Chicago Meetup: donezo. .

[Malakittens]

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[Thestatusquo]

You guys. The sadness. It's real.

[Chevre]

CHEVRE’S MEET NARRATIVE

(WARNING: I think there was a supreme lack of those cheesy travelogue assignments in my schooling so a lot of it sounds like a 3rd grader chronicling his trip to Disneyland)

Spoiler: spoiler

I arrived in Chicago at about 2:45 p.m. on Thursday. I was super hungry, so I went with Jimmy John’s because it was super familiar and super close to the train station. I then took an Uber to the AirBnB in West Town, and floated in and out of consciousness until Faraday and KittyMo arrived, because I was supposed to open the door for them, but I struggled with this (recurring theme). So after they arrived they were super hungry so they went to the grocery store, and I waited for them and the next batch of arrivals. Empire and Gamma arrived soon and Faraday and KittyMo returned; there were chips and beer.

Game: Mafia de Cuba

Winners: Everyone, at some point, I think
This was a super fun game once everyone fully understood the rules! We played like a million rounds. During this time the AIRBNB GHOST appeared and turned on the bathroom faucet and stuck chapstick in the Mafia de Cuba box. Also Mina arrived and we played more rounds of Mafia de Cuba.

Game: Mysterium

Winners: Gammagooey’s murderer
So Mysterium is like if Clue and Dixit had a magically amazing baby. Gamma was a ghost and gave us picture cards that acted like clues to determine each players suspect, location, and murder weapon. Notable events include: KittyMo narrowing her suspect options down to one because there were mixed signals about pipe organs and buttons and #SecondPantryGate. We lost unforch but it was super fun.
After that we all went to bed except KittyMo who had agreed to stay up for the arrival of BipolarChemist and Cheetory6. I heard this happen at some point in the morning but did not wake up. I also remember waking up in a panic and grabbing whoever’s keys were on the table, but soon realized that my keys were safe at home in Nebraska.

- - -

I woke up and had a nice chat with BPC and Cheetory about music I think? The previous night we had discovered that the AirBnB did not come stocked with toilet paper (but tons of BR ice cream), so BPC, Cheetory6, Empire, Mina and I went to the grocery store for those things. However, we thought that we may have some actual meals at the AirBnB . . . so we bought eight ears of corn, pasta, sauce, and bread.

Game Codenames

Winners: BipolarChemist, Cheetory6, Chevre, and Mina
We played a best-2-out-of-3 game of Codenames which is like the best game ever. Notable moments: Cheetory, Mina and I thought so hard about BPC’s clue of “weapon 3” that we chose “disease” over “hand”, and Faraday’s clue of “Mars” did not allow the other team to connect with “chocolate” as soon as they would’ve liked. After this, we headed to lunch at Runa for sushi, which was delicious! After this we headed to Llamarble’s for the day. To start we played three mafia games. I have no clue what the setup of Game 1 was.

Game 2: Fire and Ice Mafia

Winners: Faraday and Malakittens, Ice Mafia
Losers: Chevre and GreyICE, Fire Mafia, and town (Syryana as doctor)
Pretty fun! Pretty sure this was the game with #winkgate in which hiplop thought Faraday winked at Llamarble or something. Also Malakittens was lynched Day 1 but Faraday ended up taking it all the way for the win  After this game I was like “welp I don’t want to play Mafia anymore” so I tentatively volunteered to moderate a game . . .

Game 3: Masons and Mafia

Winners: Town (KittyMo, Axxle, and hiplop? Were Masons)
Losers: DeathNote, Iecerint, and Lady Lambdadelta as Mafia
So yeah, after two relatively calm games in which we sat in a composed semi-circle, it was decided that this game break up into little subgroups as people got up and talked to others, which made for a very intimidating moderation experience! But it was super fun and the Masons made the final day without ever claiming.
After this it started raining so we broke up into smaller games (well, I would say Eldritch Horror is probably on a grander scale, but smaller people-wise)

Game: Cosmic Encounter

Winner: Axxle (Ethic)
Losers: Chevre (Chosen), DeathNote (Tick-Tock), Faraday (Trader), GreyICE (Healer), hiplop (Vacuum), KittyMo (Locust)
I’d played this in Mish Mash but IRL I think it’s just a much more dynamic game. I was close to winning with Axxle but then he stopped all allies and prevented me from winning :/ GreyICE played an aggressive healer game and we were all very intimidated by Tick-Tock.
At this point everyone was getting hungry so I bandwagoned on to the Thai train with Axxle and DeathNote.

Game: Shadow Hunters 1

Winners: Shadows (Chevre, pablito)
Losers: Hunters (DeathNote, Faraday?), Neutrals (hiplop, KittyMo, GreyICE?)
This was the first time I had actually played the game. Super fun! Everyone ganged up on pablito early but Shadows were able to win.
Food arrived and then we delved into another game. Shea wanted a 3-1-3 split in roles . . .

Game: Shadow Hunters 2

Winners: NO ONE
Losers: Chevre, DeathNote, hiplop, KittyMo, Llamarble, pablito, Shea
Somehow there were 4 hunters in the mix . . .
Next we played a few bigger games of Mafia de Cuba which was super fun! I don’t think I won any though. After that, everyone went home! Everyone at the AirBnB was in bed by 12:30am. Meanwhile, other places were having mad adventures from what I heard.

- - -

BPC, Cheetory and I woke up early again. The Canadians decided they wanted a McDonald’s breakfast, so I walked with them there despite it being pretty cold :/ Breakfast was good though! I told BPC and Cheetory about library accreditation and they were amused. We Uber’d back to Llamarble’s to pick up BPC’s car and then back to the AirBnB, from which we headed to Loyola to spend the day at Shea’s! The trains were super packed because of a Cubs game. Upon arrival, we broke up again for lunch. Cheetory, Gamma, hiplop and I went to Potbelly where I had macaroni and cheese. We then went back to Shea’s and played ALL THE GAMES

Mafia Game 1

Winners: #CouchMasons and the rest of the town too
So me and Titus sat on the couch and ruled CouchMasons with an iron fist, bringing in trusty town members such as Cheetory, Shea, Iecerint, Mala, and KittyMo. Hiplop also claimed that his role card said “mason with the person to your right” which was pretty funny

Mafia Game 2

Winners: Scum (Cephrir, Chevre, hiplop, MathBlade)
Hiplop and Mathblade really played amazingly this game!
After this game I was tired out of Mafia so I went to play other games:

Game: Codenames

Winners: Chevre, Iecerint, & Mina
Second-Placers: Axxle?, dramonic, & Titus
This was my first time giving clues but I think I really lucked out! There was a bit of difficulty with linking “press” to “button” but we got there and then me and Iecerint went on a small Sugababes tangent. Afterward . . .

Game: Balderdash

Winner: Mina?
Losers: Axxle, BROseidon, Chevre, dramonic, Iecerint, SleepyKrew
Words: torup, nonillion, rattoon, beanantigh, degrugger, ?????
Mina didn’t technically win but we gave up on the game at a point that she was winning, so it’s counted I guess.
After this, everyone began to gather for a game of . . .

Game: 2 Rooms and a Boom

Winners: Red Team (Game 1), Blue Team, Romeo, Juliet, and Ahab? (Game 2)
I don’t know if I have a ton to say about these games because they were such a whirlwind and both times I lost as the spy lol. I know the second game I was just really sucked into LLD’s narrative even though I was pretty much playing against my wincon by doing so
After this we went to dinner at Home Run Inn which was delicious! But at around the same time the Survivor: 2016 cast and winner was revealed, which made for interesting dinner conversation amongst me, BROseidon, Cephrir, DeathNote, Gamma, hiplop, MathBlade, and SleepyKrew. BROseidon discussed a game with 20 Hidden Immunity Idols. Also Eurovision and RuPaul’s Drag Race were hot topics.
Heading back, SleepyKrew got stuck at the turnstile and only half the group waited for him, splitting us into two different train cars :O But we all got off at Loyola and BROseidon, Cheetory, Ether and I stopped at Dunkin Donuts which was pretty good!
Finally, back at Shea’s we waited for DeathNote’s Death Note game to start. I video chatted with my friends so they made sure I was still alive. MathBlade and I had a scintillating discussion about our favorite games.

Game: DEATH NOTE MAFIA

Winners: Strike Force (Town)!
Losers: Kira Faction (Cephrir, Empire, Gamma, Iecerint, Mala, MathBlade, Mina), Nachomamma8 (Third-Party)
Kudos to everyone who worked on this game all day, because even though I didn’t stay in long I thought it was a tremendous effort and I really enjoyed playing and watching and discussing in the “dead thread”  I’m sure DeathNote’s reveal of the setup will do more justice to this game than I ever could
Anyway following that game it was literally soooo late so we rode back with BPC to the AirBnB and fell asleep.

- - -

On Sunday I woke up and gathered my things and prepared for the escape room and my impending departure! It was so sad to say goodbye to everyone  Anyway, we travelled to Fox in a Box and BPC, Faraday, Gamma, KittyMo, and I did the Bank escape room. It was SOOOO MUCH FUN and so INTENSE and we won! We heard the other group doing theirs throughout but I never got the final results.
Afterward I said my final goodbyes and headed to the train station. Only minutes away from Chicago, I was very sad to have left a group of such amazing, cool, smart, fashionable, funny, fantastic people. I cannot wait to do this again in the future!

QUESTIONS

1. Who turned on the faucet in the bathroom on Thursday night?
   Who put the chapstick in the Mafia de Cuba box?
   What happened to the corn and the rest of the groceries?
   Did Cephrir, hito, Mala, Mina, & STD win their escape room?

[Thestatusquo]

I'm glad that my meet was Disneyland to you. Will read in snippets while ignoring work!

[BROseidon]

BROseidon discussed a game with 20 Hidden Immunity Idols.

Oh it gets worse.

[BROseidon]

I'm gonna make a game announcement soon, but let's just say.

20 idols wasn't enough

[Cephrir]

I could answer with a picture, but instead I'll just say heck yeah we killed it and it was super fun

[Chevre]

um yeah the one thing I did not do at this meet was take pictures? I have pictures of the AirBnB and that's it, lol.

[Thestatusquo]

I have a bunch I still need to post

[Cephrir]

Do that! I also totally neglected to take pictures!

[Titus]

Good. My face breaks cameras.

[Malakittens]

so I have half of my list of shout outs done, but i'm heading to bed because yaaay exam tonight. ^^

Hopefully I'll be able to finish it when I get home because I think posting it when it's not fully finished is silly lol

[Thestatusquo]

cross posted with face with a name.

Here are some meet photos.

Spoiler: BPC, Cephrir, STD and Sleepy play some love letter

Spoiler: Mina, LLD, Gamma, Cheet, Ether, iec, bro and two people I can't make out

Spoiler: Faraday, KittyMo, Hiplop, Chevre and bits of GreyIce and Deathnote

Spoiler: Deathnote thinks the meet is TOTALLY RAD

Spoiler: SK, Pie ceph empire mathblade titus, back of llamarbles head

Spoiler: Axxle, Faraday, Hito, KittyMo, Nacho, Chevre

[Iecerint]

I like how bro is holding the doomed kraken.

[Iecerint]

while playing lovecraft games

[Lady Lambdadelta]

pffffffttttttt

[Bellaphant]

i'm worried hippy and deathnote are estranged serial killer brothers....

[dramonic]

I believe those two you can't make out are me and Empire. I'm mostly obscured by BRO though.

[Axxle]

I think that's STD hiding behind mala

[BROseidon]

I like how bro is holding the doomed kraken.

Oh my god that is dank.

That made Friday almost worth it except not really

[hiplop]

i'm worried hippy and deathnote are estranged serial killer brothers....

we dont even look alike

[DeathNote]

It's all in the eyes.

Come hiplop, let us watch the world burn.

[Bellaphant]

I like how that's your issue, hippy...

[GreyICE]

The meet was seriously amazing. Not just the mafia, not just the other games, not even the Karaoke (okay the Karaoke was pretty amazing). Just hanging around with everyone and talking was really the highlight. So many great people, so many good times. I don't know that I've ever been in a more relaxed, chill, awesome group of people. It's what I always thought a party really should be, and it rolled for so long.

Definitely little post meet depression.

(also I was Shadow in Game 1 of shadow hunters, but the neutrals self-destructed so fast I never really did anything)

[DeathNote]

The DeathNote Mafia Game

For those who don't really know me, I am a designer at heart who likes to come up with new mechanics and power heavy roles. Late Friday night I decided I wanted to run a closed setup and will usually do this at meets, coming up with zany games that are larger but not overly complex. This time, I wanted to go all out and the ONLY reason this was even remotely successful was because of Jason (BPC). He decided he didn't really want to play and would rather co-mod thus we began a 7 hour long venture of balancing and creating this unique F2F game.

Spoiler: Setup

25 players 17 Town 7 Mafia 1 Third Party

Roles: Room 1 / Room 2
Aiber - Faraday / Higuchi - Syryana
Wedy - SleepyKrew / Rem - Gamma
Halle - KittyMo / Light - Mina
Sidoh - Cheetory / Teru - Iecerint
Steven - Pieguy / Takada - Empire
Kanzo Mogi - Mala / Soichiro - Chevre
Misa - Mathblade / Ide - Titus + Hydra (Sorry forgot his name)
Matsuda - Hiplop / Ukita - LLD
Hitoshi - Cephrir / Matt - GreyIce
L - SaveTheDragons / Roger - Axxle
Mello - Broseiden / Naomi - Llamarble
Watari - Dramonic / Stephen - Tammy/Pablito
NA / Ryuk - Nacho

Spoiler: Mechanics

This is the portion of the game that took the longest to work out. I had never designed a DeathNote theme'd game before and figured it was about time to fix that. But how do I make the game unique? What we decided on was the concept of everyone having their own personal notebook. They were smaller books but everything revolved around these books. Their roles were put in, they submitted night actions in them, they were able to pass notes to each other and some characters even had the ability to look or exchange with other players notebooks. The concept was strong but the execution was a little slower then I wanted. Even with two mods, we struggled to search through all the books and finding the results. I figured this would be the fastest way to resolve night actions but it turned out to take a little longer then I wanted.

The Mafia also had a type of Night chat were they all looked up at night and we showed them all any notes that were submitted by Mafia members. We were tired and forget to write the notes in Sharpie making them kind of hard to read at times Sorry about that. In addition, Mafia were suppose to have a 1 time factional kill at the start of night 3. We forgot to give it to them and I think they got it on night 5?

The book pages were as followed:
1.) Role PM (Players were instructed to rip them out and pocket them)
2.) Blank Buffer page
3.) DeathNote (if the players had a DeathNote, the instructions for it were listed here)
4.) Role Actions (All night actions were written here including DeathNote actions
5.) Everything beyond this point was used for notes and passing notes.

Spoiler: Roles PMs

VTs: These players had essentially just VT roles although VTs/Goons were the only ones who could actually pass notes to other players.
Halle/Steven/Soichiro/Ide/Ukita/Matt/Matt/Roger/Stephen/Hitoshi(Goon)/Takada(Goon)

Town Power Roles:

Aiber

- Could exchange his notebook with another player once per game.

Wedy

- Could prevent a player from passing or receiving notes (This would also prevent Mafia from joining in on the Night Chat)

Sidoh

- Unkilable ( the only real bastard role of the game. He was also told that he wanted to get a DeathNote but getting one would treestump the player, removing both the DeathNote and his vote from the game. This was put it as a sort of balance to the DeathNotes getting exchanged.)

Matsuda

- One-Shot Daykill. The day kill would reveal him as Matsuda but not reveal his alignment. (This was a countermeasure to Light)

L

- DeathNote Immune. Additionally, he had the ability to reveal himself as L to look at Notebooks from Deceased players. If he choose to do this, he would lose the DeathNote Immune ability.

Mello

- Hated Townie.

Watari

- Notebook Swapper. He could pick two people besides himself and swap their notebooks. Afterwards, I realized this role was pretty strong and should have added that he couldn't swap the same person more then once forcing him to pick new targets each time.

Naomi

- Tracker (Tracks everything, even note passing)

Higuchi

- Starts with a DeathNote and is compulsive so he is forced to use the DeathNote each night if he has it.

Mafia Power Roles:

Kanzo Mogi

- Starts with a DeathNote

Misa

- Shinigami Eyes: could target a player and learn if they have a DeathNote. FakeClaim was Near.

Rem

- Unkillable. If Misa ever died, Rem would die too.

Teru

- Should the Mafia team ever not possess a DeathNote, Teru was given a DeathNote that only allowed Daykills. The mechanics were that he was required to vote his target and then say "Delete". (I failed at catching this... go figure )

Light

- Immune to DeathNote. If L ever died, Light could reveal himself and become Unlynchable but would lose the immune to DeathNote ability.

Third Party:

Ryuk

- Unkillable. At the start of each Night phase, any DeathNotes that were in the "graveyard" were given to Ryuk. He was the only one capable of having multiple notebooks aside for L. He was not allowed to use the DeathNotes but he was allowed to give them to other players during the night phase.
His objective was to make sure both L and Light were dead at the end of the game.

Spoiler: GamePlay/ModNotes

The game did not go quite as smooth as I had hoped but people still enjoyed themselves from what I could tell so I guess thats good enough for me. There were some things that were beyond my control and a couple mistakes that were entirely on me. Overall, I do think the setup was fairly balanced so at least that made me happy.

Day 1/2 (Two rooms)

Room 1 destroyed the Mafia team which was unfortunate but every now and then that happens! Props to town for just being ballers. Dramonic had used the note swapping ability and a strong town block was formed with Hiplop/Skrew/Dromonic/Bros/Faraday? I wasn't in that room so I didn't get to witness the carnage. Ceph was eliminated day 1 and Mathblade day 2 causing Scum to lose 3 members before they merged into 1. Additionally, Mala didn't submit a kill for the first night possibly because she wasn't aware of who her teammates were or who was the best person to kill. It was up in the air. Faraday was the kill for night 2.

Room 2 was a little more hectic. LLD/GreyICE had a 1v1 situation causing GreyICE to go day 2. Chevre was a mutual lynch for Day 1. Syr kinda of saved the room a little by night killing Empire Day 1 so that scum would be put down to 3 members left by the time rooms combined. The real drawback of the room was that we lost Tammy partway through Day 1 which caused nacho to have to leave day 2. Tammy was replaced by Pablito but Nacho was forced to be Mod killed causing the Third Party to be eliminated.

At this point, I was kind of freaking out. Not only was 4 scum dead before day 3 but Ryuk was also mod killed. Ryuk was meant to stay in the game all the way til the end so losing that caused me to panic. The balance was definitely in town's favor at this point. Luckily, the remaining scum fought tooth and nail to make sure they stayed in it.

Day 3. I guess I was stressed out because the first Mod error happened here. Syryana submitted a DeathNote kill stating that Titus would die if LLD was ever voted. I remembered that and even wrote it down. Once that situation finally happened, I goofed and killed LLD as soon as she was voted causing me to Mod Kill Titus as well as she was already meant to die. It was a shitty situation but luckily it didn't hurt Mafia and just end the game. This made up for the lack of night 1 kill is what I kept telling myself.

There were a couple of mislynchs the next couple days and Syryana was revealed as the compulsive vig. His kill on Empire night 1 is probably what saved him from being voted once his deathnote was stolen by Bro. At this time, town also realized there was a conditional kill on Llamarable that he would die as soon as he was voted. In my head, I was thinking that Mafia still wasn't out of the game. There was a hated townie alive, a conditional death on Llamarble and Iec/Mina were not being suspected at all. Mala was doing a decent job of staying low and Pieguy was the mislynch instead.

That night, Mala kills Dramonic and the Mafia team use their factional kill on Dramonic as well. This was pretty depressing as it was a 1 shot kill and they didn't really notice Mala saying NO. Dramonic also had swapped Mala with Skrew causing both deathnotes to go into Town's hands. I kept shaking my head wondering why Cheetory wasn't getting swapped instead

Mala was an easy lynch but on the plus side, Iecerint got his daykilling deathnote now. The next day, I mess up and never hear him use the kill on L. I swear Jason and I were watching him like a hawk but we just never realized it. It was late, get off my back. It wouldn't have mattered anyways because L(STD) was still DeathNote immune. However, L did reveal himself that turn giving a narrow window that could have been used ( and supposedly was according to Iec... sorry buddy) The day ended with Llamarble dying due to the DeathNote on him and Pablito being lynched.

At this point, the game is pretty much over as there is a conditional vote on Iec for him to die once he votes and Mina being Unlynchable wouldn't save her with town having two deathnotes. Town lynch Mina and the game ends!

Congrats to Town who really did play a great game.

NOTE TO IMPROVE ON:

1.)Night was long. Night 1 especially after the rooms were not in sync due to replacements and some people using their one shot abilities. If I was to run another large game like this, I need to figure out a system to run through the actions faster. I thought we had something that was going to work but still it was just too much to look through everything.
2.) I knew putting conditional stuff was going to be hard to keep track of. I keep thinking from a forum perspective where I will get to see everything and make calm and collective decisions but when everyone is literally staring at you waiting for game info, I can make poor decisions that cause mod errors. I think as a Mod, you have to just say screw everyone's feelings and make the correct call instead of rushing.
3.) The game probably could have been divided into two phases. We could have done the first two days and then called it quits to finish the game the next day/afternoon. That would have helped with the time issue we seemed to have.
4.) Dramonic's role really was super strong. Probably could have tweaked it a little like I mentioned above. Might have helped but then again, mafia did a good job even after starting on the backfoot.

Thanks for all the critiques and compliments the game got from the players/spectators! It was a really cool game to see go into effect and Jason did a boss ass job of helping run/design/create/EVERYTHING.

I'll try to get something set up before hand for the next meet