bolded information to be sure there was no misunderstanding, but farside got done dirty. Beyond that - and I would stress that farside getting unduly screwed over is my primary concern because that goes against my design philosophy - it led people to believe all sorts of nonsense about me giving people investigative results in their Role PMs (which is a shitty design idea for the same reason Mafia Usurper is) and in particular whether it was more widespread than it actually was w.r.t. ABR (who got a completely vanilla Role PM). In general, because of how some of the claims went, I think people ended this game thinking it was far more bizarre than it actually was.
About how the teams did...
The only thing the Town didn't do right that I wouldn't handwave as ~just Town things~ is that they didn't suplex the dog D5. That was 100% the correct move mechanically speaking, and not doing so gave the Mafia more of an opening to win than they should have had. I'm also not entirely sure where the "so obviously one Mafia claimed Tracker and one Mafia claimed Vanilla" read came from, but it turned out to be incorrect - but ultimately that only mattered D5 thanks to Gamma's efforts to confirm the other Tracker.
The Mafia did great by mountainous standards. After N1, the Mafia team was 100% undercover. The entire spectator thread was completely wrong. ABR sent me three pairs of potential scumpartners and all six of the people named were Town. After N2, the Mafia team was still 100% undercover. After N4, VPB was still completely under the radar. As far as Mafia teams that crumple go, this was a pretty darn good one. However, all the tools of mischief I gave them were forgotten immediately, and this wasn't a Mountainous game, so I can't say I have a ton of pity.
The MVP of this game was easily Gammagooey. Replaced in, remembered the
meta, was on the right side of the CLAP argument, and came up with the Tracking scheme that ultimately bagged the last Mafia. We'll pretend Day 6 lasted for five posts.
Was the setup balanced? Who knows? It's too swingy to tell based on this single run. farside thought it was 95% Town-sided; cfj's last comment was that it was still scum-sided enough to be concerned about. And, honestly, that's kind of the point - because so much of the game's balance was intentionally
not
based on roles and (standard) mechanics.
Did the game work out the way I wanted/expected? I mean, mostly yes. Everything that was put into the game ultimately mattered to some extent, albeit not always in the way I would have liked. ROLE NINE is the obvious example, but in addition everyone on the review staff expected the Mafia to hunt and kill the enabler role ASAP and then mow the Trackers to a manageable population based on whatever WIFOM the Mafia wanted to roll with. Instead it arguably became more pro-Mafia to leave the enabler alive.
Have I discovered a new and enticing predisposition for not answering any questions after the beginning of the game? Yes! Like, beyond what seems to be customary these days (i.e. "I will not answer any questions posed to me in public"), but just about any question short of "will this get me modkilled" after Day 1 begins. To answer specific concerns that arose, I would assert that I went well out of my way to make sure that any unforeseeable player-snares this game were telegraphed in advance to the best of my ability. As for lies in Role PMs, I think those died in like 2009 with Mafia Masons and the birth of the Normal Review Group. Unless you're playing a game where lies in Role PMs are unambiguously indicated to be part of the game, they're both bad design and not even fun, and I'm actually doing my best to hold back on expressing what it means that people thought I would entertain the idea to begin with. I do my best to take care of the players who put their faith in me as a moderator. However, I also want to avoid inserting myself into games beyond what goes into setup (e.g. some Town power role inevitably ducking out of and into the thread with "I just asked the mod and they told me __ ", especially when __ was not originally part of the predefined set of information the player/game was intended to have).
In the end, I want to thank everyone for playing in this game, and VPB in particular for recommending me... although I'm not sure if VPB remembered what kinds of games I run. And I want to apologize to the people who didn't get what they wanted out of this. Even though I was singled out to run this game, I'm still not sure if I made the right call in running an "ordinary Vi setup" when I could have run an actual ordinary setup considering that this was an invitational for more-or-less retired players who didn't want to have to deal with my art projects. I also want to thank everyone for keeping this game running at the pace it did; I thought 10 days per Day would be short but only D4 came remotely close to that. That level of proactivity is something any moderator should be grateful for.
I have like four ideas for a game to follow this one and I'm not sure if I want to pursue any of them at this time. Maybe it was always like this and I've forgotten, or maybe I should have used a hydra account to have an empowered backup mod, or maybe I've changed or had the upheaval in my own life spill over - to say nothing of current world events - but designing, recruiting for, and running this game was stressful and unenjoyable for me (independent of how the game itself went, to be perfectly clear) and I'll be grateful to have some time to not worry about a daily obligation. To those of you who enjoyed the game - at some point I may work myself up to another, and I'll let you know when it's coming. ...But considering the response during Day 6, and likely the posts that will follow this one, it's probably better to not bother. Please don't play Mafia.
Everything you say and do matters. People will respond in ways you may never see. May those responses be what you intend.
