Overkill 1: Serenity/Firefly HoB PT

[Almost50]

JK Chickadee

Received and acknowledge.

[Tails]

Am I going to win? No. Am I going to make this interesting to force the other non-town to think on their feet? Heck yes!

[Tails]

Let's see how far I can go! Place your bets Dead thread!

[Almost50]

There are 10 Town slots. Most players could not deduce their own flavor, or at least are not sure.

1- 1 Modified Motion Detector (Gets told whether action originated from or targeted the target)

This is Captain Malcolm Reynolds, the captain and owner of Serenity (the RR slot).
"This ship is your home and your crew is your family." <<= This was the hint in their PM to their character. They still believed it might be Book.

2 & 3- 2 Masons

Obviously Zoe & Wash (Gamma & Jingle). "A member of the Serenity Crew" in each of their PMs*

4- Vengeful Townie

Aris flipped already as Jayne. Also had the "A member of the Serenity Crew" bit.

5- Loved:

Chara is sleeping on this. This is Kaylie, and is "A member of the Serenity Crew"

6- Compulsive Doctor.

Cheeky is Simon and has to pick a protection target each night, or it will be randomized for her. "A member of the Serenity Crew"

The other 4 do NOT have "A member of the Serenity Crew" in their PMs. My PoV was "Mal is special, as he owns the ship and is the captain. Zoe is 2nd in command, Wash is the pilot and Kaylie is the mechanic. Jayne may not have anything to do with "piloting/maintaining the ship" but is the "hired muscle" so can be considered "crew". Simon is a refugee, but Mal accepts to protect him and River "in exchange of his services" so can be considered crew.

Now what do Book, River, or Inara have to do with the word "crew" technically? Book is a passenger. A friend and assists in all missions. but still is not "crew". River also is a refugee, and Inara leases a shuttle, so they are not "crew". THAT was the hint that many have missed and RR even pushed on Town slots based on.

Flicker is obviously Book (Priest), Chicka is River (modified/nerfed Day flavor Cop) and her results were meant to be a bit confusing and far from exclusive. The player had to do their own work rather than get spoon fed. Toog is Inara and is a 1-shot Lightening Rod.

The final Town slot is BuJaber, who's character is Sir Warwick and is a Seraph Knight on Mal, but my definition of Seraph Knight is different than the wiki's. The wiki makes them a permanent Doctor, while I consider them as "a double for the main character", meaning they die instead of RR if RR should either die at night or get lynched by day. That's the Seraph Knight I know and have seen in action.. on MS!

So, aside from Mal being extra protected (obviously meant to make Mala work for her win con), the Town actually is pretty weak in terms of actual powers, and especially the investigative/informative, but then they were really good and really really lucky, plus some mistakes from all anti-town slots, and suddenly "Overkill" turned out to be "Underkill".

Mala is Atherton Wing, Lyncher on Mal (falvor not given). EJ is Badger, 1-shot BP Ascetic Hider (NO DOCTOR HERE).

Then there was you 3-man team, Thor as a Reaver (SK) and the ever changing slot that started as Toranaga and is now RightKnight as the Operative (also a SK). Same abilities for both SKs (i.e. 2-shot commuter).

Now Sky slipped, Nico crumbed, and TPFKAP didn't care, which lead to HoB being eliminated early. Furthermore, the lynch ofn the Traitor on D1 allowed Toog to use his 1-shot ability early resulting in no kill on N1. That and the use of the JK (that was what protected him from 3 submitted kills). Is this luck or is it good play by Town> You decide.

Oh, btw, Chicka didn't check anyone on d1. She forgot she had a DAY modifier.
But the one fake claim that really messed everything up was EJ's.

You were there on D2 and saw what happened, and again the Venge landed on the exact slot that was best to flip for Town, and Chicka picked your slot to investigate. Good play? Good Luck> bad Luck for you?? I dunno.

On N2, you didn't kill!!! Thor tried shooting the Hider for the 2nd time!!! And Nancy/Math shot Thor of all slots in the game!! Neither SK nade any use of the 2-shot commute. So, of a total of 5 scum NK attempts only one even went through, and it was on fellow scum. Town had only ONE killing sot (Venge) and they hit scum with that!!

Even on N3, the one remaining SK finally decides to target RR. This means BuJaber will die in their stead and w/o even confirming RR as Mal, so Malakittens should have a good chance now. Right? WRONG! Cheeky decided to protect BuJaber on this very night. Now what can you say about that? The one nightkill ability remaining in the game is blocked by the only protective!

The "2 players max" rule never even came into play, because town was never in danger of losing 3 players on the same cycle anyway. (Obviously that was meant to prevent town losing up to 5 players on one cycle. Imagine if the vengeful got lynched, venged Town, then all 3 kills targeted different Town slots).

Aside from the disappointment stemming from the lack of numerous kills, I am amazed how things are going still. I mean, the town basically missed each and every hint/lead they were given (imagine the part of Thor being found with his heart pierced was missed by everyone and they were still considering HoB may have killed him, despite them knowing already that you killed by a sonic device.. bla bla bla). *Shrug*

P.S. In my preliminary setup I had Inara as a vote-manipulator rather than a 1-shot LR. that was the main change Varsoon implemented, and it sounded better.

So, what do you think? I would appreciate your feedback regarding the setup balance, the flavor and how it fits, the leads I provided, as well as anything else you can think of including VCs and rules. Don't be shy and spare me no criticism if you have any. This was my first tailored setup, and I might as well learn a whole lot from the experience.

[Tails]

Mass claim probably still breaks this, but not as bad as I thought. No one is taking 10 town into account, given how flavor focused you've been. I think the only thing I would have done differently would have been to throw out the adherence to all of the Serenity crew being in the game. This would have also allowed you to bring in more characters from the show and movie, while giving you room to give scum fake claims. As it is, you're really only focused on one episode of the show, with the Alliance characters thrown in as scum. Having town be a mix of crew and allies would have thrown a wrench in the mass claim strategy. If you have to redact flavor text in order to not break your game, then you probably need to take a good look at your source material and reevaluate if it can fit a theme this large.

Again, I think it could, but you'd have to be willing to throw a few curveballs, and that might not fit into your Overkill idea. Although, Fanty and Mingo as masons would have been funny, as most people would expect Wash/Zoe or Simon/River. Once again, as is, your game is highly breakable by a mass claim, even with flavor redacted. And that's something I noticed and lamented earlier on in this PT. It's part of the reason why I knew I didn't have a chance, and I even considered self-leashing and playing with the town for as long as I could/they'd let me. If they mass claim tomorrow, RT is almost certainly dead, as the enabler fake claim just doesn't work with how flavor focused you are. That's part of the reason why I went with BP: It could be seen as Simon from a sideways perspective, that is, if you weren't so straightforward with matching roles directly with flavor.

[Tails]

-Hypothetical game design-

If I were to take on a Firefly/Serenity themed game, keeping with your idea of a large with 17 players, and maybe a modified version of Overkill, I'd go 10 town, 3 Alliance (2 HoB + Operative), 3 Reavers, and 1 SK (Niska). Heck, if you want to get rid of overkill, you could just make Niska a lyncher. In your 10 town, I'd give myself room to go nuts. I'd make a list of all potential Serenity members and allies, and make sure that I'd have a mix, while allowing some names, even important ones, to be given to scum as fake claims. Heck, you could even have some of those in the town not be strict allies, but just not as overtly hostile as Niska or some of the other villians, that way you have some town flavor that could throw the speccers off. I'd probably throw Patience in there as a means to do that, for example. Figure out what kind of roles you want, and go.

[Almost50]

Noted and much appreciated.

My next "Overkill" game (haven't submitted the setup for review yet) does in fact make use of the lessons I learned from this one. All non-Town slots have been provided with very good fake claims. My only worry is if the reviewer thinks/demands some roles to be changed, in which case the flavour could very well be disturbed. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

[Tails]

Who was RR's n2 target?

[Tails]

Also, when will the thread unlock? Have to get my video 'bah' sent, but not sure if I'll be awake.

[Almost50]

Who was RR's n2 target?

Chickadee

[Almost50]

Also, when will the thread unlock? Have to get my video 'bah' sent, but not sure if I'll be awake.

I've sent out asking for a shortened night (48 hrs rather than 72) and so far only 7 responded. I'll probably go ahead and unlock the thread in 14 hrs 42 min anyway, but EJ hasn't submitted a target yet.

[Tails]

Wait. So RR actually knew that Chickadee was targeted?!? I told the truth about my target, and they called bull crap?!

[Tails]

That moment town realized that they killed a town-siding scum player, and the real villain is still out there:

[Tails]

[Tails]

Plan was to figure out the game during the day. N3 I was going to kill and claim a protect on a still alive conf. town read. N4 I'd kill a conf. town read, but claim that I was blocked, as I was protecting that player.

[Almost50]

But how would they know that? They only knew she was targeted, and for all they know she was saved by a doctor from a nightkill attempt.

[Tails]

Except their argument was that Chickadee couldn't have been a protect target. They're trying to figure out where the missing kills are, and there's a claimed flavor cop with an action on her.

[Tails]

And if they only see one action, and an action is then claimed, Occam's Razor something something.

[Tails]

At most, they would know that I'd be likely telling the truth about my target. They didn't have to believe I was town or BP, but it should have been obvious from their result that I was telling the truth about where I was. So if they're still thinking HoB, they would know that my kill was likely out of play that night. The next question would be why, but that hydra really isn't up for asking the hard questions.

[Almost50]

Oh! I missed that. They probably were too confident the Flavour Cop result on you was damning then.
They have discord and I get a copy of the chat after the fact, so that one I still didn't get an update of.

P-edit: They don't see the number of actions. They only know if there was outgoing action(s) and/or incoming action(s) aside from theirs.

[Tails]

I figured. So they knew there were actions on Chickadee, and I claimed an action on Chickadee. Something should have made them stop, but really, I'm not surprised they didn't. It was obvious from the moment they voted that they were super tunneled. The problem with accounts that say they are super logical or are going to use reason to solve the game is that they rarely do. They're the ones most likely to fall into a tunnel or get super emotional, and the fact of that matter is that what they tout as reason or logic doesn't matter in mafia. I used to be all about picking apart arguments and finding inconsistencies. I'd state that I'd "logic you to death". And during that time, I was a horrific scum hunter. I still am when I let my emotions get the better of me and don't take a step back. That's exactly what I want to breed when I play scum. I want you to argue and get emotional until no one pays attention to you. The key actually does fall down to motivation and intent. Why did that player do X? What do they have to gain? Etc.etc.etc. It's actually a lot easier to do this when you're not involved in the game, tbh, but it can still be done. I mean, I probably should have noticed Thor putting a lot of weight on page 1 posts. That's normally a bad argument, and Thor knows that. The fact that we had a blue moon situation here doesn't change the fact that early game posts rarely mean anything, and cases that rely on those posts are half-baked. The thing was, I really wasn't paying much attention to Thor enough to try to sort him. He made a Nacho-scum type of move, and I really wasn't caring. I mean, I could have approached pretty much everything differently, but that's the thing about hindsight.

[Almost50]

With all due respect, if you don't pay attention to MY entrance you're likely missing a lot. I usually hide my crumbs in my earlier posts and get that done with.

And I only get emotional when someone's being really stupid or really aggressive. Otherwise I'm just having fun and making jokes while I'm taking notes.

[Tails]

I'm kinda sad I had to turn to serious mode so quickly. I wanted to see how many different combinations of R words I could come up with.

[Almost50]

[Tails]

And award for best Bah post goes to...