So someone in the Dead QT (I think it was StefanB) asked me a couple of questions about how long this game took to create and what my favorite role was.
This set-up has been a long time coming. I originally started actually putting ‘pen to paper’ as it were in December of 2011 but had been percolating the idea around in my brain for at least a couple of months beyond that. The Dresden series I find to be the perfect stomping ground for Mafia games. You have the nice mixture of genres (fantasy, detective), a very large cast of characters, and any number of characters who nicely blur the lines between Dull Hero and Stereotypical Villain.
Originally the set-up was going to be Large-r. There were several elements that got axed over time - the StreetWolves originally were to be a three player “Shared Vig” similar to the Angry Mob from ElectricBadger’s Mini Theme. Marcone was originally slated to be the Chicagoland Doc (using his criminal influence to call off hits). However the back to back crashes (that occurred while I was running Final Fantasy 6 Mafia) resulted in me reassessing how large a game I wanted to run. The game got downsized and elements dropped or re-assigned.
Duality (which I mentioned in the Dead QT) is the word that defines this set-up. Each Mafia team had an information role, an Investigation Immune member, a blocking role, and a way to defeat secondary Town powers (Tracker and protection, specifically). Town had mirroring roles revolving around the two Mafia factions – there were Cops for each (Zdenek and ICENinja), Docs for each (Dresden and ICEninja), Bulletproofs for reach (Shumgen and greenknight), Millers for each (Konowa and greenknight), and recruitables for each (fatlikepig and jasonT1981). Once it became public that there were two factions I expected there to be re-assessment by every player about what their role actually did. This is a case where reading into the flavor of the role PMs would pay off. And I think it was successful as Shamrock, Vi and ICENinja all made comments at some point driven by the flavor that led the to correct assessments of hidden elements of the game.
Interestingly in set-up review their was never that much worry at all that Town was over-powered. In fact the sentiment among the reviewers was that if anything scum still probably was slightly favored but the set-up was so swingy it was really going to be hard to balance. And the actual result bore that out – Town steam-rolling scum on Dayplay rendered whatever worries about scum being over-powered moot.
Fun fact – this is the first time Town has won a set-up of mine.
As to the what my favorite role in this game is – I can’t say I can have just one.
I love the Mafia Wildcard. I think it is a pretty unique spin on the Informed Minority concept – a player who has more information than anyone else but is also at once more vulnerable than any other scum player and still has every reason to play to a scum Wincon. I’m sad the CKD took the route he did with it in claiming to one side so early and outing both sides to the other. I think, as things go, that is to my mind the weakest possible way to utilize that role and I was hoping for more from such a veteran player.
I also very much love the ‘boring Vanilla Masons’ who were poised to be the Worst Nightmare of every other player (Sixty’s role) or of the players who killed Sixty (ABR’s role). In fact I actually prefer Tera as a nice Wincon alternative to the standard Serial Killer. I personally think alternate Wincon roles are very under-utilized here on Mafia-scum.
I probably had the most fun writing flavor and abilities for secondary characters (specifically both bulletproof roles and Bob when recruited) who had something I could exploit in having some fun.
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kortul wrote: MoI, after sensor result was outed, i was stuck anyway. Killing FLP would confirm the result, and blocking pidgey is useless - everyone would decide that scum got the result and decided to keep silent. My chance was to find traitor in a "cleared" pool - then either pidgey Fairy will report that FLP was wrong (and i will be saved in process), or Fairy will report that FLP was right (and traitor will have chances to win the game).
I get what you are saying but from a Mod Spoiled perspective you were making your moves way too late. For example – by the time you actually decided to kill Sixty you were aware via fatlikepig’s claim that the Escape potion existed in the game. I’m surprised you didn’t even factor that in as a workable Doc Protect possibility.
Furthermore Jason was not getting lynched with Sixty basically calling him confirmed Town. So once you died (which was going to happen) I think a large “Hmmm … two blue and two red flipped” outguessing would have taken over. For example – Tierce said she was paranoid that The Nightmare was missing. Had jasonT’s “Scared to death” flavor started showing up that probably would have fueled the fire on her thoughts and jason’s ability was one of the few absolutely proven (via his information from ICENinja) and thus likely not a secondary Serial Killer ability.
I’m not saying your choices were bad. If anything I think you already being screwed by the sensor made you rush those choices.
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Shamrock wrote: Hah, I would draw the one secret VT in a role madness game.
Yeah. I saw how you were ‘protecting’ Sixty and was waiting for them to get snuffed early and you basically throw tons of explictives my way when your protection failed.
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ICENinja wrote: A question for MoI...what result would I have gotten had I investigated Sells? Would he have come back not guilty (and thus make my investigation role actually negative, being that I can accidentally clear/incorrectly convict more people than I can actually get a guilty on meaning my investigation was actually ANTI-TOWN)?
Had you investigated Sells you would have gotten a result of Not Guilty. You only successfully investigated those aligned with the Chicagoland Mafia (or the Miller to that faction). Your role was not intended to be ‘strong’ – in fact the option to Doc protect someone should have, to some degree, signaled this. Why give you an option that logically you would very rarely choose (Docs are overall much weaker for Town than Cops) unless your investigation was not all that powerful? Additionally the fact that you were a split Doc / Cop also should have strengthened this – why give the Cop (usually the target for protection) what you might expect to be the only means of protection?
Dresden was the strong Town investigative role in the game – his normal investigation caught both factions and his enhanced protection caught everyone including the Serial Killers while avoiding the Millers. Both you and Zdenek were quasi-useful Cops with quasi-useful secondary skills.
ICENinja wrote: AND FUCK YOU FOR MAKING KARRIN SCUM OMG. WE AREN'T FRIENDS ANYMORE. Jk <3
Yeah, I expected this sort of reaction to Karrin’s flip (and expected something similar if Konowa ever flipped too)