Lord of the Flies Mafia Postgame
This whole mafia game started with an idea: what if the Prisoner's Dilemma were used in mafia? It could allow for some unorthodox alliances, "money management" issues, and most of all plenty of deal-brokering and backstabbing. Fairly early on, I decided to put one Prisoner's Dilemma character on each team, have the mafia factions play the Prisoner's Dilemma with each other, and have the village play the Prisoner's Dilemma with the wolf. I wanted the mafia factions to have a large incentive to work together, but also to be able to backstab each other and and sell each other out. The village would be large and hard to organize to promote the psychological elements of mafia. The wolf, who of course would be the Lord of the Flies, would be in an interesting position. While wolves usually align themselves with the mafia, the Lord of the Flies had a motive for killing the mafia, and would therefore be more strongly tied to the village. This served to balance out the united pair of mafia factions. He would still be able to backstab everyone in the game, however. Many roles played out as I expected and some didn't, making this game a fun game to host.
The Destructive
Overall the Destructive played a pretty terrible game. Only Johann actually made a fake role PM using his safe-claim. Johann was also the only person to reach out to the opposing mafia. The Destructive (specifically Johann and shuckles my hero) were also very good at leaking information to anyone and everyone, while BunnyMaster and BlackHatGuy were fairly inactive and did not really use their roles to the fullest. It was also pretty ridiculous how long it took for this faction to use the Suspicious Brown Lump, which could have removed THE IRON KENYAN / Da Letter El much earlier and might have actually given a team other than the village a chance. All of these pieces clearly did not make a winning combination.
Player Assignment: I wanted the mafia factions to be balanced in terms of how experienced their players were, but ended up giving the Destructive the worse set of players. The team contained an experienced player (Johann), a newbie (BlackHatGuy), a player with some experience (Bunnymaster), and a player I didn't know much about (shuckles my hero).
The Role: I made this role with the intention to unite the mafia factions while spreading misinformation among the villagers. The alliance-inspection was supposed to allow Makuta to find the Corrupt early on and join forces with them, part of my plan for the balance among the factions.
The Player: BunnyMaster didn't play very well before being lynched on Day 4. On the upside, he alliance checked many of the people that would become part of Da Letter El’s inner circle, and he made an interesting item called the “wolf skin cloak” that implied the user would be false-inspected as wolf. However, he gave it to the only full inspector in the game, so the item was largely useless in creating misinformation. Johann gave his ally BunnyMaster the Forked Tongue (described later) early on, but BunnyMaster never made use of it. Bunnymaster also claimed to be a Prisoner's Dilemma player, marking him as suspicious early on.
The Role: As the more chaotic of the two mafia factions, the Destructive were supposed to spread fear and cause unusual events. The Destructive were also supposed to have more of their power centralized in Makuta and Pocketman rather than spread out like the the Corrupt. The Suspicious Brown Lump was intended to balance out the fact that the Corrupt could kill before the Destructive, but was not used how I had intended. I expected it to be used as soon as the mafia factions unified, but shuckles my hero waited longer to use it.
The Player: shuckles my hero targeted hailflameblast N0, but shuckles was hooked by KnightoftheWind. On N1 he hooked Raverist, which essentially did nothing because Raverist wasn’t a real role-name checker anyway. After that, he targeted Da Letter El for the next two nights, which did nothing because Da Letter El had the Knife, rendering him unhookable. On Day 3, shuckles was burned with the Glasses by Da Letter El, which meant his days were numbered. He targetted Raverist with the Glasses next, which failed due to it not being day, and then used the Suspicious Brown Lump on Da Letter El, ironically delay-killing his own delayed-killer! Not only did shuckles have essentially no good hook targets, he also leaked mafia information to Da Letter El in an attempt to keep Da Letter El from suspecting him after accidentally(?) sending him something that was supposed to go to just Johann. Obviously this attempt to save himself didn't work, and instead made him look all the more suspicious. Overall, shuckles my hero did not play a very good game, so I hope this was a good learning experience for him so that he can play games better in the future!
The Role: This was the first Prisoner's Dilemma role I made. Tabuu and Cyrus were supposed to bind the two mafia factions together but also allow for double-crossing if need be. If one died, the other would only get one point per night, giving these two roles and incentive to keep each other alive. I gave Tabuu the ability to buy steals for a low price since the Destructive had no thief, and gave him other useful abilities that cost more points. Tabuu and Cyrus had the most expensive extra kills in the game since their factions had consistent ways of killing anyway. It wasn't true that Tabuu and Cyrus would be godkilled if they failed to send in Prisoner's Dilemma action PMs; it was just a way to scare the players into being active. Tabuu held the Smash Ball for flavor reasons and so the item that Fox needed for his kill would be on the mafia. This made stealing from the mafia overall more important for the village thief.
The Player: BlackHatGuy was the last mafian to die, and I assume it was because he kept a low profile. He didn't send in a Night PM for the first 2 cycles, which was equivalent to a defection, and allowed him to accrue quite a few points for his team since vonFiedler cooperated both nights (because the mafias were already in contact.) On the next night he used his extra kill on Blue Tornado as vonFiedler defected. I don't think that he chose the target himself, but since Blue Tornado had already passed his glasses off and was otherwise just a half voter, it was THE weakest target in the game. On Night 3 the partners finally both cooperated, which yielded more points for BlackHatGuy (a total of 6). After that single cooperation, the rest of the game was double-defects for the pair. He for some reason did not use his extra kill when it was available, but did make the final kill for his team on Night 5 when he targeted Fangren (one of the better targets available since StevenSnype was already being targeted). Unfortunately he was hooked and was given the Collateralized Debt Obligation, making it impossible to defend himself as he was lynched the next day. One thing of note is that BlackHatGuy always voted for other mafia members after his first few days of idling. His voting pattern made it difficult for Da Letter El to figure out what mafia he was on, but he knew that BlackHatGuy was bad fairly early regardless. While BlackHatGuy didn't play a stellar game (and was idle for a lot of it), he did manage to survive longer than any of his allies and also managed to get quite a few points for his team.
The Role: This was a fun role to watch be used. Of all the misinformation roles in the game, this one was the most successful in confusing the village. When designing this role, I gave it an item to keep it from being too underpowered. The Forked Tongue was supposed to be a hot potato for the village but useful for the mafia, although it unfortunately was never used. If ever combined with the Tiger Penis, it could have caused a repeat of the original Fuck Tiger!
The Player: Johann played a pivotal role in uniting the two mafia factions, reaching out to UncleSam before he was lynched. However, he was a little too happy to divulge information about his team, giving away the names of all of his teammates without asking the same in return. Lucky for him, UncleSam and the rest of the Corrupt were never in a position where they needed to rat out the Destructive to save themselves, so nothing came of it, but it was overall a very risky play. His night actions were also very important, although Da Letter El suspected that they weren't true pretty early. On Night 0, he randomly decided to make UncleSam paranoid about the would-be village leader hailflameblast. He also passed off his Forked Tongue to BunnyMaster, who never used it. The next message was sent to THE IRON KENYAN and also targeted hailflameblast, in an attempt to alienate the two candidates for village leadership and make the more likely candidate suspect the other of being evil. Johann began a trend of making Da Letter El paranoid of other villagers, targeting Raverist, Game Freak201, and Itchni to be included in the messages. However, Da Letter El already knew that the paranoia messages were fake because of the information that shuckles my hero had leaked. The message snipped out the actual actions that were being performed but maintained the names of both the mafias to perform the action and the targets. It was fairly easy for Da Letter El to figure out that one of them was an order to send a paranoia message, and therefore the messages were little more than a nuisance. Johann was ultimately lynched on D5, a victim of his poor team. He was actually one of the best players for either mafia, since he was clearly attempting to unite the mafias and even had his fake role PM ready to distribute fairly early.
The Corrupt
With their best player (UncleSam) killed off early, this team struggled to make something of itself. They appeared to have lost communication with the Destructive, and overall was left in a weak position, with vonFiedler crippled due to his lack of points and the other two roles not being very powerful either. UncleSam was also the only player to make full use of his safe-claim.
Player Assignment: The Corrupt ended up getting a much more experienced set of players. UncleSam and KnightoftheWind are both good players, vonFiedler has a medium amount of experience, and the team only has one new player, Millon De Floss. If I were to assign the teams again, I would have switched KnightoftheWind and BunnyMaster to make the teams more balanced.
The Role: Of the two mafia teams, the Corrupt were supposed to be more focused on controlling the lynch and were supposed to have more "normal" roles. By being a standard hooker with a way of forestalling a lynch, this role accomplished both of those.
The Player: KnightoftheWind was initially taking orders from Uncle Sam, but when US died early the Corrupt had a difficult time bringing things together, and they appeared to have lost communication ties with the Destructive. He simply hooked THE IRON KENYAN / Da Letter El every night until he was killed by Pidge, and never ended up using his filibuster. On the first night he hooked the Destructive’s hooker, shuckles my hero, which essentially did nothing for reasons I will explain later, and after that he denied THE IRON KENYAN a Night 2 inspect, but TIK/DLE were given the Knife on Night 1, which made Da Letter El unhookable. As far as I know, he did not use his safe claim, which is one of the most important things for a mafia member to do. He also never ended up using his Filibuster, although there weren’t many opportunities. Overall just not enough effort to break through the strong village.
The Role: The Corrupt were supposed to have more control over items than the Destructive. A nightly thief who also held a vote-influencing item
supported the Corrupt's overall goal of controlling the lynch. However, since most items in the game were weak, this role was also somewhat weak.
The Player: On Night 0, Millon stole from hailflameblast to try to get any items that had been passed to him (he was a bit confused about priorities apparently), however he instead ended up with the Sandbag (HD), unwittingly ruining hailflameblast's plan to use HD as a pseudo-inspect. However, when he stole the Sandbag he prevented himself from passing the Collateralized Debt Obligation, and kept him from stopping his teammate UncleSam from being lynched the next day (although he didn't vote anyway). The next night he was effectively hooked from stealing, so he simply attempted to pass HD off to vonFiedler. Since HD was killed that night, he was finally able to pass off the Collateralized Debt Obligation to De Letter El on Day 2. At some point Millon claimed to Da Letter El as thief, and since it was unlikely the village had two thieves, either hailflameblast or Millon was lying. Ultimately it was hailflameblast that was killed first, which flipped his card and essentially sealed Millon's fate. Millon De Floss was hooked on the night that darkamber8828 was subbed in, and was lynched the next day. Other than his lucky Sandbag snag, there is very little to say about Millon De Floss/ darkamber8828 in this game. Millon didn't even use his safe claim and, as far as I know, Millon simply took orders until his death. It is unfortunate that darkamber8828 was subbed in on the day that they were lynched, but that's mafia.
The Role: The Destructive had one kind of inspector and the Corrupt had another. The item Tiger Penis was mostly added just for lols, but also increased the number of (somewhat) useful items in the game. If Tiger Woods had been able to obtain this item, he would have been able to use his power twice a night.
The Player: UncleSam was the de facto leader of not only the Corrupt, but also the mastermind behind the joint efforts between the two mafias. He ability-checked zorbees on Night 0, which ultimately lead to zorbees' death the next night. He got into contact with Johann early before he was lynched, and it allowed for the cooperation between the two mafias that came to follow. Due to an incorrect ruling about deadtalking, he was allowed to work with his Corrupt teammates after his death for a while until the ruling was overturned. It was unfortunate that he was THE IRON KENYAN's first inspection target, and he probably would have liked to not have been mafia, but he was easily the best player either mafia had this game. When he found out that he couldn't talk to his teammates, though, he started flaming the hosts, telling us to change the deadtalking rules. This got him banned from #candle, ironically enough, on the fourth of July.
The Role: With the exceptions of killing and inspecting, Tabuu and Cyrus had different abilities they could buy. I did this so there would be more variety in what the mafia factions could do. Overall, Cyrus's abilities were more defensive than Tabuu's, fitting into the plan of having the Corrupt be slightly more defensive that the Destructive.
The Player: As was mentioned above, vonFiedler cooperated on the first two nights as his partner defected. BlackHatGuy's idleness cost vonFiedler here, as it kept his team from using an extra kill for quite a while. Interestingly enough, he was the one that was sent for all but one kill his team made, and they made some decent targets. On Night 2 he was sent to kill FreakOfNature the item guard, which freed up their thief to steal a bit more safely (although Millon De Floss/ darkamber8828 was killed the next day). The Night 3 kill was on Pidge, which ate up his Circle of Ice and allowed the village to lynch him down the line in the endgame. Finally, vonFiedler targetted Itchni on Night 5 (Who was certainly one of the best targets left in the nearly all-vanilla village), but was killed by Pidge before priority got to his kill. vonFiedler did end up claiming to Da Letter El, but he claimed with the flavor of his partnership rather than the flavor of the zorbees / Pidge partnership, which overall just made him look suspicious. He was lucky that Da Letter El faltered a bit and didn't recognize this. Overall vonFiedler didn't end up doing much this game, but through no fault of his own. He was screwed over by BlackHatGuy and didn't have enough points to make an impact until too late.
The Stranded
The Stranded started off with a little bit of a struggle for leadership that developed on Day 1 and ended on Day 2, but after that small struggle the village became extremely unified behind Da Letter El. While the Stranded was mostly filled with essentially vanilla villagers and had only a few power roles, it was able to stay in the game through pure numbers. Da Letter El became the most powerful man in the game with all of the items and claims that he ended up with, and as a result he was able to play a stellar game that put the village into a dominating position that the weak mafias couldn't defend themselves against. Ultimately a lot of things that could have wrong did not go wrong, and that allowed the village to have a fairly easy time of consolidating even with all of the misinformation that existed in the beginning. The lynch of hailflameblast allowed the village to figure out that some of the information they had was false, and really set them straight for the remainder of the game. After the death of Da Letter El and then StevenSnype, the village became a bit more confused and weak without the power roles and spreadsheet, but they still had the target list and a huge numbers advantage, so winning at that point was academic. The Stranded managed to keep themselves together just long enough to pull out the win.
The Role: In retrospect, this role wasn't very well made. It required little involvement from the player until late game, and then could potentially become broken. When I made it I just wanted to see how such a unique item as the Gray Goo would be used.
Player Assignment: ABT620 doesn't have very much mafia experience, so I gave him one of the less important roles. New players often idle, so I gave ABT620 a role that would probably idle most of the time anyway.
The Player: There were many ways that the Goos could be used, and ABT620 decided to simply sit on them until he could amass a huge amount of negative votes for the endgame. He idled nearly every night, except he did give 1 of his Gray Goos to Da Letter El to prove his claim. He ended up surviving until the endgame and had 60 Goos by the time the game was over, which was worth -6.5 votes! He would have had enough for -14 by the next day, so it is unfortunate the game didn’t last a little longer for some seriously ridiculous vote totals.
The Role: Just like any other village, the Stranded needed a hooker. Nothing remarkable here.
Player Assignment: I knew StevenSnype had played mafia before and was active, so I gave him a fairly important role. I also wanted to make the hooker someone who wouldn't be name-targeted.
The Player: On Night 0, StevenSnype hooked the idling BlackHatGuy. He was then one of the many people that targeted hailflameblast on Night 1. After these unfortunate targets, his picks became a lot better. He hooked Millon de Floss / darkamber8828 the night before they were lynched, potentially stopping an important item from being stolen. On Night 3 he once again hooked the player that would be lynched the next day: BunnyMaster. On Night 4 he hooked Pidge, which accomplished nothing because it was an even Night and Pidge was idling. At this point in the game Da Letter El had entrusted him and only him with sheet access, and wanted StevenSnype to lead in the event of his death, and StevenSnype did just that when DLE died at the end of Day 5. Unfortunately Pidge killed him the next night as he was hooking BlackHatGuy again. BlackHatGuy had targeted Fangren for a kill that night, so it ended up saving Fangren’s life. Overall he did a very good job for his first mafia, making very few if any of the serious mistakes that newer players are prone to, although he was essentially just following orders for all but 2 nights.
The Role: The Vaccine was a way to counteract the potentially broken Super-STD, and would have potentially been useful to any team except the Destructive. Other than that, this was just a standard bodyguard role.
Player Assignment: Similarly to with StevenSnype, I didn't want an inexperienced, idling BG, but also didn't want such an important role to be killed Night 1.
The Player: It is unfortunate that the Vaccine never once interacted with Pocketman's STD, but it was mostly because shuckles my hero only infected one person (Raverist). On Night 0 theangryscientist immunized himself, and his targets after that were zorbees, Da Letter El, and Fangren on Nights 1, 2, and 3 respectively. These were good selections, although it ultimately wasn't needed. As far as his protection targets went, he just protected THE IRON KENYAN / Da Letter El until his death on Night 3. Another action of note regarding theangryscientist was that FreakOfNature gave him the CursedRuby on Night 0, which kept him from speaking in the main thread. He then passed it off to hailflameblast on the night before he was lynched, which made him unable to defend himself in the main thread and contributed to his demise. There really isn't much to say about theangryscientist's performance. Bodyguard is a fairly easy role when the inspector claims and you die before he does, but theangryscientist did a good job.
The Role: This role was designed to cause at least one mislynch. It was made to draw suspicion to its owner, especially one who acts suspiciously as reliably as Raverist does. This role was important in giving the village misinformation, but ironically ended up misinforming the mafia most of all.
Player Assignment: Raverist is very good at acting suspiciously when he's a villager (see Golden Sun Mafia), and a suspiciously behaving player who claims miller and gives false results is almost guaranteed to be lynched.
The Player: Raverist started the game off on Night 0 by name-checking hailflameblast, the leader that had stepped up, which of course screwed him over when his claim didn't match the name check, and ultimately this debacle was one of the major factors that kept hailflameblast from leading. There was too much mystery behind him because of all of the misinformation roles. Raverist idled on Nights 1 and 2, and I asssume it was because he already had a suspicion that his role was a fake. It worked out just fine though, because he was hooked on the first Night (infecting him) and hailflameblast was lynched by the time the second Night rolled around, which proved he had a troll role beyond a shadow of doubt. Raverist got the Collateralized Debt Obligation for Day 3, but there were enough votes on darkamber8828 to nullify his loss of voting rights. He actually kept the item for a bit before giving it away to BlackHatGuy after Da Letter El recognized it as the source of the vote discrepancy. Raverist then inexplicably checked Pidge on Night 3, and then idled after that until his death on Night 5. It was fortunate for Raverist that his fake role was discovered early, or else it might have implicated even more people wrongfully. Overall he played an okay game despite the hailflameblast incident.
The Role: I didn't want the village to be too powerful, so I gave it a marginally useful information role.
Player Assignment: Acklow was another player I didn't know much about. I didn't want to give him too powerful a role, but I wanted him to still be involved in the game.
The Player: Obviously Acklow was forced to idle for the first two nights because no villager had died yet. His targets starting Night 3 were, in order, zorbees, GTS, KnightoftheWind, Da Letter El, and StevenSnype. Other than finding out that there was definitely a killing neutral, his channeling wasn't of vital importance, but he did a good job nonetheless, and he survived all the way to endgame.
The Role: Standard inspector. This role PM was the shortest in the game, which ended up causing some controversy on Day 1 as to whether it was real or not.
Player Assignment: When I assigned roles, it was important for the inspector to be an experienced player. Da Letter El was good player to sub in for THE IRON KENYAN since they have similar amounts of experience.
The Player: TIK made a smart move on Night 0 when he targetted UncleSam. UncleSam, being the good player he is, could either be an excellent ally or TIK's worst enemy. Unfortunately for both of them, UncleSam was the Corrupt leader, which presented a strong Day 1 lynch. TIK public-claimed and asked for bodyguard protection, which set up Da Letter El when TIK was forced to exit the game. Da Letter El played better than any other player in the game, although he was certainly given more opportunity to do so since he ended up getting a huge number of items from villagers attempting to prove their claim. TIK was hooked by KnightoftheWind on the night that DLE took over, but he also got some nice items: the hook-protecting Knife from Itchni, and the killer Glasses from Blue Tornado. At the same time, Johann sent a paranoia message to TIK that implicated hailflameblast (another nail in his coffin). Da Letter El started the game off on the wrong foot, with a mislynch on hailflameblast and the gift of the Collateralized Debt Obligation from Millon De Floss, which he re-gifted to Raverist. With all of the misinformation thrown on hailflameblast he was the logical lynch target between HFB and Millon (who had kept a relatively low profile), so it is tough to blame DLE for that call. The only good thing to happen on Day 2 was the he got the Bible from TPM, which gave him immunity to Pidge's kills. With his new-found hook protection, Da Letter El was able to inspect the suspicious shuckles my hero (who had been leaking information to him and pretending to NOT be mafia) through both mafia hookers (including shuckles himself), and gave him his burn target for Day 3.After the mislynch of hailflameblast, he simply ignored the paranoia message implicating Raverist, and proceeded with the lynching of darkamber8828 (Millon's replacement) as expected. Another eventful night for Da Letter El ended up with his inspect being redirected by Pidge from Fangren to HD. He got poisoned by shuckles my hero's Suspicious Brown Lump, got a paranoia message about Game Freak201, and was also given the fake "wolf-skin cloak" item from BunnyMaster, who was also his lynch target that day. Another night brought him the pre-requisite paranoia message (this time about Itchni), a Gray Goo from ABT620, and TPM's role PM. By this time DLE had played Itchni and StevenSnype against each other to see what information he could learn. After determining that StevenSnype was trustworthy, he fortuitously gave him access to the spreadsheet and gave Itchni the threat list to ensure that StevenSnype carried out the orders. After running another successful lynch on Johann, Da Letter El died from the noxious fumes of the Suspicious Brown Lump. As I said before, Da Letter El played better than any player in the game, and was the main reason that the village was as successful as they were. TIK didn't get much time to show his stuff, but he played very well on the first Night/Day cycle and I assume he would have been a very good leader should he have stayed in the game.
The Role: The Metal Fan was supposed to be between Pidge and the mafia Prisoner's Dilemma players in power. I wanted to see how readily a villager would cooperate with a likely wolf, and whether the villager would think it more important to gain points or keep points away from the Metal Fan's suspicious partner.
Player Assignment: Since having the Metal Fan role would involve managing resources effectively and negotiating with a non-aligned player, it was very important that this role was assigned to a good player. zorbees had played well in previous games, so I gave him this role.
The Player: zorbees got into contact with Pidge early so that they could double-cooperate for the first 2 nights. He was killed by the mafia early so it is difficult to say how this would have gone. zorbees did a good job of getting into contact with his partner, however, zorbees's role PM implied that his partner was the wolf. This made cooperating very risky, so perhaps he was being a bit naive. Whatever the case may be, it would have been interesting to see how this developed, so it is unfortunate that he died so early.
The Role: This is the role that I originally envisioned as the village leader. Fox was able to move around items with his stealing ability, which would have been useful to a village leader since most items in the game were voting-related. Fox was also automatically cleaned by the Sandbag, and could gain information on other users by passing the Sandbag to them and stealing it back.
Player Assignment: I assigned hailflameblast this role because I thought it was his time to lead a village. Having played in multiple games and designed two himself, I thought he would be able to effectively lead the village.
The Player: hailflameblast started the game very happy, as he had what he believed was the best role to lead with. He quickly formulated a plan to use HD as a pseudo-inspect as was intended, but when he stepped up to lead he ended up getting screwed over. On Night 0 he tried to steal from Itchni and attempted to pass the Sandbag to Acklow, but both actions failed. Not only was hailflameblast hooked that night, but the Sandbag kept him from stealing. Millon De Floss also stole HD from him, which ruined his ability to work with him. To make matters worse, the misinformation roles targeted him. Raverist false name-checked him and got something that didn't gel with his claim, which created a lot of confusion the next day. Johann began his paranoia messages with a message to UncleSam about hailflameblast, which became public knowledge before UncleSam died on Day 1. People were also suspicious of his claim that he knew a neutral. In fact, one of the major reasons that THE IRON KENYAN public claimed rather than simply giving his information to hailflameblast was because he was suspicious of him (and furthermore thought that he would not be a good leader). Things got worse for hailflameblast the next night, when he was simultaneously hooked (this time by the village hooker) and martyred (if the hook wasn't good enough), got the Cursed Ruby from theangryscientist, and once again the subject of Johann's paranoia message (this time to THE IRON KENYAN). He was lynched the next day, unable to post in the main thread to defend himself and the victim of his own ambition to lead. HFB might have done a good job of leading if not for 2 things. First of all, he was completely screwed in nearly every way imaginable on the first 2 nights. Secondly, he had a lot of other things going on in his life. He had his own mafia (Overkill 2) running at the time, so he might have been a bit of a distracted leader. Overall, HFB had endless plans but was never able to carry them out.
The Role: This role was another way in which I injected misinformation into the village.
Player Assignment: I gave Game Freak201 this role because I thought he would be easy to troll. In some previous games he had been trolled by the village leader, so I thought he would believe the results of his importance-checks.
The Player: While Raverist's false name-check and Johann's paranoia messages were discovered to be false early, no one ever seriously suspected that Game Freak201's importance check was a sham, but it was! There were various theories that evolved to explain the random results, and even Game Freak201 himself had some doubts (he mentioned coin-flipping in his Night 2 PM), but I believe that no one ever figured it out until maybe the last day when Pidge died. I used the random.org coin flipper to generate the results, with heads meaning "yes" and tails meaning "no." Quite a few times this check was used as a partial justification for a lynch, but the true ramifications of the check are difficult to gauge. The fun started on Night 0 with a random check on StevenSnype which resulted in a "no." The ramifications of this result weren't known until later, but this started a trend of important roles randomly having "no" results that was continued with the "no" result on THE IRON KENYAN. He also got "no" results on BlackHatGuy and Johann on Nights 2 and 3, respectively. By this time Game Freak201 might have suspected that the results were always no or the opposite of the truth, as clearly an inspector should show up as important right? Interestingly enough this trend of "no" results was reversed on the next 3 nights, which yielded "yes" results on Pidge, Itchni, and TPM. When Johann died on D5, GF201 might have begun to suspect that his results were "insane." and this might have been further justified by the death of TPM, who had an unimportant role and got a "yes." However, Pidge's death clearly shook that belief, because he clearly had an important role. The amount that this check was used to justify lynches is not known to the hosts, so it would be interesting to talk about this in postgame. Overall Game Freak201 did a good job, and was always active during the lynches. It will be interesting to hear the theories that were formulated to explain his results. On another note, Game Freak201 was fortunate that GTS didn't resetter-check him, although it probably wouldn't have mattered that much considering the position the village was in.
The Role: This is a role that Anachronism envisioned leading before we nerfed it. If protected by the bodyguard, King Kong would have essentially allowed the village an extra hook. Anachronism and I downgraded this role from a nightly martyr so that the village wouldn't be overpowered.
Player Assignment: I gave Fangren this role because he had experience, but not a huge amount. While making the game, Anachronism and I had considered the possibility that this role could lead the village, and while Fangren would not be the obvious candidate for a village leader role he likely could have managed it well.
The Player: Despite living out the entire game, Fangren never really contributed much. He could not compete for Bodyguard protection with the inspector, so he ultimately was reduced to being a Martyr in the strictest sense of the word, since absorbing anything of value would likely result in his death. His first distraction was on hailflameblast, which didn't do anything because hailflameblast was already hooked. His N3 target was shuckles my hero, which would have been a brilliant play if his role worked on items (shuckles used the Suspicious Brown Lump on Da Letter El), but instead got him hooked without much else coming from it since Da Letter El was also being hooked by KnightoftheWind and had the knife anyway. He then idled for the rest of the game so overall didn't really accomplish more than a vanillager would have. However, this was not Fangren's fault. He did a pretty good job using the decent role that he was given, and if you survive until the endgame you can't be doing all too bad.
The Role: John Calvin was the weakest villager of all, with a mostly useless role and a mostly useless item. The village had a large numbers advantage but few power roles.
Player Assignment: In a lot of TPM's games he hasn't played particularly well, so I gave him one of the less important roles. Someone had to get this role, right?
The Player: Yeah...numbers guy. No night role, so not much to comment on here. He passed off the Bible to Da Letter El on Day 2 to prove his claim and give Da Letter El another layer of protection...and that is it! TPM did a pretty good job staying active during the lynches and talking with his team on IRC so he did as well as can be expected for someone with essentially a vanilla villager role. Like I said, if you survive until the endgame then you are doing something right.
The Role: This role wasn't very well-designed, actually. It was unlikely to have any impact, but by sheer luck could have taken out a mafia member. The most interesting part of the role was the Cursed Ruby, which was made in order to give the village a limited way to silence.
Player Assignment: As a totally new player, FreakOfNature was a good candidate for a role of little use. Giving a new player control over the Cursed Ruby could have been bad, but I thought the Cursed Ruby would be passed off quickly.
The Player: On Night 0 FreakOfNature decided to make the safe play and idle his item protection so he didn't inadvertently hit the village thief and/or protect a mafia member. If he had protected hailflameblast then this game might have turned out VERY differently, although the final outcome would have been the same. Keeping HD on HFB and killing Millon would have been a powerful way to start off the game, however the safe play was probably the right one to make. FreakOfNature did pass off his Cursed Ruby, however he gave it to the Bodyguard, which essentially did nothing but make it a bit harder to lynch UncleSam. He then attempted to lynch hailflameblast, so he was clearly very skeptical of HFB from the beginning. He then had a sudden reversal and tried to protect hailflameblast's items the next night when HFB no longer had any. He idled for the entirety of the next day/night cycle and was killed by the Corrupt on Night 2, so his only action this game that had any relevance was the passing of his item to a bad target. I think FreakOfNature seems like a pretty cool, competent guy but he really accomplished nothing in this game.
The Role: I wanted there to be a glasses item in the game, and wanted it to be powerful. I designed the glasses so that they would have the power to kill but could backfire, and so it would be held by more than one faction during the game. The holder of the glasses was supposed to think twice before using them. I gave this role a half vote to further reduce the power of village roles. Due to concerns that the glasses would get out of hand, we decided to have the glasses break after their second use.
Player Assignment: I gave Blue Tornado this role because I wanted the glasses to be controlled by an experienced player. Due to this role being a very safe claim that is easy to prove, I expected Piggy to be cleaned early on and likely become the assistant village leader.
The Player: Blue Tornado voted for UncleSam on Day 1, then gave his Glasses to THE IRON KENYAN on Night 1 because the village leader would be able to target more effectively. After giving away his item his role was reduced to being worse than even a vanilla villager. He just idled until his death by the Destructive on Night 2. Overall he did the best that his role afforded him.
The Role: This role was made to potentially cause division within the village. If Joey posted his role PM and tried to lead the village, he would have to negotiate with Mr. Resetti in order to not be killed. I designed this role so that even if Joey did not lead the village, the village leader would not know how much to trust Mr. Resetti. I made Mr. Resetti an announcer just because it's fun to have an announcer in the game.
Player Assignment: I gave this role to GTS because he was experienced. Mr. Resetti would have likely had to negotiate with the village leader over using his power, so I assigned this role to a player who could make deals well.
The Player: GTS wrote a little rant for Night 0, then randomly resetter-checked vonFiedler. After contributing to the lynch of UncleSam, he idled for Night 1 and Day 2. His Night 2 resetter-check was on Blue Tornado, but GTS died that night. Some interesting stuff could have happened if he had managed to find Game Freak201, but that was not the case, so GTS had a pretty boring role with which he was incapable of accomplishing anything of value. It is unfortunate that he was the only villager who didn't win.
The Role: This is another weak village role. The most interesting part of the role is the knife, which was made to counteract the large number of hooks in the game. This item was actually very important in the village's victory, since it absorbed many hooks targeted at THE IRON KENYAN / Da Letter El.
Player Assignment: At the beginning of the game, I didn't know much about Itchni. I knew he had been in at least one game before, but didn't know how well he did. That is why I chose him to have one of the mostly useless village roles.
The Player: Itchni tried pretty hard to successfully stalk but it just didn't work for him. Itchni gave away his Knife to THE IRON KENYAN on Night 1, and started following essentially random people. He followed Blue Tornado that same night, then Raverist, idled on Night 3, then followed Johann, idled again, followed BlackHatGuy, and finally Pidge. As you can see, his targets became more and more informed as the game went on, showing that he was likely getting some good information from someone. His false public claim of Elmer Fudd did a good job of trolling people but didn't get him targeted as he intended. Even if he was targeted it would be unlikely that he would have stalked the correct person. Itchni somehow ultimately became one of the people Da Letter El trusted the most, enough to give him the lynch target list before his death. Itchni played an interesting game, and clearly was doing something right to last so long, but his Elmer Fudd claim was not only ineffective but poorly-planned. It is difficult to tell how much of Itchni's game was the result of his connections to the village inner circle, but either way he started off with a poor performance that got better as time went on.
The Neutrals
The Role: The idea for this role came out of the "Character Items" classification in the Brawl Classic/All Star credits. A player who was also an item and had a shifting alliance would likely be passed between multiple different factions and have to choose which team to work with. This role also fit with the backstabbing motif well. The way I expected the Sandbag to be played was that Fox would pass him to players to check their alliances. If the Sandbag were passed to a mafia member, he could mole the mafia faction and then get stolen back. However, the Sandbag could choose to go over to the mafia and have his holder pass him to another member of the same faction during the day. This role is also the reason for my strict deadtalking rule. If the Sandbag were passed between multiple people, he would end up gaining large amounts of village information. Then if the Sandbag were passed to a mafia faction, kept his village information secret, and then were killed in crossfire before he could be stolen back, the Sandbag would have a lot of information he couldn't tell his teammates while strategizing with them. This would create a large incentive to secretly deadtalk.
Player Assignment: This was a role I made sure to give to a very good player. The Sandbag would have likely handled large amounts of information and would have had to mole the mafia factions, both of which require skill.
The Player: HD played very well before being killed on Night 1 by Pidge, who was apparently wary of the other neutral in the game. He help formulate a plan with hailflameblast to use HD as a win-condition inspection by passing him off and then stealing him the next day, however HD was stolen by Millon de Floss before even one pseudo-inspection could be completed, and was then killed the next night. It would have been interesting to see how HD’s role would have developed, so it is unfortunate that he died early. It is also unfortunate that HD was stolen away from the winning team to join the Corrupt, the first mafia faction to die, but that is mafia for you.
The Role: Out of all the roles in the game, I gave this role the most thought. The Lord of the Flies was the first role that I decided would be in the game, and was the obvious candidate for the wolf role. This role was designed to maximize backstabbing. By being a Prisoner's Dilemma player, he would be able to form a cooperation pact with the Metal Fan and help the village, but would have to betray the village in order to fulfill his win condition. But the wolf usually works with the mafia, so I gave the Lord of the Flies a way to backstab the mafia too. I gave the Lord of the Flies the cheapest Prisoner's Dilemma purchases in order to make him more powerful. I also didn't want my carefully-crafted wolf to be namekilled too early, so I gave him a one-time BPV item. If the Metal Fan had not died Night 1, this role could have become broken due to the large number of points the Lord of the Flies would have been able to get.
Player Assignment: I gave this role to the player I percieved to be the best player in the player list. Pidge has had a very large amount of mafia experience and has been wolf before. Because of the Circle of Ice, I was not worried about namekills, so I gave this role to the player best able to use it.
The Player: Pidge started the game off on Night 0 double-cooperating with his partner zorbees, presumably having already contacted him. For whatever reason, Pidge claimed harmless neutral to zorbees instead of using his safe-claim of mayor. When TIK came out in Day 1, Pidge did not claim right away, but did assist in the lynching of UncleSam. On Night 1, Pidge used his first kill on HD, because he had learned HD was a neutral and was afraid that HD might be able to discover him and/or was lying and had a killing neutral role as well. In any case, Pidge also cooperated, which meant that both zorbees and Pidge had 6 points. Unfortunately, zorbees was killed by the mafia that same night, which meant that Pidge was only capable of getting 1 point a night for the rest of the game unless he found and killed some of the mafia leaders. He once again participated in the lynch on Day 2, this time on hailflameblast. He predictably idled on Night 2, now at 7 points, and lynched darkamber8828 the following day. Night 3 brought his second kill, and this was used on KnightoftheWind in what I assume was an attempt to take out a mafia leader. He also used some points up to redirect Da Letter El's inspect (on Fangren) to HD so that he could allude detection for at least another night. This brought him to 8-3 = 5 points. He helped lynch BunnyMaster the next day, and around this time he finally claimed to Da Letter El as a harmless neutral with a global martyr on Night 7 that would make him win if he died as a result. I am not sure why he went with this role instead of something a little bit simpler, but Da Letter El clearly didn't suspect him enough to make him top lynch priority on his list, so it was good enough to keep him alive a bit longer. Pidge idled on Night 4, and helped lynch Johann on Day 5. On Night 5 he used a kill on StevenSnype to keep himself from being hooked later on, and also killed vonFiedler to get some extra points for killing a mafia leader while also removing a potential killer. In an attempt to balance the numbers a bit Pidge supported BlackHatGuy in the failed lynch of Acklow on Day 6, but they didn't buy it and Pidge became the last threat to the village standing. He used his points to get another kill on TPM, but it was too late. He was vastly outnumbered and couldn't sway the lynch on the next day. Pidge played an excellent game for someone that was crippled so early. He was also put into a very difficult position where he was unable to gain points unless he killed mafia leaders, but couldn't kill mafia leaders without creating an even greater imbalance than already existed. This predicament made it considerably easier for the village to win. Pidge was also hurt by Anachronism's public vote tallies, which were not originally included in the plans for the game and made Pidge's mayor claim less believable. If Pidge had killed villagers rather than mafiosos and neutrals then we might have had entirely different winners in this game. While Pidge did play pretty well, I think he could have done a better job by using his safe-claim and attempting to talk with the mafia to help coordinate kills while also moling them and figuring out who the leaders were.
Awards:
Best Stranded: Da Letter El
Best Destructive: Johann
Best Corrupt: UncleSam
Best Neutral: Pidge
Best Player: Da Letter El
Worst Player: shuckles my hero
Best New Player: BlackHatGuy
Best Luck: Da Letter El
Worst Luck: UncleSam/hailflameblast
Best Move: THE IRON KENYAN stepping up to lead the Day 1 lynch
Worst Move: shuckles my hero leaking his team to Da Letter El
Biggest Disappointment: HD and zorbees both dying Night 1
Most Important Item: The knife
Conclusion:
This game tried out a large number of new roles. In addition to the original idea of Prisoner's Dilemma players, there were the Gray Goo, the flavor faker, and the player item. Some of these roles turned out as expected and some did not; some worked well and some did not. The Prisoner's Dilemma roles were not as good as I had expected, and mostly idled until they had saved up enough points for kills. Of course, this might have turned out differently if zorbees had survived Night 1. The Gray Goo was the least successful new concept in the game, requiring little involvement on the player's part for most of the game and potentially becoming broken late in the game. The flavor faker, on the other hand, worked exactly as intended, spreading confusion among its targets until it was discovered. Watch out for this role in future games! The most interesting, but also mostly untested, new role ended up being the player item. Since this role was only in the game for a night and a day, I did not get a very good sense of how it would work, but saw that its use for moling was working as planned. It's likely that I'll make a game in the future that involves many player items.
Overall, Anachronism and I did a good job of balancing the game. Before he approved the game, Earthworm expressed concern that the village was too powerful due to its large numbers. If the mafia factions had crossfired more or two important village roles had not been killed Night 1, this might have been true. Also, Pidge would have had a much better chance of winning if zorbees had not been killed so early. But the Stranded was the faction that played the best, and well deserves its victory.
Not only is this the postgame, it is also my thousandth post here on Smogon. During the past year and five months I have been here I have greatly improved from my former inexperienced state, becoming better at Pokemon, mafia, and posting in general. Lord of the Flies Mafia has been the high point in my time at Smogon so far; I hope to play and host many more games in the future. I would like to thank everyone who has helped and encouraged me here on Smogon, especially my cohost Anachronism. I hope I will improve as much in my next thousand posts as I did in my first.
This whole mafia game started with an idea: what if the Prisoner's Dilemma were used in mafia? It could allow for some unorthodox alliances, "money management" issues, and most of all plenty of deal-brokering and backstabbing. Fairly early on, I decided to put one Prisoner's Dilemma character on each team, have the mafia factions play the Prisoner's Dilemma with each other, and have the village play the Prisoner's Dilemma with the wolf. I wanted the mafia factions to have a large incentive to work together, but also to be able to backstab each other and and sell each other out. The village would be large and hard to organize to promote the psychological elements of mafia. The wolf, who of course would be the Lord of the Flies, would be in an interesting position. While wolves usually align themselves with the mafia, the Lord of the Flies had a motive for killing the mafia, and would therefore be more strongly tied to the village. This served to balance out the united pair of mafia factions. He would still be able to backstab everyone in the game, however. Many roles played out as I expected and some didn't, making this game a fun game to host.
The Destructive
Dear Destructive,
Your team consists of:
BunnyMaster - Makuta - alliance checker / false item creator
shuckles my hero - Pocketman - hooker
Green_Pikachu - Tabuu - Prisoner's Dilemma player
Johann - WOPR - Paranoia generator
Starting on Night 2, your team may send one of your living members to kill twice every three nights. The team has a leader, who must be the user who sends your team's killing PM. Makuta starts out as the leader, but if the current leader dies, the leader will become Tabuu, followed by the WOPR, and lastly by Pocketman. You know that the village has no safeguard, item duplicator, anonymous messenger, or LPV. Also, you know that Princess Peach, James Bond, Popeye, and Dragonite are not in the game.
Your team consists of:
BunnyMaster - Makuta - alliance checker / false item creator
shuckles my hero - Pocketman - hooker
Green_Pikachu - Tabuu - Prisoner's Dilemma player
Johann - WOPR - Paranoia generator
Starting on Night 2, your team may send one of your living members to kill twice every three nights. The team has a leader, who must be the user who sends your team's killing PM. Makuta starts out as the leader, but if the current leader dies, the leader will become Tabuu, followed by the WOPR, and lastly by Pocketman. You know that the village has no safeguard, item duplicator, anonymous messenger, or LPV. Also, you know that Princess Peach, James Bond, Popeye, and Dragonite are not in the game.
Overall the Destructive played a pretty terrible game. Only Johann actually made a fake role PM using his safe-claim. Johann was also the only person to reach out to the opposing mafia. The Destructive (specifically Johann and shuckles my hero) were also very good at leaking information to anyone and everyone, while BunnyMaster and BlackHatGuy were fairly inactive and did not really use their roles to the fullest. It was also pretty ridiculous how long it took for this faction to use the Suspicious Brown Lump, which could have removed THE IRON KENYAN / Da Letter El much earlier and might have actually given a team other than the village a chance. All of these pieces clearly did not make a winning combination.
Player Assignment: I wanted the mafia factions to be balanced in terms of how experienced their players were, but ended up giving the Destructive the worse set of players. The team contained an experienced player (Johann), a newbie (BlackHatGuy), a player with some experience (Bunnymaster), and a player I didn't know much about (shuckles my hero).
The Role: I made this role with the intention to unite the mafia factions while spreading misinformation among the villagers. The alliance-inspection was supposed to allow Makuta to find the Corrupt early on and join forces with them, part of my plan for the balance among the factions.
The Player: BunnyMaster didn't play very well before being lynched on Day 4. On the upside, he alliance checked many of the people that would become part of Da Letter El’s inner circle, and he made an interesting item called the “wolf skin cloak” that implied the user would be false-inspected as wolf. However, he gave it to the only full inspector in the game, so the item was largely useless in creating misinformation. Johann gave his ally BunnyMaster the Forked Tongue (described later) early on, but BunnyMaster never made use of it. Bunnymaster also claimed to be a Prisoner's Dilemma player, marking him as suspicious early on.
The Role: As the more chaotic of the two mafia factions, the Destructive were supposed to spread fear and cause unusual events. The Destructive were also supposed to have more of their power centralized in Makuta and Pocketman rather than spread out like the the Corrupt. The Suspicious Brown Lump was intended to balance out the fact that the Corrupt could kill before the Destructive, but was not used how I had intended. I expected it to be used as soon as the mafia factions unified, but shuckles my hero waited longer to use it.
The Player: shuckles my hero targeted hailflameblast N0, but shuckles was hooked by KnightoftheWind. On N1 he hooked Raverist, which essentially did nothing because Raverist wasn’t a real role-name checker anyway. After that, he targeted Da Letter El for the next two nights, which did nothing because Da Letter El had the Knife, rendering him unhookable. On Day 3, shuckles was burned with the Glasses by Da Letter El, which meant his days were numbered. He targetted Raverist with the Glasses next, which failed due to it not being day, and then used the Suspicious Brown Lump on Da Letter El, ironically delay-killing his own delayed-killer! Not only did shuckles have essentially no good hook targets, he also leaked mafia information to Da Letter El in an attempt to keep Da Letter El from suspecting him after accidentally(?) sending him something that was supposed to go to just Johann. Obviously this attempt to save himself didn't work, and instead made him look all the more suspicious. Overall, shuckles my hero did not play a very good game, so I hope this was a good learning experience for him so that he can play games better in the future!
The Role: This was the first Prisoner's Dilemma role I made. Tabuu and Cyrus were supposed to bind the two mafia factions together but also allow for double-crossing if need be. If one died, the other would only get one point per night, giving these two roles and incentive to keep each other alive. I gave Tabuu the ability to buy steals for a low price since the Destructive had no thief, and gave him other useful abilities that cost more points. Tabuu and Cyrus had the most expensive extra kills in the game since their factions had consistent ways of killing anyway. It wasn't true that Tabuu and Cyrus would be godkilled if they failed to send in Prisoner's Dilemma action PMs; it was just a way to scare the players into being active. Tabuu held the Smash Ball for flavor reasons and so the item that Fox needed for his kill would be on the mafia. This made stealing from the mafia overall more important for the village thief.
The Player: BlackHatGuy was the last mafian to die, and I assume it was because he kept a low profile. He didn't send in a Night PM for the first 2 cycles, which was equivalent to a defection, and allowed him to accrue quite a few points for his team since vonFiedler cooperated both nights (because the mafias were already in contact.) On the next night he used his extra kill on Blue Tornado as vonFiedler defected. I don't think that he chose the target himself, but since Blue Tornado had already passed his glasses off and was otherwise just a half voter, it was THE weakest target in the game. On Night 3 the partners finally both cooperated, which yielded more points for BlackHatGuy (a total of 6). After that single cooperation, the rest of the game was double-defects for the pair. He for some reason did not use his extra kill when it was available, but did make the final kill for his team on Night 5 when he targeted Fangren (one of the better targets available since StevenSnype was already being targeted). Unfortunately he was hooked and was given the Collateralized Debt Obligation, making it impossible to defend himself as he was lynched the next day. One thing of note is that BlackHatGuy always voted for other mafia members after his first few days of idling. His voting pattern made it difficult for Da Letter El to figure out what mafia he was on, but he knew that BlackHatGuy was bad fairly early regardless. While BlackHatGuy didn't play a stellar game (and was idle for a lot of it), he did manage to survive longer than any of his allies and also managed to get quite a few points for his team.
The Role: This was a fun role to watch be used. Of all the misinformation roles in the game, this one was the most successful in confusing the village. When designing this role, I gave it an item to keep it from being too underpowered. The Forked Tongue was supposed to be a hot potato for the village but useful for the mafia, although it unfortunately was never used. If ever combined with the Tiger Penis, it could have caused a repeat of the original Fuck Tiger!
The Player: Johann played a pivotal role in uniting the two mafia factions, reaching out to UncleSam before he was lynched. However, he was a little too happy to divulge information about his team, giving away the names of all of his teammates without asking the same in return. Lucky for him, UncleSam and the rest of the Corrupt were never in a position where they needed to rat out the Destructive to save themselves, so nothing came of it, but it was overall a very risky play. His night actions were also very important, although Da Letter El suspected that they weren't true pretty early. On Night 0, he randomly decided to make UncleSam paranoid about the would-be village leader hailflameblast. He also passed off his Forked Tongue to BunnyMaster, who never used it. The next message was sent to THE IRON KENYAN and also targeted hailflameblast, in an attempt to alienate the two candidates for village leadership and make the more likely candidate suspect the other of being evil. Johann began a trend of making Da Letter El paranoid of other villagers, targeting Raverist, Game Freak201, and Itchni to be included in the messages. However, Da Letter El already knew that the paranoia messages were fake because of the information that shuckles my hero had leaked. The message snipped out the actual actions that were being performed but maintained the names of both the mafias to perform the action and the targets. It was fairly easy for Da Letter El to figure out that one of them was an order to send a paranoia message, and therefore the messages were little more than a nuisance. Johann was ultimately lynched on D5, a victim of his poor team. He was actually one of the best players for either mafia, since he was clearly attempting to unite the mafias and even had his fake role PM ready to distribute fairly early.
The Corrupt
With their best player (UncleSam) killed off early, this team struggled to make something of itself. They appeared to have lost communication with the Destructive, and overall was left in a weak position, with vonFiedler crippled due to his lack of points and the other two roles not being very powerful either. UncleSam was also the only player to make full use of his safe-claim.
Player Assignment: The Corrupt ended up getting a much more experienced set of players. UncleSam and KnightoftheWind are both good players, vonFiedler has a medium amount of experience, and the team only has one new player, Millon De Floss. If I were to assign the teams again, I would have switched KnightoftheWind and BunnyMaster to make the teams more balanced.
Dear Corrupt,
Your team consists of:
KnightoftheWind - Larry Craig - hooker
Millon De Floss - Bernard Madoff - thief
UncleSam - General Zaroff - ability checker
vonFiedler - Cyrus - Prisoner's Dilemma player
Starting on Night 1, the team leader may send a living member of the faction to perform a kill twice every three nights. The team always has a faction leader who must be the user who sends the kill PM, and the leadership is passed down if the leader dies. The primary leader is General Zaroff, and if the current leader dies, the position of leadership gets passed to Cyrus, then Larry Craig, then Bernard Madoff. You know that the village has no watcher, priority changer, question asker, or item checker. You also know that Kitsunoh, Jack Bauer, Bart Simpson, and Tingle are not in the game.
Your team consists of:
KnightoftheWind - Larry Craig - hooker
Millon De Floss - Bernard Madoff - thief
UncleSam - General Zaroff - ability checker
vonFiedler - Cyrus - Prisoner's Dilemma player
Starting on Night 1, the team leader may send a living member of the faction to perform a kill twice every three nights. The team always has a faction leader who must be the user who sends the kill PM, and the leadership is passed down if the leader dies. The primary leader is General Zaroff, and if the current leader dies, the position of leadership gets passed to Cyrus, then Larry Craig, then Bernard Madoff. You know that the village has no watcher, priority changer, question asker, or item checker. You also know that Kitsunoh, Jack Bauer, Bart Simpson, and Tingle are not in the game.
The Role: Of the two mafia teams, the Corrupt were supposed to be more focused on controlling the lynch and were supposed to have more "normal" roles. By being a standard hooker with a way of forestalling a lynch, this role accomplished both of those.
The Player: KnightoftheWind was initially taking orders from Uncle Sam, but when US died early the Corrupt had a difficult time bringing things together, and they appeared to have lost communication ties with the Destructive. He simply hooked THE IRON KENYAN / Da Letter El every night until he was killed by Pidge, and never ended up using his filibuster. On the first night he hooked the Destructive’s hooker, shuckles my hero, which essentially did nothing for reasons I will explain later, and after that he denied THE IRON KENYAN a Night 2 inspect, but TIK/DLE were given the Knife on Night 1, which made Da Letter El unhookable. As far as I know, he did not use his safe claim, which is one of the most important things for a mafia member to do. He also never ended up using his Filibuster, although there weren’t many opportunities. Overall just not enough effort to break through the strong village.
The Role: The Corrupt were supposed to have more control over items than the Destructive. A nightly thief who also held a vote-influencing item
supported the Corrupt's overall goal of controlling the lynch. However, since most items in the game were weak, this role was also somewhat weak.
The Player: On Night 0, Millon stole from hailflameblast to try to get any items that had been passed to him (he was a bit confused about priorities apparently), however he instead ended up with the Sandbag (HD), unwittingly ruining hailflameblast's plan to use HD as a pseudo-inspect. However, when he stole the Sandbag he prevented himself from passing the Collateralized Debt Obligation, and kept him from stopping his teammate UncleSam from being lynched the next day (although he didn't vote anyway). The next night he was effectively hooked from stealing, so he simply attempted to pass HD off to vonFiedler. Since HD was killed that night, he was finally able to pass off the Collateralized Debt Obligation to De Letter El on Day 2. At some point Millon claimed to Da Letter El as thief, and since it was unlikely the village had two thieves, either hailflameblast or Millon was lying. Ultimately it was hailflameblast that was killed first, which flipped his card and essentially sealed Millon's fate. Millon De Floss was hooked on the night that darkamber8828 was subbed in, and was lynched the next day. Other than his lucky Sandbag snag, there is very little to say about Millon De Floss/ darkamber8828 in this game. Millon didn't even use his safe claim and, as far as I know, Millon simply took orders until his death. It is unfortunate that darkamber8828 was subbed in on the day that they were lynched, but that's mafia.
The Role: The Destructive had one kind of inspector and the Corrupt had another. The item Tiger Penis was mostly added just for lols, but also increased the number of (somewhat) useful items in the game. If Tiger Woods had been able to obtain this item, he would have been able to use his power twice a night.
The Player: UncleSam was the de facto leader of not only the Corrupt, but also the mastermind behind the joint efforts between the two mafias. He ability-checked zorbees on Night 0, which ultimately lead to zorbees' death the next night. He got into contact with Johann early before he was lynched, and it allowed for the cooperation between the two mafias that came to follow. Due to an incorrect ruling about deadtalking, he was allowed to work with his Corrupt teammates after his death for a while until the ruling was overturned. It was unfortunate that he was THE IRON KENYAN's first inspection target, and he probably would have liked to not have been mafia, but he was easily the best player either mafia had this game. When he found out that he couldn't talk to his teammates, though, he started flaming the hosts, telling us to change the deadtalking rules. This got him banned from #candle, ironically enough, on the fourth of July.
The Role: With the exceptions of killing and inspecting, Tabuu and Cyrus had different abilities they could buy. I did this so there would be more variety in what the mafia factions could do. Overall, Cyrus's abilities were more defensive than Tabuu's, fitting into the plan of having the Corrupt be slightly more defensive that the Destructive.
The Player: As was mentioned above, vonFiedler cooperated on the first two nights as his partner defected. BlackHatGuy's idleness cost vonFiedler here, as it kept his team from using an extra kill for quite a while. Interestingly enough, he was the one that was sent for all but one kill his team made, and they made some decent targets. On Night 2 he was sent to kill FreakOfNature the item guard, which freed up their thief to steal a bit more safely (although Millon De Floss/ darkamber8828 was killed the next day). The Night 3 kill was on Pidge, which ate up his Circle of Ice and allowed the village to lynch him down the line in the endgame. Finally, vonFiedler targetted Itchni on Night 5 (Who was certainly one of the best targets left in the nearly all-vanilla village), but was killed by Pidge before priority got to his kill. vonFiedler did end up claiming to Da Letter El, but he claimed with the flavor of his partnership rather than the flavor of the zorbees / Pidge partnership, which overall just made him look suspicious. He was lucky that Da Letter El faltered a bit and didn't recognize this. Overall vonFiedler didn't end up doing much this game, but through no fault of his own. He was screwed over by BlackHatGuy and didn't have enough points to make an impact until too late.
The Stranded
The Stranded started off with a little bit of a struggle for leadership that developed on Day 1 and ended on Day 2, but after that small struggle the village became extremely unified behind Da Letter El. While the Stranded was mostly filled with essentially vanilla villagers and had only a few power roles, it was able to stay in the game through pure numbers. Da Letter El became the most powerful man in the game with all of the items and claims that he ended up with, and as a result he was able to play a stellar game that put the village into a dominating position that the weak mafias couldn't defend themselves against. Ultimately a lot of things that could have wrong did not go wrong, and that allowed the village to have a fairly easy time of consolidating even with all of the misinformation that existed in the beginning. The lynch of hailflameblast allowed the village to figure out that some of the information they had was false, and really set them straight for the remainder of the game. After the death of Da Letter El and then StevenSnype, the village became a bit more confused and weak without the power roles and spreadsheet, but they still had the target list and a huge numbers advantage, so winning at that point was academic. The Stranded managed to keep themselves together just long enough to pull out the win.
The Role: In retrospect, this role wasn't very well made. It required little involvement from the player until late game, and then could potentially become broken. When I made it I just wanted to see how such a unique item as the Gray Goo would be used.
Player Assignment: ABT620 doesn't have very much mafia experience, so I gave him one of the less important roles. New players often idle, so I gave ABT620 a role that would probably idle most of the time anyway.
The Player: There were many ways that the Goos could be used, and ABT620 decided to simply sit on them until he could amass a huge amount of negative votes for the endgame. He idled nearly every night, except he did give 1 of his Gray Goos to Da Letter El to prove his claim. He ended up surviving until the endgame and had 60 Goos by the time the game was over, which was worth -6.5 votes! He would have had enough for -14 by the next day, so it is unfortunate the game didn’t last a little longer for some seriously ridiculous vote totals.
The Role: Just like any other village, the Stranded needed a hooker. Nothing remarkable here.
Player Assignment: I knew StevenSnype had played mafia before and was active, so I gave him a fairly important role. I also wanted to make the hooker someone who wouldn't be name-targeted.
The Player: On Night 0, StevenSnype hooked the idling BlackHatGuy. He was then one of the many people that targeted hailflameblast on Night 1. After these unfortunate targets, his picks became a lot better. He hooked Millon de Floss / darkamber8828 the night before they were lynched, potentially stopping an important item from being stolen. On Night 3 he once again hooked the player that would be lynched the next day: BunnyMaster. On Night 4 he hooked Pidge, which accomplished nothing because it was an even Night and Pidge was idling. At this point in the game Da Letter El had entrusted him and only him with sheet access, and wanted StevenSnype to lead in the event of his death, and StevenSnype did just that when DLE died at the end of Day 5. Unfortunately Pidge killed him the next night as he was hooking BlackHatGuy again. BlackHatGuy had targeted Fangren for a kill that night, so it ended up saving Fangren’s life. Overall he did a very good job for his first mafia, making very few if any of the serious mistakes that newer players are prone to, although he was essentially just following orders for all but 2 nights.
The Role: The Vaccine was a way to counteract the potentially broken Super-STD, and would have potentially been useful to any team except the Destructive. Other than that, this was just a standard bodyguard role.
Player Assignment: Similarly to with StevenSnype, I didn't want an inexperienced, idling BG, but also didn't want such an important role to be killed Night 1.
The Player: It is unfortunate that the Vaccine never once interacted with Pocketman's STD, but it was mostly because shuckles my hero only infected one person (Raverist). On Night 0 theangryscientist immunized himself, and his targets after that were zorbees, Da Letter El, and Fangren on Nights 1, 2, and 3 respectively. These were good selections, although it ultimately wasn't needed. As far as his protection targets went, he just protected THE IRON KENYAN / Da Letter El until his death on Night 3. Another action of note regarding theangryscientist was that FreakOfNature gave him the CursedRuby on Night 0, which kept him from speaking in the main thread. He then passed it off to hailflameblast on the night before he was lynched, which made him unable to defend himself in the main thread and contributed to his demise. There really isn't much to say about theangryscientist's performance. Bodyguard is a fairly easy role when the inspector claims and you die before he does, but theangryscientist did a good job.
The Role: This role was designed to cause at least one mislynch. It was made to draw suspicion to its owner, especially one who acts suspiciously as reliably as Raverist does. This role was important in giving the village misinformation, but ironically ended up misinforming the mafia most of all.
Player Assignment: Raverist is very good at acting suspiciously when he's a villager (see Golden Sun Mafia), and a suspiciously behaving player who claims miller and gives false results is almost guaranteed to be lynched.
The Player: Raverist started the game off on Night 0 by name-checking hailflameblast, the leader that had stepped up, which of course screwed him over when his claim didn't match the name check, and ultimately this debacle was one of the major factors that kept hailflameblast from leading. There was too much mystery behind him because of all of the misinformation roles. Raverist idled on Nights 1 and 2, and I asssume it was because he already had a suspicion that his role was a fake. It worked out just fine though, because he was hooked on the first Night (infecting him) and hailflameblast was lynched by the time the second Night rolled around, which proved he had a troll role beyond a shadow of doubt. Raverist got the Collateralized Debt Obligation for Day 3, but there were enough votes on darkamber8828 to nullify his loss of voting rights. He actually kept the item for a bit before giving it away to BlackHatGuy after Da Letter El recognized it as the source of the vote discrepancy. Raverist then inexplicably checked Pidge on Night 3, and then idled after that until his death on Night 5. It was fortunate for Raverist that his fake role was discovered early, or else it might have implicated even more people wrongfully. Overall he played an okay game despite the hailflameblast incident.
The Role: I didn't want the village to be too powerful, so I gave it a marginally useful information role.
Player Assignment: Acklow was another player I didn't know much about. I didn't want to give him too powerful a role, but I wanted him to still be involved in the game.
The Player: Obviously Acklow was forced to idle for the first two nights because no villager had died yet. His targets starting Night 3 were, in order, zorbees, GTS, KnightoftheWind, Da Letter El, and StevenSnype. Other than finding out that there was definitely a killing neutral, his channeling wasn't of vital importance, but he did a good job nonetheless, and he survived all the way to endgame.
The Role: Standard inspector. This role PM was the shortest in the game, which ended up causing some controversy on Day 1 as to whether it was real or not.
Player Assignment: When I assigned roles, it was important for the inspector to be an experienced player. Da Letter El was good player to sub in for THE IRON KENYAN since they have similar amounts of experience.
The Player: TIK made a smart move on Night 0 when he targetted UncleSam. UncleSam, being the good player he is, could either be an excellent ally or TIK's worst enemy. Unfortunately for both of them, UncleSam was the Corrupt leader, which presented a strong Day 1 lynch. TIK public-claimed and asked for bodyguard protection, which set up Da Letter El when TIK was forced to exit the game. Da Letter El played better than any other player in the game, although he was certainly given more opportunity to do so since he ended up getting a huge number of items from villagers attempting to prove their claim. TIK was hooked by KnightoftheWind on the night that DLE took over, but he also got some nice items: the hook-protecting Knife from Itchni, and the killer Glasses from Blue Tornado. At the same time, Johann sent a paranoia message to TIK that implicated hailflameblast (another nail in his coffin). Da Letter El started the game off on the wrong foot, with a mislynch on hailflameblast and the gift of the Collateralized Debt Obligation from Millon De Floss, which he re-gifted to Raverist. With all of the misinformation thrown on hailflameblast he was the logical lynch target between HFB and Millon (who had kept a relatively low profile), so it is tough to blame DLE for that call. The only good thing to happen on Day 2 was the he got the Bible from TPM, which gave him immunity to Pidge's kills. With his new-found hook protection, Da Letter El was able to inspect the suspicious shuckles my hero (who had been leaking information to him and pretending to NOT be mafia) through both mafia hookers (including shuckles himself), and gave him his burn target for Day 3.After the mislynch of hailflameblast, he simply ignored the paranoia message implicating Raverist, and proceeded with the lynching of darkamber8828 (Millon's replacement) as expected. Another eventful night for Da Letter El ended up with his inspect being redirected by Pidge from Fangren to HD. He got poisoned by shuckles my hero's Suspicious Brown Lump, got a paranoia message about Game Freak201, and was also given the fake "wolf-skin cloak" item from BunnyMaster, who was also his lynch target that day. Another night brought him the pre-requisite paranoia message (this time about Itchni), a Gray Goo from ABT620, and TPM's role PM. By this time DLE had played Itchni and StevenSnype against each other to see what information he could learn. After determining that StevenSnype was trustworthy, he fortuitously gave him access to the spreadsheet and gave Itchni the threat list to ensure that StevenSnype carried out the orders. After running another successful lynch on Johann, Da Letter El died from the noxious fumes of the Suspicious Brown Lump. As I said before, Da Letter El played better than any player in the game, and was the main reason that the village was as successful as they were. TIK didn't get much time to show his stuff, but he played very well on the first Night/Day cycle and I assume he would have been a very good leader should he have stayed in the game.
The Role: The Metal Fan was supposed to be between Pidge and the mafia Prisoner's Dilemma players in power. I wanted to see how readily a villager would cooperate with a likely wolf, and whether the villager would think it more important to gain points or keep points away from the Metal Fan's suspicious partner.
Player Assignment: Since having the Metal Fan role would involve managing resources effectively and negotiating with a non-aligned player, it was very important that this role was assigned to a good player. zorbees had played well in previous games, so I gave him this role.
The Player: zorbees got into contact with Pidge early so that they could double-cooperate for the first 2 nights. He was killed by the mafia early so it is difficult to say how this would have gone. zorbees did a good job of getting into contact with his partner, however, zorbees's role PM implied that his partner was the wolf. This made cooperating very risky, so perhaps he was being a bit naive. Whatever the case may be, it would have been interesting to see how this developed, so it is unfortunate that he died so early.
The Role: This is the role that I originally envisioned as the village leader. Fox was able to move around items with his stealing ability, which would have been useful to a village leader since most items in the game were voting-related. Fox was also automatically cleaned by the Sandbag, and could gain information on other users by passing the Sandbag to them and stealing it back.
Player Assignment: I assigned hailflameblast this role because I thought it was his time to lead a village. Having played in multiple games and designed two himself, I thought he would be able to effectively lead the village.
The Player: hailflameblast started the game very happy, as he had what he believed was the best role to lead with. He quickly formulated a plan to use HD as a pseudo-inspect as was intended, but when he stepped up to lead he ended up getting screwed over. On Night 0 he tried to steal from Itchni and attempted to pass the Sandbag to Acklow, but both actions failed. Not only was hailflameblast hooked that night, but the Sandbag kept him from stealing. Millon De Floss also stole HD from him, which ruined his ability to work with him. To make matters worse, the misinformation roles targeted him. Raverist false name-checked him and got something that didn't gel with his claim, which created a lot of confusion the next day. Johann began his paranoia messages with a message to UncleSam about hailflameblast, which became public knowledge before UncleSam died on Day 1. People were also suspicious of his claim that he knew a neutral. In fact, one of the major reasons that THE IRON KENYAN public claimed rather than simply giving his information to hailflameblast was because he was suspicious of him (and furthermore thought that he would not be a good leader). Things got worse for hailflameblast the next night, when he was simultaneously hooked (this time by the village hooker) and martyred (if the hook wasn't good enough), got the Cursed Ruby from theangryscientist, and once again the subject of Johann's paranoia message (this time to THE IRON KENYAN). He was lynched the next day, unable to post in the main thread to defend himself and the victim of his own ambition to lead. HFB might have done a good job of leading if not for 2 things. First of all, he was completely screwed in nearly every way imaginable on the first 2 nights. Secondly, he had a lot of other things going on in his life. He had his own mafia (Overkill 2) running at the time, so he might have been a bit of a distracted leader. Overall, HFB had endless plans but was never able to carry them out.
The Role: This role was another way in which I injected misinformation into the village.
Player Assignment: I gave Game Freak201 this role because I thought he would be easy to troll. In some previous games he had been trolled by the village leader, so I thought he would believe the results of his importance-checks.
The Player: While Raverist's false name-check and Johann's paranoia messages were discovered to be false early, no one ever seriously suspected that Game Freak201's importance check was a sham, but it was! There were various theories that evolved to explain the random results, and even Game Freak201 himself had some doubts (he mentioned coin-flipping in his Night 2 PM), but I believe that no one ever figured it out until maybe the last day when Pidge died. I used the random.org coin flipper to generate the results, with heads meaning "yes" and tails meaning "no." Quite a few times this check was used as a partial justification for a lynch, but the true ramifications of the check are difficult to gauge. The fun started on Night 0 with a random check on StevenSnype which resulted in a "no." The ramifications of this result weren't known until later, but this started a trend of important roles randomly having "no" results that was continued with the "no" result on THE IRON KENYAN. He also got "no" results on BlackHatGuy and Johann on Nights 2 and 3, respectively. By this time Game Freak201 might have suspected that the results were always no or the opposite of the truth, as clearly an inspector should show up as important right? Interestingly enough this trend of "no" results was reversed on the next 3 nights, which yielded "yes" results on Pidge, Itchni, and TPM. When Johann died on D5, GF201 might have begun to suspect that his results were "insane." and this might have been further justified by the death of TPM, who had an unimportant role and got a "yes." However, Pidge's death clearly shook that belief, because he clearly had an important role. The amount that this check was used to justify lynches is not known to the hosts, so it would be interesting to talk about this in postgame. Overall Game Freak201 did a good job, and was always active during the lynches. It will be interesting to hear the theories that were formulated to explain his results. On another note, Game Freak201 was fortunate that GTS didn't resetter-check him, although it probably wouldn't have mattered that much considering the position the village was in.
The Role: This is a role that Anachronism envisioned leading before we nerfed it. If protected by the bodyguard, King Kong would have essentially allowed the village an extra hook. Anachronism and I downgraded this role from a nightly martyr so that the village wouldn't be overpowered.
Player Assignment: I gave Fangren this role because he had experience, but not a huge amount. While making the game, Anachronism and I had considered the possibility that this role could lead the village, and while Fangren would not be the obvious candidate for a village leader role he likely could have managed it well.
The Player: Despite living out the entire game, Fangren never really contributed much. He could not compete for Bodyguard protection with the inspector, so he ultimately was reduced to being a Martyr in the strictest sense of the word, since absorbing anything of value would likely result in his death. His first distraction was on hailflameblast, which didn't do anything because hailflameblast was already hooked. His N3 target was shuckles my hero, which would have been a brilliant play if his role worked on items (shuckles used the Suspicious Brown Lump on Da Letter El), but instead got him hooked without much else coming from it since Da Letter El was also being hooked by KnightoftheWind and had the knife anyway. He then idled for the rest of the game so overall didn't really accomplish more than a vanillager would have. However, this was not Fangren's fault. He did a pretty good job using the decent role that he was given, and if you survive until the endgame you can't be doing all too bad.
The Role: John Calvin was the weakest villager of all, with a mostly useless role and a mostly useless item. The village had a large numbers advantage but few power roles.
Player Assignment: In a lot of TPM's games he hasn't played particularly well, so I gave him one of the less important roles. Someone had to get this role, right?
The Player: Yeah...numbers guy. No night role, so not much to comment on here. He passed off the Bible to Da Letter El on Day 2 to prove his claim and give Da Letter El another layer of protection...and that is it! TPM did a pretty good job staying active during the lynches and talking with his team on IRC so he did as well as can be expected for someone with essentially a vanilla villager role. Like I said, if you survive until the endgame then you are doing something right.
The Role: This role wasn't very well-designed, actually. It was unlikely to have any impact, but by sheer luck could have taken out a mafia member. The most interesting part of the role was the Cursed Ruby, which was made in order to give the village a limited way to silence.
Player Assignment: As a totally new player, FreakOfNature was a good candidate for a role of little use. Giving a new player control over the Cursed Ruby could have been bad, but I thought the Cursed Ruby would be passed off quickly.
The Player: On Night 0 FreakOfNature decided to make the safe play and idle his item protection so he didn't inadvertently hit the village thief and/or protect a mafia member. If he had protected hailflameblast then this game might have turned out VERY differently, although the final outcome would have been the same. Keeping HD on HFB and killing Millon would have been a powerful way to start off the game, however the safe play was probably the right one to make. FreakOfNature did pass off his Cursed Ruby, however he gave it to the Bodyguard, which essentially did nothing but make it a bit harder to lynch UncleSam. He then attempted to lynch hailflameblast, so he was clearly very skeptical of HFB from the beginning. He then had a sudden reversal and tried to protect hailflameblast's items the next night when HFB no longer had any. He idled for the entirety of the next day/night cycle and was killed by the Corrupt on Night 2, so his only action this game that had any relevance was the passing of his item to a bad target. I think FreakOfNature seems like a pretty cool, competent guy but he really accomplished nothing in this game.
The Role: I wanted there to be a glasses item in the game, and wanted it to be powerful. I designed the glasses so that they would have the power to kill but could backfire, and so it would be held by more than one faction during the game. The holder of the glasses was supposed to think twice before using them. I gave this role a half vote to further reduce the power of village roles. Due to concerns that the glasses would get out of hand, we decided to have the glasses break after their second use.
Player Assignment: I gave Blue Tornado this role because I wanted the glasses to be controlled by an experienced player. Due to this role being a very safe claim that is easy to prove, I expected Piggy to be cleaned early on and likely become the assistant village leader.
The Player: Blue Tornado voted for UncleSam on Day 1, then gave his Glasses to THE IRON KENYAN on Night 1 because the village leader would be able to target more effectively. After giving away his item his role was reduced to being worse than even a vanilla villager. He just idled until his death by the Destructive on Night 2. Overall he did the best that his role afforded him.
The Role: This role was made to potentially cause division within the village. If Joey posted his role PM and tried to lead the village, he would have to negotiate with Mr. Resetti in order to not be killed. I designed this role so that even if Joey did not lead the village, the village leader would not know how much to trust Mr. Resetti. I made Mr. Resetti an announcer just because it's fun to have an announcer in the game.
Player Assignment: I gave this role to GTS because he was experienced. Mr. Resetti would have likely had to negotiate with the village leader over using his power, so I assigned this role to a player who could make deals well.
The Player: GTS wrote a little rant for Night 0, then randomly resetter-checked vonFiedler. After contributing to the lynch of UncleSam, he idled for Night 1 and Day 2. His Night 2 resetter-check was on Blue Tornado, but GTS died that night. Some interesting stuff could have happened if he had managed to find Game Freak201, but that was not the case, so GTS had a pretty boring role with which he was incapable of accomplishing anything of value. It is unfortunate that he was the only villager who didn't win.
The Role: This is another weak village role. The most interesting part of the role is the knife, which was made to counteract the large number of hooks in the game. This item was actually very important in the village's victory, since it absorbed many hooks targeted at THE IRON KENYAN / Da Letter El.
Player Assignment: At the beginning of the game, I didn't know much about Itchni. I knew he had been in at least one game before, but didn't know how well he did. That is why I chose him to have one of the mostly useless village roles.
The Player: Itchni tried pretty hard to successfully stalk but it just didn't work for him. Itchni gave away his Knife to THE IRON KENYAN on Night 1, and started following essentially random people. He followed Blue Tornado that same night, then Raverist, idled on Night 3, then followed Johann, idled again, followed BlackHatGuy, and finally Pidge. As you can see, his targets became more and more informed as the game went on, showing that he was likely getting some good information from someone. His false public claim of Elmer Fudd did a good job of trolling people but didn't get him targeted as he intended. Even if he was targeted it would be unlikely that he would have stalked the correct person. Itchni somehow ultimately became one of the people Da Letter El trusted the most, enough to give him the lynch target list before his death. Itchni played an interesting game, and clearly was doing something right to last so long, but his Elmer Fudd claim was not only ineffective but poorly-planned. It is difficult to tell how much of Itchni's game was the result of his connections to the village inner circle, but either way he started off with a poor performance that got better as time went on.
The Neutrals
The Role: The idea for this role came out of the "Character Items" classification in the Brawl Classic/All Star credits. A player who was also an item and had a shifting alliance would likely be passed between multiple different factions and have to choose which team to work with. This role also fit with the backstabbing motif well. The way I expected the Sandbag to be played was that Fox would pass him to players to check their alliances. If the Sandbag were passed to a mafia member, he could mole the mafia faction and then get stolen back. However, the Sandbag could choose to go over to the mafia and have his holder pass him to another member of the same faction during the day. This role is also the reason for my strict deadtalking rule. If the Sandbag were passed between multiple people, he would end up gaining large amounts of village information. Then if the Sandbag were passed to a mafia faction, kept his village information secret, and then were killed in crossfire before he could be stolen back, the Sandbag would have a lot of information he couldn't tell his teammates while strategizing with them. This would create a large incentive to secretly deadtalk.
Player Assignment: This was a role I made sure to give to a very good player. The Sandbag would have likely handled large amounts of information and would have had to mole the mafia factions, both of which require skill.
The Player: HD played very well before being killed on Night 1 by Pidge, who was apparently wary of the other neutral in the game. He help formulate a plan with hailflameblast to use HD as a win-condition inspection by passing him off and then stealing him the next day, however HD was stolen by Millon de Floss before even one pseudo-inspection could be completed, and was then killed the next night. It would have been interesting to see how HD’s role would have developed, so it is unfortunate that he died early. It is also unfortunate that HD was stolen away from the winning team to join the Corrupt, the first mafia faction to die, but that is mafia for you.
The Role: Out of all the roles in the game, I gave this role the most thought. The Lord of the Flies was the first role that I decided would be in the game, and was the obvious candidate for the wolf role. This role was designed to maximize backstabbing. By being a Prisoner's Dilemma player, he would be able to form a cooperation pact with the Metal Fan and help the village, but would have to betray the village in order to fulfill his win condition. But the wolf usually works with the mafia, so I gave the Lord of the Flies a way to backstab the mafia too. I gave the Lord of the Flies the cheapest Prisoner's Dilemma purchases in order to make him more powerful. I also didn't want my carefully-crafted wolf to be namekilled too early, so I gave him a one-time BPV item. If the Metal Fan had not died Night 1, this role could have become broken due to the large number of points the Lord of the Flies would have been able to get.
Player Assignment: I gave this role to the player I percieved to be the best player in the player list. Pidge has had a very large amount of mafia experience and has been wolf before. Because of the Circle of Ice, I was not worried about namekills, so I gave this role to the player best able to use it.
The Player: Pidge started the game off on Night 0 double-cooperating with his partner zorbees, presumably having already contacted him. For whatever reason, Pidge claimed harmless neutral to zorbees instead of using his safe-claim of mayor. When TIK came out in Day 1, Pidge did not claim right away, but did assist in the lynching of UncleSam. On Night 1, Pidge used his first kill on HD, because he had learned HD was a neutral and was afraid that HD might be able to discover him and/or was lying and had a killing neutral role as well. In any case, Pidge also cooperated, which meant that both zorbees and Pidge had 6 points. Unfortunately, zorbees was killed by the mafia that same night, which meant that Pidge was only capable of getting 1 point a night for the rest of the game unless he found and killed some of the mafia leaders. He once again participated in the lynch on Day 2, this time on hailflameblast. He predictably idled on Night 2, now at 7 points, and lynched darkamber8828 the following day. Night 3 brought his second kill, and this was used on KnightoftheWind in what I assume was an attempt to take out a mafia leader. He also used some points up to redirect Da Letter El's inspect (on Fangren) to HD so that he could allude detection for at least another night. This brought him to 8-3 = 5 points. He helped lynch BunnyMaster the next day, and around this time he finally claimed to Da Letter El as a harmless neutral with a global martyr on Night 7 that would make him win if he died as a result. I am not sure why he went with this role instead of something a little bit simpler, but Da Letter El clearly didn't suspect him enough to make him top lynch priority on his list, so it was good enough to keep him alive a bit longer. Pidge idled on Night 4, and helped lynch Johann on Day 5. On Night 5 he used a kill on StevenSnype to keep himself from being hooked later on, and also killed vonFiedler to get some extra points for killing a mafia leader while also removing a potential killer. In an attempt to balance the numbers a bit Pidge supported BlackHatGuy in the failed lynch of Acklow on Day 6, but they didn't buy it and Pidge became the last threat to the village standing. He used his points to get another kill on TPM, but it was too late. He was vastly outnumbered and couldn't sway the lynch on the next day. Pidge played an excellent game for someone that was crippled so early. He was also put into a very difficult position where he was unable to gain points unless he killed mafia leaders, but couldn't kill mafia leaders without creating an even greater imbalance than already existed. This predicament made it considerably easier for the village to win. Pidge was also hurt by Anachronism's public vote tallies, which were not originally included in the plans for the game and made Pidge's mayor claim less believable. If Pidge had killed villagers rather than mafiosos and neutrals then we might have had entirely different winners in this game. While Pidge did play pretty well, I think he could have done a better job by using his safe-claim and attempting to talk with the mafia to help coordinate kills while also moling them and figuring out who the leaders were.
Awards:
Best Stranded: Da Letter El
Best Destructive: Johann
Best Corrupt: UncleSam
Best Neutral: Pidge
Best Player: Da Letter El
Worst Player: shuckles my hero
Best New Player: BlackHatGuy
Best Luck: Da Letter El
Worst Luck: UncleSam/hailflameblast
Best Move: THE IRON KENYAN stepping up to lead the Day 1 lynch
Worst Move: shuckles my hero leaking his team to Da Letter El
Biggest Disappointment: HD and zorbees both dying Night 1
Most Important Item: The knife
Conclusion:
This game tried out a large number of new roles. In addition to the original idea of Prisoner's Dilemma players, there were the Gray Goo, the flavor faker, and the player item. Some of these roles turned out as expected and some did not; some worked well and some did not. The Prisoner's Dilemma roles were not as good as I had expected, and mostly idled until they had saved up enough points for kills. Of course, this might have turned out differently if zorbees had survived Night 1. The Gray Goo was the least successful new concept in the game, requiring little involvement on the player's part for most of the game and potentially becoming broken late in the game. The flavor faker, on the other hand, worked exactly as intended, spreading confusion among its targets until it was discovered. Watch out for this role in future games! The most interesting, but also mostly untested, new role ended up being the player item. Since this role was only in the game for a night and a day, I did not get a very good sense of how it would work, but saw that its use for moling was working as planned. It's likely that I'll make a game in the future that involves many player items.
Overall, Anachronism and I did a good job of balancing the game. Before he approved the game, Earthworm expressed concern that the village was too powerful due to its large numbers. If the mafia factions had crossfired more or two important village roles had not been killed Night 1, this might have been true. Also, Pidge would have had a much better chance of winning if zorbees had not been killed so early. But the Stranded was the faction that played the best, and well deserves its victory.
Not only is this the postgame, it is also my thousandth post here on Smogon. During the past year and five months I have been here I have greatly improved from my former inexperienced state, becoming better at Pokemon, mafia, and posting in general. Lord of the Flies Mafia has been the high point in my time at Smogon so far; I hope to play and host many more games in the future. I would like to thank everyone who has helped and encouraged me here on Smogon, especially my cohost Anachronism. I hope I will improve as much in my next thousand posts as I did in my first.
