General Notes:
Interesting fact #1: This setup is the most complex setup I have ever run (with the possible exception of an ongoing Mini Theme designed at about the same time). It will likely be the most complex setup I will ever run, as I found that I was unable to keep track of all the role interactions (in particular, there was a very broken interaction involving Georgia Lass and Tarhalindur that I completely missed that actually happened this game) and made a few mistakes (the big one: I accidentally sent the Seraphim the mod result PM for the WRONG player D2; I elected to simply not send the correct result (effectively redirecting him to preserve the game state) and not acknowledge the error at the time, since I deemed that the error by itself did not threaten game integrity).
Interesting fact #2: The setup that I adapted into Mind Screw 3 wasn't actually a Mind Screw game at all. Rather, I took what I could remember of the first large setup I ever designed (before I came up with the idea for Mind Screw 1, in fact) called Legacy of the Ancients Mafia and converted it into a Mind Screw setup (also adding considerable complexity). Several game mechanics (the Ultimates and High Councilors especially) are relics of the older design. Several other mechanics were discarded.
As an aside, I've actually rebuilt Legacy of the Ancients Mafia (changing several roles/mechanics to change the game significantly). I can run it after Majora's Mask (it's a Large Theme) if people are interested in playing it.
Interesting fact #3: This is probably the last Mind Screw setup I will run for some time. There are two reasons for this: there are several other interesting ideas I want to run before another Mind Screw game (Majora's Mask is the big one, and I've been finalizing Legacy of the Ancients and an Unreal Tournament mini theme; I've also been considering my own spin on a Stargate Verse Large Theme), and I'm running out of ideas for what to do with the Mind Screw premise (there's really only so much you can do to play off of hiding the rules).
Interesting fact #4: This game, among other things, had a major death-triggered role mechanic (it works well as an Ultimate). I foresaw during design that this would likely mean that the trying to use lynches to get the most out of death-triggered roles would likely backfire horribly - I was fairly sure during design that the best way to deal with the death-triggered roles (except the Jesters, who were going to get lynched) was to simply NOT TRIGGER THEM - this would leave a minefield for the Mafia, who could either kill them (and trigger the beneficial effect) or leave a townie alive. This was, in fact, what happened.
Interesting fact #5: The meta for this game was mostly "if it was bad in previous Mind Screw games, it's bad here" and vice versa. I was amused (and amazed) to see how effectively the Mafia was able to convince the town otherwise, even after my lynch.
Subthemes:
- High Councilors
- Roles with multiple votes
- Death-triggered abilities
Notes on play:
Town, in many ways, shot themselves in the foot. This wasn't due to the lynches themselves - the most questionable lynches I see, given behavior in this game, were BlakAdder and zwetschenwasser. Zwet didn't really look like a good lynch candidate to me, while the BlakAdder lynch was fairly low gain, IMO.
Town, however, really shot itself in the foot by actions and individual play. DEATH (one of the stronger town roles) blew itself out of the water by hammering Day 1. DragonsofSummer, who had what was probably the strongest town role in the game, was inactive D1, severely curtailing the role's potential effectiveness; moreover, hasdgfas shot the town in the foot by protecting Xyl D4 (if he had not done so, Xylthixlm would have died D4 and the game would have been very different). malthusis, in turn, also wound up preventing an opportunity to off a Mafioso (MM, the lone Mafia High Councilor) early. ShadowGirl played HORRIBLY D6, leading to a mislynch... and so on.
The Mafia, on the other hand, were both somewhat overpowered (I wasn't sure about this when the game started, but I'm pretty sure now) and played EXTREMELY well (they just got a bunch of Scummy nominations) - best play that I've ever seen from a Mafia, in fact. They coordinated actions effectively, used abilities effectively, and generally made no mistakes.
The Neutrals were a mixed bag. The Jesters were decent overall, but Empking was so much better than the other two that he got the easy victory. Vi played decently but had horrible luck (particularly in getting roleblocked D2, when he would have killed a Mafioso AND gained a recruit). Kairyuu simply played horribly (see: his claim) and got WIFOMed to death.
Role Notes:
Tarhalindur
- I've been setting up this role (a Mod-SK) since Mind Screw II, using both Mind Screw II (with its "mod as Mao" mechanic) and the Mod Screw game from Marathon Day 3 (Mod as only scum) as preparation. It was a fair amount of fun to play. Note that I held fire here D1 to give TCS a chance to actually do something with his role.
As an aside: Lynching the Mod in Mind Screw 1 would NOT have revealed the setup. It would simply have revealed that the Mod was unkillable (and thus unlynchable) and reset the vote count. Lynching me here was still the right idea, however.
Rei Ayanami
- Again, a role I've been setting up for some time. This is the only role name that has had the same ability in all three Mind Screw games... but this time, it was scum.
Rei's role here is a largely unmodified form of a role from the original Legacy of the Ancients setup. It was changed from Godfather to semi-Goon during the adaptation of the original setup.
Lain Iwakura
- This role was added to the setup during the adaptation process. The point mechanic (seen several times in the setup) was inspired by Fiasco Corporation Mafia on MTGS. The abilities were all abilities I thought would be useful on scum (in particular, I liked the redirect... <3 scum redirectors). I was right (town got VERY screwed by not nerfing this role early). I'm somewhat surprised Xyl never seemed to catch on to this game having heavy MTGS inspiration, especially given that he had this role and he mods on MTGS...
Kaname Chidori
- Again, this role was added during initial adaptation. The roleblock ability is standard, the "doesn't count as a player" is a typical red herring (also wound up as a useful falseclaim for myself
), and the FoS-vote comes from Mind Screw II (intended as a means for this role to help "confirm" itself). The Ultimate is something I've been itching to do for a while now (IIRC, there was something similar in Matrix Mafia on MTGS); the 1-shot mod message (adapted from Blood Moon Mafia on MTGS) was added at the last minute to allow this role to fake having an Ultimate.
Tessa Testarossa
- I can now scratch Inventor off of the list of "typically town roles I've wanted to give to Mafia for a while now" (sadly, turns out Egypt Mafia did it first). The specific Inventor variant use (name an ability, hand it out) was inspired by yet another MTGS role (Fiasco Corporation). The Resonance ability was given early on to give this role a means to simulate a masonifying Ultimate (and the flavor just works perfectly).
As an aside, I woefully underestimated Brand's power (and thought it was fairly likely to be prevented, as it had pretty much the lowest priority of any action)
Marvin
- Marvin's history is interesting. This role began as a role in the original Legacy of the Ancients setup. It was then removed from the setup during adaptation and added BACK into the setup (when added back it had the tracker immunity and an Ultimate that would permablock a player and remove said player from win condition calculations so long as Marvin was alive; when Natirasha protested, I reverted the role back to its original version - tracker immunity + bulletproof - and added the Wiretap ability to force the Mafia to make choices) when I thought the Mafia was underpowered with 4 individuals. This was probably a mistake; the Mafia might very well have been balanced without this role.
Aldaris
- I've been wanting to use Vigicultist/Inquisitor ever since I saw Mokina post the role in Worst Ideas (it took the place of a different anti-town neutral in the original setup), and here it is! The Ultimate was originally a single recruit, but switched to double recruit after getting inspired by yet another MTGS game (MTGS's Final Fantasy VII game). The bulletproof shield was added due to my preference for giving SK's (which is what I balanced the role as - the inside information was somewhat misleading) limited immunity to kills.
Kairyuu
- I wanted a Neutral Dreaming God, I wanted the Dreaming God to function similarly to Mind Screw 1's Ozmodiar, I didn't want the role to be a pure survivor (so it had to do something), mass origin claim had been suggested in both previous Mind Screw games... easy enough.
Sadly, this role was roleblocked on the day it used what I considered its coolest 1-shots.
Jesters (Shinji, Eiri, Ender)
- These three roles were inspired by a stray comment in Mind Screw 1 (three Jesters and a Cult? You DID give the Mod ideas!). I was fairly sure going in that the question for D1 was not "does a Jester get lynched?" but "which Jester gets lynched?", with the Jesters competiting to ensure that they got lynched instead of their counterpart.
It would have been interesting if one or more Jesters had actually claimed Jester - all three Ultimates were death-triggered, and two could be used by the town. (The third Jester, Eiri, was significantly nerfed from his original incarnation... where he could auto-lynch himself on D6 and became the SOLE WINNER when lynched (the other Jesters would have been informed of this, and Arthur Dent would have learned the same from his Ultimate).
Tweedledee/Tweedledum
- This role (effectively a modified Neighborhood Watch) dates back to the original LotA setup, and survived almost intact - the only change I made to the role was making the role Clones (played by player and that player's alt) instead of normal Masons. The Clone mechanic is, again, inspired by/stolen from MTGS (Blood Moon Mafia).
Leonard
- Shamelessly lifted almost intact from a New Coldness post in one of the Role Ideas threads in Mafia Discussion (where I even said "and I am stealing this role and adapting it to my purposes"). The only changes were templating the investigation-reveal as an Ultimate and adding the character name.
Yuki Nagato
- Well, she's gotten overpowered in the Suzumiya Haruhi light novels, what did you expect? Role inspiration lifted wholeheartedly (along with the point mechanic in general and the name "Townie Shepherd") from Fiasco Corporation on MTGS. The tension in this role was that the role was a weak investigative role even WITHOUT powering up its abilities... but powering up its abilities would lessen the power of its first investigation (the Points of Order ability itself). hasdgfas opted for the whole-hog solution; I suspect that voting only 5-10 players per day would have been more productive (if you *don't* gain a Point of Order, you just got an innocent investigation on 5-10 players, which is gamebreaking).
Also the Town's second best protective role (best was a powered-up HAL 9000), indirectly nerfing cop-doc combos.
General Ripper
- Another role lifted almost intact from the original LotA Mafia setup; the only change was the role name (which changed twice due to me first seeing Dr. Strangelove only late last year). High Councilor was added here to a) offer a second means of protection to the role (a hidden feature of Taking the Bullet was that it would protect all roles in The Office, IIRC) and b) make the High Councilor ability somewhat relevant.
Harriet Jones
- Speaking of the High Councilor mechanic, here's the only role that it was relevant to. The High Councilor mechanic is a relic of the original LotA setup, where it was far more relevant and showed up on more powerful roles (if I run a LotA game, expect the same to apply). After the adaptation, the only really useful player this role could save was General Ripper (though it could also offer some useful protection for the Vigicultist).
This role was once more screwed than it was in the final setup - the "at least one High Councilor must live" win con was originally an additional win con instead of an alternate win con.
Asuka Langley Soryuu
- This role was inspired by yet another role in Fiasco Corporation, and changed in no meaningful way once added.
Quantum Mechanics
- The Entangle ability dates back to the LotA version of this role. The Ultimate is a much later addition. Not much else to say here, except that kill methods would have been conserved if kills had been copied. (Oh, yeah, and the fact that Entangle + HAL's Copy resulted in THREE players being Branded D4... Kinetic, Machiavellian-Mafia, and Cephrir/iamausername.)
HAL 9000
- This role also dates back to the original LotA design, but it changed hugely during design (among other things, in the original design this role's Ultimate was the global motivate that Haruhi wound up with). I made one mistake here - I forgot to tell this role it couldn't target itself. It still created considerable havoc D5 and stopped a Mafia kill D6.
Georgia Lass
- This is a role I've been wanting to try out for some time (a very long time, in fact - this role dates back to the original LotA setup and survived untouched except for the character name) - ability to speak with dead and ability to trade that for a useful dead player's abilities. The multi-vote (inspired by a role in DotA Mafia on... you guessed it... MTGS) and inability to be protected were intentional - the point was to create tension between the really useful multi-vote and the really useful Ultimate.
I completely missed the interaction with the Mod-SK during design - if I had expected it, I would have put Moderator at a bare minimum in Factional Abilities (I'd probably keep the kills active in retrospect, since that part of the interaction was just fun).
Number 6
- It's a Miller who can clear itself under certain conditions. Really, it's an obvious use of the Ultimate mechanic. It was also the last role added to the setup. (It had a useful second function - the role was intended to encourage heavy bandwagoning, which was good for the town since it would shut down Lain's point gain.)
Note on Miller: I traditionally word the ability as "turn up guilty (or the closest equivalent" to all investigations"... though I can't remember how many of my Miller setups I've actually run (this may be the first).
Teal'c
- Flavorwise, this may be my favorite role in the setup. TCS definitely liked it... which is why I gave him an extra day to use his daykill before killing him. (Yes, I think daykills should be used early and often).
Sigmund Freud
- Oh, come on, you knew that Freud's search ability would be a red herring (he *could* have found him... yeah right, Shinji-jester). The Ultimate originally had the same "permablock + ignore player while calculating win conditions" that Marvin once had (IN ADDITION TO the masonifying part of the ability); that part, like the Marvin equivalent, was removed due to Natirasha objections (he thought the ability was blatantly unfun).
Daniel Jackson
- It's Daniel, he dies, he ascends, what did you expect? Another weak role that survived almost intact from the precursor setup.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, GLaDOS, John Sheridan, Arthur Dent
- The Mostly Vanilla Townies were defined as roles that had no abilities except for Ultimates and High Councilor (Teal'c didn't count due to post restriction, Daniel didn't count due to additional win condition, Number 6 didn't count due to Miller). Obi-Wan's role was another obvious "you can do this with Ultimates", as was John Sheridan (the idea was that his vote would be conserved even after he died, much like Obi-Wan's voice would be conserved after death). Qwints was a bulletproof (and food for the Inquisitor), while Arthur Dent was, fittingly, the closest thing to a vanilla character in the game (and the "learns as he adapts to strangeness" is great from a flavor standpoint).
- Probably my favorite role in the setup. This is the role I wanted Lain to be in Mind Screw II but couldn't use because of queue constraints - a truly invisible townie with a couple of kills and the ability to pop in (or not) as it chose. The original inspiration, like Lain, comes from the Invisible Townie in Sin City Mafia on (where else?) MTGS.
(Why did this role have to hammer D1?
)
