California Trilogy - Going to San Francisco (Game Over!)

[Talitha]

Things left to do (more a note for myself):
Select three non-ghost players at random for the basement (restriction - not more than one scum).

[Gorrad]

Aha!

[mith]

Thanks for the comments. Some quick thoughts and additional information:

Victor Conte and Count de Morcerf appeared in this game as survivors from the last game (whether this will also happen in the third game... you'll have to wait and see). When creating the setup, I gave them both a chance of being scum (don't remember the exact percentages, but they were independent). Once Victor Conte came up scum, I decided to give the group a steriods related motive, and put Conte and Bonds with the Dixie Chicks because country music is evil. (Curiously, not only did all the Dixie Chicks die before Conte/Bonds, and all the potential ghost roles survive the first two thirds of the game, the two surviving roles and the surviving player from last game all made it to the endgame... not quite as crazy as all four Marker roles from MeMeMeet surviving to the last five, but still interesting I thought.)

Also: I didn't find out until I was writing the final scenes that Victor Conte played bass with Tower of Power. Completely accidental that the "lead" scum was related to both themes, I thought that was neat. (And "Baron Danglers" was a typo from the first game - I just copied it in this game, since that role and the "Innocent Fresnino" that Jim Jones was possessing were meant to be dead players from that game.)

I had the idea for this setup a long time ago - I remember talking to Tally about it in New Orleans last summer, which is why she couldn't play and agreed to co-mod instead. (Basically, I came up with the punny name "Dantes in Fresno", then came up with the "Hotel California" mechanic, and figured I might as well make a whole trilogy set in California.) When actually putting it together, I realized the balance would be pretty similar to Nightless, or Tree Stump.

I wanted some way to keep the town guessing about the missing players. Originally I was going to have the ghost players go missing the first night, and then reveal them as dead over the first three nights. But then I came up with the Basement and liked it more - interesting experiment to see whether the three in the Basement would end up lynching or not.

Most intersting moments in the game for me were:

1. Watching Gorrad make some bad assumptions about the Basement and end up getting himself lynched for it.
2. Watching Nibbler Twins make a great case for why Rogueben had to be scum, then talk themselves and the other ghosts into the Pooky-cult theory (with Rogueben surviving two more days). Had Rogueben been killed as looked likely the entire day, I expect the town would have won sooner.
3. Day 5... NabNab's ghosting wasn't surprising once he was forced to claim (though well done on his part guessing that there might not be a ZK at all), and that left 3 scum out of 8 living players. Had the scum known the whole setup, all they had to do was get the town to lynch wrong or the ghosts to vig wrong (using one of their kills successfully would have made it 2/5 going into Day 6, and an immediate daykill, no lynch, second nightkill would have given the scum the winning numbers since the ghosts would have lost their ability to vig). Of course, the scum didn't know all that, and the town managed to hit two scum on the lynch/vig. Good stuff.
4. Thesp claiming scum. With the ZK possibility, and the ghosts thinking there were still two SCAPE, it looked briefly like he might extend the game. Well played by him throughout (and the other scum; the SCAPE ghosts definitely did their job confusing the other ghosts, and MrBuddyLee... I was baffled that he wasn't dead sooner, but he survived lynch after lynch).

There are some things I would have done differently (more intrigue with the alignments would have been great, and I think I would give the scum a bit of a nudge in figuring out who was making the kills), but overall I think the ghost mechanic worked quite well, and the balance was about right. The most difficult thing was dealing with ghost replacements... obviously I couldn't advertise a replacement spot. In the end, I decided at the beginning of Day 5 to drop the participation requirements for the ghosts, figuring enough of them would be active to reach a consensus.

[DrippingGoofball]

Who decided who were the original players in the basement and Hotel California? Was this random?

[mith]

The initial ghosts were specific roles (Ray Charles, Jim Jones, and "Baron Danglers" = all dead) and randomly assigned just like any other role. As Tally said above, the basement roles were randomly selected among the remaining roles, with the restriction that no more than one could be SCAPE (so I picked three at random, and if two had been SCAPE I would have repicked).

[Glork]

and MrBuddyLee... I was baffled that he wasn't dead sooner, but he survived lynch after lynch).

I blame me for this.

[Guardian]

2. Watching Nibbler Twins make a great case for why Rogueben had to be scum, then talk themselves and the other ghosts into the Pooky-cult theory (with Rogueben surviving two more days). Had Rogueben been killed as looked likely the entire day, I expect the town would have won sooner.

Brilliant fun DGB, I'd love to again.

It was nice to be smart half the time! ;-)

lol, thinking back, you were the one on Rogueben and Pooky -- so I think you do a great job being smart half the time without me :) :).

mith -- why did we die from ghost heaven? I couldn't figure that out.

[FaerieLord]

Guardian, SCAPE killed you.

[Guardian]

Guardian, SCAPE killed you.

Why???
So we couldn't go back to Rogueben? :(

[Niv]

beacuse you were active in a sea of inactivity