Heroes Wanted! (Game Over)

[The Dream Weaver]

The

Aspiring Heroes

have achieved their Win Condition.

Ankamius, Ausuka, Cerberus v666, Drixx, Gamma Emerald, hebichan, Kokichi Oma, Myloninja13, Nosferatu, Nero Cain, Sakura Hana, Sando, Shiro, stungun0404, Theta Alpine, the worst, Toogeloo, and Toranaga have won the game.

Replacements

I would like to thank every player that signed up and played my game, even if it wasn't to completion. However, I'd also like to thank each of Ankamius, Ausuka, Brandi, Creature, MathBlade, Nero Cain, Nosferatu, stungun0404, Theta Alpine, and Toogeloo specifically for replacing in, no matter how brief. Many of them did not have to, and I appreciate them for helping me out when I asked them.

Setup

As explained in the Graveyard, the setup was never reviewed for balance. I specifically asked FakeGod to only help make sure it gave each side a fair chance of winning and that I was okay with massive swing. I did not care how well a poor town or poor scumteam fared in my setup. I do think it is probably slightly townsided, and that both sides have a chance to decimate the other side depending on both team composition and which Superpowers are revealed.

The main focus was around both a leader mechanic and an ability acquisition mechanic. The idea was that good play, from either side, would be rewarded. On the other hand, players who did not play well would struggle, especially in case of acquiring abilities and Night Actions. I did not mind that there was a possibility that one side could lose a huge advantage if the other side made a really good play. At the very least, it

should

promote good play from both sides throughout the game, although that point is arguable.

I feel like town players inherently had the advantage when it came to being elected Leader. But I feel like the position was incredibly difficult to play well. Not only did the player have to convince the other players to elect them, but they also had full control over who would get powers at night. If they had good reads and took the risk of giving out more powers, then town would be rewarded. If they had poor reads, however, then the scumteam could benefit and punish them. Town also had a huge advantage that the Leader, if a lynch was achieved, would be guaranteed to not only receive an ability, but survive through the night to use it.

The scumteam had a huge disadvantage when it came to becoming elected, and I think that's fair to say since they only got elected this game with outside influence. However, I thought it was slightly balanced back towards their favor by not publicly declaring the members of the Superhero Team. This would allow the scumteam a way to slip in Superpowers to their teammates should they get elected. I also felt that by publicly announcing who was Leader, the scumteam would also have the opportunity to play to this and either destroy their credibility or buddy them to gain their favor.

The Superhero Team size was a mixed bag. It was large enough that if town tried to use all the slots, a scum player was likely to slip into the group and gain a Superpower. The Leader always had the option of submitting a smaller Superhero Team or no one at all, but that reduced accountability and would require them to be trusted by the other members of town.

The failure to acquire Superpowers should a No Lynch be achieved was intentional. I didn't want town to be rewarded for going for a passive strategy. While I do like the idea of enticing the town to not No Lynch, I do have some mixed feelings on it as there were some situations where No Lynching was still beneficial for town (in lynching Petrified players specifically). I'm not sure if I would have preferred nullifying Superpowers entirely when a No Lynch is achieved, as that would definitely give the scumteam a free kill on town and is close to what I wanted initially (it was an idea I was toying around with in my original proposal to FakeGod, but that was a completely different setup).

The voting mechanic was supposed to favor the scumteam. If the town failed to coordinate their votes, the scumteam could try to take advantage of them by piling their votes onto one player and electing who they wanted to, which they did at least once. If the town did coordinate their votes, then the scumteam would not only have access to this information, but they could try to manipulate the town in electing who they wanted or killing off a candidate they did not want in a position of power (or killing off a competitor should one of them be in the running). The votes were also completely anonymous, so they never actually had to vote for who they said they would.

Superpowers were randomized. I didn't want to try to balance them when I knew players would find a way to mess it up. I also didn't like the idea that one side (mostly the Villains) could be punished if they failed to 'town it up' on a specific day or night phase and fail to grab a certain power when it was made available to them. On the flip side, this also meant that we had some abilities appear way more frequently than was probable (I'm looking at you Impenetrable Skin, although there were some others) whereas others, particularly investigative abilities (and strong ones), didn't show up at all. I still like the randomization aspect

for this game specifically

, although I probably wouldn't ever run another setup that was randomized like this in the future.

Neither side had any real power to begin with. Every player was essentially Vanilla, and the scumteam mostly only had abilities that would help them deal with the Superpowers and the voting mechanic. The scumteam had a Factional Kill, a Superpower Cop, and an Election Rigger. The Superpower Cop was mainly to help them keep up with all the Superpowers town was likely to acquire. However, this was made essentially useless to them as town was telling them all their abilities and basically giving them a roadmap of how to deal with them in the Night Phase (and this was something I had considered would probably happen when I decided to give it to them). The Election Rigger was mostly to help them should they have a huge problem with the election mechanic. They had the option of using it to force one of them into a Leadership position should they need it. Although, I mostly just thought they would try to use it to keep an problematic townie from getting elected. I don't mind the Superpower Cop, but I'm not happy with the Election Rigger. I definitely feel there was probably a better way to give them some help with that mechanic, such as increasing the number of Villains to 6 and making it a White Flag setup.

Overall, I still like that all the players had to

earn

their abilities, and that no one was inherently more or less important, or more or less powerful, just based on RNG.

Petrification, Spiritual Mediumship, and Other Superpowers

I liked the idea of both of these abilities, but I didn't like either of them in practice. Petrification is just an unfun mechanic. I did realize how awful it was sometime during Day 1, but I didn't really think it would become an issue since Superpowers could only be obtained if a lynch was achieved or if a player intentionally grabbed it. The Leader also did not have to give anyone else Superpowers. And it was probably for these reasons that I didn't think too much of it during the design process. Still, I'm not really that happy with its implementation even if it did end up playing a crucial role in this game.

I still like the idea of a player getting a chance to contribute to the game after death, but I don't really think it's necessary. At the very least, I would have changed it into a Day Ability or something that would allow it to activate immediately instead of the dead player having to wait a full Day/Night Phase to find out if they needed to continue following along or not.

There were some other abilities that, after some reflection, I believe this setup didn't really need. I always did like the idea of Phasing after seeing Desperado use Prism in Anything Goes, but I think having four redirecting roles are too many. I'd probably just choose one or two of Phasing, Hypnosis, or Power Echo and remove Siren's Call. I would definitely remove Shapeshifting, and probably Goo Generation since I don't think it would be needed if Shapeshifting wasn't there, and probably Healing Touch if I removed Petrification. I also don't really like Teleportation (which was mostly a semi-busdriver and I'm glad it never came up) and I think Power Sensing is either unnecessary or takes away from the scumteam's Superpower Cop.

Even though it was never meant to be taken seriously and it pales when compared to pretty much any other ability, I'm still perfectly okay with Enhanced Hearing.

Moderating

I believe I could have done a much better job moderating. I made a few mistakes, although most of them were small that were caught by either myself or another player almost immediately. Specifically, the worst of these were when I was going to put Sakura's username in Gray when she was petrified, which could have confused the players based on Goo Generation, and telling the scumteam a misleading investigative result, to which MathBlade recognized seemed incorrect immediately.

The most glaring mistake was at the beginning of the game when I decided to announce two abilities were provided by Alisae. Truthfully, Alisae did roll for these abilities, but I rolled the same exact ones as well. While I can say Alisae rolling for these abilities didn't directly have an impact on the game (it wouldn't have really mattered anyway since I randomly rolled for all of them), I don't think I should have ever announced this (even though it was mostly for flavor and fun) as many players came up to conclusions that I do think it adversely affected my game. This decision was entirely my own, and Alisae did not have any part of it (Ali was just a spectator and did not know what I was going to do).

As far as answering questions were concerned, the only thing I would do differently about that would have been to never answer questions publicly in the game thread in the first place. I stopped answering them in thread because some players rightfully complained that it was distracting and inflating the post count. I also did not like answering the same question more than once, and considering players stopped answering me redundant questions the instant I declared I would only answer questions through PM, I'm not sure how much of this was intentional by the players or not.

Regarding the complexity of the setup and answering questions, I don't regret my decision. It was declared in my ruleset that I wouldn't answer questions about the setup or Superpowers after a set period of time, so the onus was on players to take advantage of that. The decision was mainly to protect the scumteam so they wouldn't be confirmed scum in the event some players tried to catch them in a lie by bombarding me with questions (which some of you did anyway). Also, I felt that, for the most part, the players on both sides should have been able to understand the setup. Although I do think I could have done a much better job drafting the rules and Superpower descriptions, and I do wish I spent more time doing so.

Even then, I still answered questions about both Superpowers and the Setup throughout the game when I literally could have just pointed to my ruleset and not done so. If there was something about the Setup I felt should have been public knowledge, then I would clarify it to any player that asked me. I actually ended up answering many questions about the leader mechanic or votes long after Day 1 that I didn't have to do, mainly because I wanted players to understand how the game should have been played and I understand that some things just weren't clear. And most, if not all, of those questions were about things that I felt the players should already have known in order to play my setup. If a question involved anything regarding a Superpower that had just been revealed, I would answer the question, even if it involved Superpowers that had been revealed previously. So, depending on the question that was asked, it was possible for me to divulge information that you would not be able to obtain based on my rule. It was actually possible to circumvent my rule with a little bit of creativity, although from what I remember, it was mostly just MathBlade that took full advantage of this. I also answered questions mostly just based on Roleblockers, which didn't exist in my setup (you can argue that Freezing is technically a Roleblocker, which it is), that I really shouldn't have or didn't need to, but at that point I'd already answered a bunch of questions about previous Superpowers so why not? If a player asked me anything about a Superpower that I had rewritten, specifically Phasing, then I would always answer a question regarding it to prevent confusion, and I did. If a player asked me anything that involved an unrevealed Superpower, such as the possibility of a mechanic existing, I ignored the question. If someone asked me a question about a mechanic that didn't exist or wasn't specifically outlined in the rules, then I wouldn't answer the question (although no one did this). Also, I refused to answer any question that was about what the Villains did or did not have.

If I were to do it over again, I would have just made all the Superpowers public from the beginning, given you all the Action Resolution Chart, and ignored you all after Night 1.

Analysis

The beginning of the game was a real struggle for the scumteam. I admit that their team composition did not fare well in this setup since I feel that they did not get any strong, charismatic players. And from the onset, they didn't want to take advantage of town's lack of ability to discuss the game's first leader (except for mostly Human Sequencer). There was some fear for them that Superpowers could reveal who they voted for. I understand why Titus worried about such a possibility, and I couldn't tell them directly that Superpowers couldn't reveal their votes. However, that's not something I would ever have put in this setup and I feel like they should have had some clue based on the votes being Anonymous that this wouldn't happen (Human Sequencer did seem to understand this, but his team didn't really listen to him).

I thought Day 1 was a disaster for the scumteam. I feel that town came off very strongly right out of the gate. The scumteam, on the other hand, had inner friction in that 123456789 wanted to be bussed and the scumteam didn't want to make that sacrifice immediately. I think that either 123456789 should have conceded the point and tried to play the game (mostly this) or the scumteam should have just agreed to bus him and taken what towncred they could from his flip (also okay). What ended up happening were these weird interactions between the Villains where 123456789 strongarmed them into getting what he wanted, but no one from his team really benefited. Furthermore, Titus felt the need to shoot down Day 1's revealed Superpowers and pushed an awful plan that involved the town all going for Enhanced Hearing. Nancy also kind of got caught up in it, and I felt that hurt both of their credibility.

Regarding town on Day 1, I do think some players got drowned out or misunderstood. Mainly, Muffin understood that town should coordinate their Leader votes, but no one wanted to listen to his input. Human Sequencer was able to punish town for this by convincing his teammates to coordinate their votes onto Titus and keeping her alive for an extra day without using their Hacking Device.

I feel that Titus and the scumteam did a decent job of convincing the town that it was possible for her to have been manipulated into the Leader role. Town's best play at that point was to recognize she was scum and probably No Lynch, but she was able to get just enough trust from the town that she was able to give Math and Nancy Superpowers and help set them up for the long game. I feel that Math did a fairly decent job of taking advantage of Precognition and planning around it, although I do think Titus and Math both wasted a Day action when they both could have used Precognition immediately on the night they acquired it. I also feel like Nancy did a great job of digging herself out of her hole from Day 1 and she was set for a deep run into endgame.

I think the scumteam were probably on a clear trajectory to winning the game until Math got too caught up in the Self-Detonation plan. I do get that Goo Generation was a huge threat as an ability, but I feel as though he just tried to push Self-Detonation too hard. On the flipside, I do think it was great that town was able to pull themselves out of a plan that was sure to lead to their quick demise. Some town still ended up taking Self-Detonation, but I feel like the scumteam had lost a lot of their advantage and ended up going for a poor play on Night 5. This was further exacerbated by Nancy refusing to heal Sakura immediately, and when she finally did heal her, Sakura ended up detonating on Nancy and taking out, in my opinion, the player that had the best chance of winning the game for them. This was a huge turnaround for the town, and I think had the villains all just made it through the day, they would probably have petrified and strongman-killed their way to a victory.

The Hacking Device also played a crucial role on Night 5 and Day 6. I feel like it should have been apparent, should town believe that Ausuka voted Nero (she didn't) and understood Math couldn't vote for himself, that there was likely some sort of interference at play. I do understand that town could believe all three remaining Villains piled onto Math and set him up, but at that point, I feel that it's more about everyone's reads on Math and Tor/Gamma specifically rather than whether they can figure out if there was interference or not, and they were able to deduce that there was interference on the following day.

I'm not sure what Creature could have done differently to win the end game. He did what he needed to do to mislynch a townie in 4-player Lylo, but town did a good job of taking advantage of Freezing when it came up. I do believe Creature made a mistake on Night 7 based on the information he knew, and had everyone acquired an ability like they planned, he would have been blocked anyway. To me, he should have not blocked and tried to kill, as this would have allowed him to avoid a circular roleblock. It didn't really matter as the worst never acquired a Superpower, which confirmed Sando as town to him should the game reach a Day 8. I feel as though the scumteam just had very poor luck that Freezing became one of the revealed abilities for Day 7.

Overall, I feel that there were some players that were playing well, but they were drowned out or their reads took a massive swing for the worse as the game went on (which may have been due to the game's massive apathy-inducing game length). I do feel that both sides made some really good plays, but there were also some mistakes made by both sides that could have cost them the game.

links

Mod PT

Shiro and Cerberus' Neighborhood
Aspiring Villains PT
League of Alisae
Graveyard

Ankamius' PT
Gamma Emerald's PT
MathBlade's PT
zMuffinMan's PT

I will release the Scum PT within the next 48 hours unless one of the Villains objects. For individually requested PT's, please let me know if you want yours to be released.

[Nero Cain]

Solid job Worst and Sando.

[Sando]

If I were to do it over again, I would have just made all the Superpowers public from the beginning, given you all the Action Resolution Chart, and ignored you all after Night 1.

Hnnng yeah, I think this would've been a great thing to do, even have a pre-game where we could ask questions, maybe even do that before sides were rolled.

Yeah in case it wasn't obvious (it was to mod when I suggested just handing me the game ) I never saw the no-lynch = no-powers, doing that with Titus would've been pretty damn interesting, and probably was the correct call D6 with Math.

In regards to the vote-rigging, I never answered Tor, but as the primary person there: Given a choice between a hidden ability of leadership choosing that there's literally no way for town to check ever, and a hidden ability to mess with abilities that town could theoretically check with precog...I thought scum would be more likely to get the ability to do something town could "catch" them doing.

Awesomely modded btw, thanks!

[Sando]

I'm not sure what Creature could have done differently to win the end game. He did what he needed to do to mislynch a townie in 4-player Lylo, but town did a good job of taking advantage of Freezing when it came up. I do believe Creature made a mistake on Night 7 based on the information he knew, and had everyone acquired an ability like they planned, he would have been blocked anyway.

In the 3-way, nothing, Creature played super well all game.

I think the "mistake" was his directing me onto himself. Easy to say in hindsight, but I think me and duckling were equally likely to say "fuck you, Ima freeze who I wanna freeze" and hand him the game. Also Drixx was never gonna not give me powers imo, but duckling not getting powers was a decent chance. Again, easy to say in hindsight, but me and Drixx were literally hand in hand D6.

Honestly Nos' last posts were what eventually swayed me, suspected Creature and locktowned me. He was an odd bomb target from Math I felt.

[Frozen Angel]

I'm sorry town that I had to replace myself out midgame like that when I had perfect reads.

I had to speak with someone in this game and I didn't want to do it publicly. I apologize for the whole thing.

I was right about nancy. And then I realized math is scum a bit too late.

[Frozen Angel]

Also thanks for trusting me with leadership for multiple days.

[Ausuka]

The

Aspiring Heroes

have achieved their Win Condition.

Ankamius, Ausuka, Cerberus v666, Drixx, Gamma Emerald, hebichan, Kokichi Oma, Myloninja13, Nosferatu, Nero Cain, Sakura Hana, Sando, Shiro, stungun0404, Theta Alpine, the worst, Toogeloo, and Toranaga have won the game.

Replacements

I would like to thank every player that signed up and played my game, even if it wasn't to completion. However, I'd also like to thank each of Ankamius, Ausuka, Brandi, Creature, MathBlade, Nero Cain, Nosferatu, stungun0404, Theta Alpine, and Toogeloo specifically for replacing in, no matter how brief. Many of them did not have to, and I appreciate them for helping me out when I asked them.

Setup

As explained in the Graveyard, the setup was never reviewed for balance. I specifically asked FakeGod to only help make sure it gave each side a fair chance of winning and that I was okay with massive swing. I did not care how well a poor town or poor scumteam fared in my setup. I do think it is probably slightly townsided, and that both sides have a chance to decimate the other side depending on both team composition and which Superpowers are revealed.

The main focus was around both a leader mechanic and an ability acquisition mechanic. The idea was that good play, from either side, would be rewarded. On the other hand, players who did not play well would struggle, especially in case of acquiring abilities and Night Actions. I did not mind that there was a possibility that one side could lose a huge advantage if the other side made a really good play. At the very least, it

should

promote good play from both sides throughout the game, although that point is arguable.

I feel like town players inherently had the advantage when it came to being elected Leader. But I feel like the position was incredibly difficult to play well. Not only did the player have to convince the other players to elect them, but they also had full control over who would get powers at night. If they had good reads and took the risk of giving out more powers, then town would be rewarded. If they had poor reads, however, then the scumteam could benefit and punish them. Town also had a huge advantage that the Leader, if a lynch was achieved, would be guaranteed to not only receive an ability, but survive through the night to use it.

The scumteam had a huge disadvantage when it came to becoming elected, and I think that's fair to say since they only got elected this game with outside influence. However, I thought it was slightly balanced back towards their favor by not publicly declaring the members of the Superhero Team. This would allow the scumteam a way to slip in Superpowers to their teammates should they get elected. I also felt that by publicly announcing who was Leader, the scumteam would also have the opportunity to play to this and either destroy their credibility or buddy them to gain their favor.

The Superhero Team size was a mixed bag. It was large enough that if town tried to use all the slots, a scum player was likely to slip into the group and gain a Superpower. The Leader always had the option of submitting a smaller Superhero Team or no one at all, but that reduced accountability and would require them to be trusted by the other members of town.

The failure to acquire Superpowers should a No Lynch be achieved was intentional. I didn't want town to be rewarded for going for a passive strategy. While I do like the idea of enticing the town to not No Lynch, I do have some mixed feelings on it as there were some situations where No Lynching was still beneficial for town (in lynching Petrified players specifically). I'm not sure if I would have preferred nullifying Superpowers entirely when a No Lynch is achieved, as that would definitely give the scumteam a free kill on town and is close to what I wanted initially (it was an idea I was toying around with in my original proposal to FakeGod, but that was a completely different setup).

The voting mechanic was supposed to favor the scumteam. If the town failed to coordinate their votes, the scumteam could try to take advantage of them by piling their votes onto one player and electing who they wanted to, which they did at least once. If the town did coordinate their votes, then the scumteam would not only have access to this information, but they could try to manipulate the town in electing who they wanted or killing off a candidate they did not want in a position of power (or killing off a competitor should one of them be in the running). The votes were also completely anonymous, so they never actually had to vote for who they said they would.

Superpowers were randomized. I didn't want to try to balance them when I knew players would find a way to mess it up. I also didn't like the idea that one side (mostly the Villains) could be punished if they failed to 'town it up' on a specific day or night phase and fail to grab a certain power when it was made available to them. On the flip side, this also meant that we had some abilities appear way more frequently than was probable (I'm looking at you Impenetrable Skin, although there were some others) whereas others, particularly investigative abilities (and strong ones), didn't show up at all. I still like the randomization aspect

for this game specifically

, although I probably wouldn't ever run another setup that was randomized like this in the future.

Neither side had any real power to begin with. Every player was essentially Vanilla, and the scumteam mostly only had abilities that would help them deal with the Superpowers and the voting mechanic. The scumteam had a Factional Kill, a Superpower Cop, and an Election Rigger. The Superpower Cop was mainly to help them keep up with all the Superpowers town was likely to acquire. However, this was made essentially useless to them as town was telling them all their abilities and basically giving them a roadmap of how to deal with them in the Night Phase (and this was something I had considered would probably happen when I decided to give it to them). The Election Rigger was mostly to help them should they have a huge problem with the election mechanic. They had the option of using it to force one of them into a Leadership position should they need it. Although, I mostly just thought they would try to use it to keep an problematic townie from getting elected. I don't mind the Superpower Cop, but I'm not happy with the Election Rigger. I definitely feel there was probably a better way to give them some help with that mechanic, such as increasing the number of Villains to 6 and making it a White Flag setup.

Overall, I still like that all the players had to

earn

their abilities, and that no one was inherently more or less important, or more or less powerful, just based on RNG.

Petrification, Spiritual Mediumship, and Other Superpowers

I liked the idea of both of these abilities, but I didn't like either of them in practice. Petrification is just an unfun mechanic. I did realize how awful it was sometime during Day 1, but I didn't really think it would become an issue since Superpowers could only be obtained if a lynch was achieved or if a player intentionally grabbed it. The Leader also did not have to give anyone else Superpowers. And it was probably for these reasons that I didn't think too much of it during the design process. Still, I'm not really that happy with its implementation even if it did end up playing a crucial role in this game.

I still like the idea of a player getting a chance to contribute to the game after death, but I don't really think it's necessary. At the very least, I would have changed it into a Day Ability or something that would allow it to activate immediately instead of the dead player having to wait a full Day/Night Phase to find out if they needed to continue following along or not.

There were some other abilities that, after some reflection, I believe this setup didn't really need. I always did like the idea of Phasing after seeing Desperado use Prism in Anything Goes, but I think having four redirecting roles are too many. I'd probably just choose one or two of Phasing, Hypnosis, or Power Echo and remove Siren's Call. I would definitely remove Shapeshifting, and probably Goo Generation since I don't think it would be needed if Shapeshifting wasn't there, and probably Healing Touch if I removed Petrification. I also don't really like Teleportation (which was mostly a semi-busdriver and I'm glad it never came up) and I think Power Sensing is either unnecessary or takes away from the scumteam's Superpower Cop.

Even though it was never meant to be taken seriously and it pales when compared to pretty much any other ability, I'm still perfectly okay with Enhanced Hearing.

Moderating

I believe I could have done a much better job moderating. I made a few mistakes, although most of them were small that were caught by either myself or another player almost immediately. Specifically, the worst of these were when I was going to put Sakura's username in Gray when she was petrified, which could have confused the players based on Goo Generation, and telling the scumteam a misleading investigative result, to which MathBlade recognized seemed incorrect immediately.

The most glaring mistake was at the beginning of the game when I decided to announce two abilities were provided by Alisae. Truthfully, Alisae did roll for these abilities, but I rolled the same exact ones as well. While I can say Alisae rolling for these abilities didn't directly have an impact on the game (it wouldn't have really mattered anyway since I randomly rolled for all of them), I don't think I should have ever announced this (even though it was mostly for flavor and fun) as many players came up to conclusions that I do think it adversely affected my game. This decision was entirely my own, and Alisae did not have any part of it (Ali was just a spectator and did not know what I was going to do).

As far as answering questions were concerned, the only thing I would do differently about that would have been to never answer questions publicly in the game thread in the first place. I stopped answering them in thread because some players rightfully complained that it was distracting and inflating the post count. I also did not like answering the same question more than once, and considering players stopped answering me redundant questions the instant I declared I would only answer questions through PM, I'm not sure how much of this was intentional by the players or not.

Regarding the complexity of the setup and answering questions, I don't regret my decision. It was declared in my ruleset that I wouldn't answer questions about the setup or Superpowers after a set period of time, so the onus was on players to take advantage of that. The decision was mainly to protect the scumteam so they wouldn't be confirmed scum in the event some players tried to catch them in a lie by bombarding me with questions (which some of you did anyway). Also, I felt that, for the most part, the players on both sides should have been able to understand the setup. Although I do think I could have done a much better job drafting the rules and Superpower descriptions, and I do wish I spent more time doing so.

Even then, I still answered questions about both Superpowers and the Setup throughout the game when I literally could have just pointed to my ruleset and not done so. If there was something about the Setup I felt should have been public knowledge, then I would clarify it to any player that asked me. I actually ended up answering many questions about the leader mechanic or votes long after Day 1 that I didn't have to do, mainly because I wanted players to understand how the game should have been played and I understand that some things just weren't clear. And most, if not all, of those questions were about things that I felt the players should already have known in order to play my setup. If a question involved anything regarding a Superpower that had just been revealed, I would answer the question, even if it involved Superpowers that had been revealed previously. So, depending on the question that was asked, it was possible for me to divulge information that you would not be able to obtain based on my rule. It was actually possible to circumvent my rule with a little bit of creativity, although from what I remember, it was mostly just MathBlade that took full advantage of this. I also answered questions mostly just based on Roleblockers, which didn't exist in my setup (you can argue that Freezing is technically a Roleblocker, which it is), that I really shouldn't have or didn't need to, but at that point I'd already answered a bunch of questions about previous Superpowers so why not? If a player asked me anything about a Superpower that I had rewritten, specifically Phasing, then I would always answer a question regarding it to prevent confusion, and I did. If a player asked me anything that involved an unrevealed Superpower, such as the possibility of a mechanic existing, I ignored the question. If someone asked me a question about a mechanic that didn't exist or wasn't specifically outlined in the rules, then I wouldn't answer the question (although no one did this). Also, I refused to answer any question that was about what the Villains did or did not have.

If I were to do it over again, I would have just made all the Superpowers public from the beginning, given you all the Action Resolution Chart, and ignored you all after Night 1.

Analysis

The beginning of the game was a real struggle for the scumteam. I admit that their team composition did not fare well in this setup since I feel that they did not get any strong, charismatic players. And from the onset, they didn't want to take advantage of town's lack of ability to discuss the game's first leader (except for mostly Human Sequencer). There was some fear for them that Superpowers could reveal who they voted for. I understand why Titus worried about such a possibility, and I couldn't tell them directly that Superpowers couldn't reveal their votes. However, that's not something I would ever have put in this setup and I feel like they should have had some clue based on the votes being Anonymous that this wouldn't happen (Human Sequencer did seem to understand this, but his team didn't really listen to him).

I thought Day 1 was a disaster for the scumteam. I feel that town came off very strongly right out of the gate. The scumteam, on the other hand, had inner friction in that 123456789 wanted to be bussed and the scumteam didn't want to make that sacrifice immediately. I think that either 123456789 should have conceded the point and tried to play the game (mostly this) or the scumteam should have just agreed to bus him and taken what towncred they could from his flip (also okay). What ended up happening were these weird interactions between the Villains where 123456789 strongarmed them into getting what he wanted, but no one from his team really benefited. Furthermore, Titus felt the need to shoot down Day 1's revealed Superpowers and pushed an awful plan that involved the town all going for Enhanced Hearing. Nancy also kind of got caught up in it, and I felt that hurt both of their credibility.

Regarding town on Day 1, I do think some players got drowned out or misunderstood. Mainly, Muffin understood that town should coordinate their Leader votes, but no one wanted to listen to his input. Human Sequencer was able to punish town for this by convincing his teammates to coordinate their votes onto Titus and keeping her alive for an extra day without using their Hacking Device.

I feel that Titus and the scumteam did a decent job of convincing the town that it was possible for her to have been manipulated into the Leader role. Town's best play at that point was to recognize she was scum and probably No Lynch, but she was able to get just enough trust from the town that she was able to give Math and Nancy Superpowers and help set them up for the long game. I feel that Math did a fairly decent job of taking advantage of Precognition and planning around it, although I do think Titus and Math both wasted a Day action when they both could have used Precognition immediately on the night they acquired it. I also feel like Nancy did a great job of digging herself out of her hole from Day 1 and she was set for a deep run into endgame.

I think the scumteam were probably on a clear trajectory to winning the game until Math got too caught up in the Self-Detonation plan. I do get that Goo Generation was a huge threat as an ability, but I feel as though he just tried to push Self-Detonation too hard. On the flipside, I do think it was great that town was able to pull themselves out of a plan that was sure to lead to their quick demise. Some town still ended up taking Self-Detonation, but I feel like the scumteam had lost a lot of their advantage and ended up going for a poor play on Night 5. This was further exacerbated by Nancy refusing to heal Sakura immediately, and when she finally did heal her, Sakura ended up detonating on Nancy and taking out, in my opinion, the player that had the best chance of winning the game for them. This was a huge turnaround for the town, and I think had the villains all just made it through the day, they would probably have petrified and strongman-killed their way to a victory.

The Hacking Device also played a crucial role on Night 5 and Day 6. I feel like it should have been apparent, should town believe that Ausuka voted Nero (she didn't) and understood Math couldn't vote for himself, that there was likely some sort of interference at play. I do understand that town could believe all three remaining Villains piled onto Math and set him up, but at that point, I feel that it's more about everyone's reads on Math and Tor/Gamma specifically rather than whether they can figure out if there was interference or not, and they were able to deduce that there was interference on the following day.

I'm not sure what Creature could have done differently to win the end game. He did what he needed to do to mislynch a townie in 4-player Lylo, but town did a good job of taking advantage of Freezing when it came up. I do believe Creature made a mistake on Night 7 based on the information he knew, and had everyone acquired an ability like they planned, he would have been blocked anyway. To me, he should have not blocked and tried to kill, as this would have allowed him to avoid a circular roleblock. It didn't really matter as the worst never acquired a Superpower, which confirmed Sando as town to him should the game reach a Day 8. I feel as though the scumteam just had very poor luck that Freezing became one of the revealed abilities for Day 7.

Overall, I feel that there were some players that were playing well, but they were drowned out or their reads took a massive swing for the worse as the game went on (which may have been due to the game's massive apathy-inducing game length). I do feel that both sides made some really good plays, but there were also some mistakes made by both sides that could have cost them the game.

links

Mod PT

Shiro and Cerberus' Neighborhood
Aspiring Villains PT
League of Alisae
Graveyard

Ankamius' PT
Gamma Emerald's PT
MathBlade's PT
zMuffinMan's PT

I will release the Scum PT within the next 48 hours unless one of the Villains objects. For individually requested PT's, please let me know if you want yours to be released.

Thanks for modding Brian.

[The Dream Weaver]

I would also like to thank FakeGod for reviewing my setup and being my backup mod. If it weren't for him, all of you would probably have been playing in a dumpster fire of a setup.

[the worst]

Solid job Worst and Sando.

Thanks dude - right back at you.


Specific shout outs to Drixx and Sakura also for some absolutely magnificent endgame plays.

blowing up Nancy was top tier. and drixx I still don't know of you thought I was scum but taking the risk on conftowning Sando was outstanding.


also like everyone else
this was a hell of a ride tbh


@Brian I think this is like, some of the absolute highest tier modding I've ever seen and the setup is glorious. awesomely done.

[Ausuka]

sorry for quoting that I legitimately have no idea how it happened.

[Sando]

This was further exacerbated by Nancy refusing to heal Sakura immediately, and when she finally did heal her, Sakura ended up detonating on Nancy and taking out, in my opinion, the player that had the best chance of winning the game for them.

This was my favourite part of the game fo sho

[the worst]

those Q+ buttons are cheeky af

[Nosferatu]

thank god sando and tw pulled out of their tunnels

bless up for aussie camaraderie

[the worst]

This was further exacerbated by Nancy refusing to heal Sakura immediately, and when she finally did heal her, Sakura ended up detonating on Nancy and taking out, in my opinion, the player that had the best chance of winning the game for them.

This was my favourite part of the game fo sho

+1!!!!!

[Sando]

thank god sando and tw pulled out of their tunnels

bless up for aussie camaraderie

Ok second favourite part was going to bed last night knowing I was gonna vote Creature after that "ima vote in the morning" post and that duckling would be sweating it

[Nero Cain]

Nancy was p obv when she wouldn't heal right away. I'm mad @ myself for not pushing Nancy harder after d3 and I should have connected the dots with Math+Creature sooner. I could have done better but I don't feel like I was all that bad.

[Ankamius]

Good game, guys

Most of my thoughts are in my Private PT and in the Dead PT

[Ankamius]

other than nancy was obvscum d1 etc.

[Ankamius]

(that's not me bragging about a read, that's me hating the fact that I gave up a very strong correct scumread for shitty reasons)

[Drixx]

Thanks for modding. You are probably being too hard on yourself. I would be happy to give specific feedback if you want it, either privately or publicly.

@Math - At what point did you realize I was on to you?

@Sando - Great job obvtowning at the right time. I felt like I was taking a huge risk with the team selection but I also thought that if it worked and got us through the night, it should also leave enough info for the win. What in particular made you trust the worst in the end?

[Ankamius]

Mathblade, you specifically would probably get a lot of use out of reading my Private PT; you were very very scummy on day three and I outlined a good chunk of that there. I could have sworn you dropped the 6x healing touch idea in the thread towards the end of day three but I checked your entire ISO throughout that day 3-4 times and I can't find it so idk

Anyways, I'm sorry for my toxicity on day one, primarily towards Nancy, and my general attitude for a good chunk of the end of day two.

Now that I know roughly what was going on throughout that part of the game, I'm kind of mystified I was killed that fast; this game was another example of my general assessments about the gamestate being correct, but very incorrect conclusions, and therefore reads, from them.

I think I have a bit of a better idea of where my towngame's shortcomings are and a couple ideas on how to at least lessen them for the future.

[The Dream Weaver]

Thanks for modding. You are probably being too hard on yourself. I would be happy to give specific feedback if you want it, either privately or publicly.

I'm highly self-critical. Although not really in a self-deprecating way, I don't think.

I'd also appreciate any feedback. (:

[Frozen Angel]

I liked the game design and enjoyed your modding

Thanks for the game!

[Sando]

@Sando - Great job obvtowning at the right time. I felt like I was taking a huge risk with the team selection but I also thought that if it worked and got us through the night, it should also leave enough info for the win. What in particular made you trust the worst in the end?

Couple of things:

Nos died to Math, I'd have died if the worst was scum imo
Duckling wouldn't open D8 with a gambit like that, I held off cause it's the type of gambit I'd pull, but it's not him
Nos SRd Creature
Last time I offered the scum the game on the penultimate day they declined and I just gave it to them the next day, so I was mostly trying to talk myself down from "but I handed Creature the game yesterday and he didn't take it"
The worst had maintained his pro-town play since end of D3, and a few re-reads was convincing me that he was just hung up on me specifically

[Ankamius]

other than nancy was obvscum d1 etc.

(that's not me bragging about a read, that's me hating the fact that I gave up a very strong correct scumread for shitty reasons)

Just to point out,

Nancy actually played really damn well this game, having a playerlist of this caliber and not only surviving for most of the game but also being locked town for a good chunk of that survival time is a very impressive feat for sone's first ever scumgame. I'd be very proud of this game.