Overview
This game was actually made over the span of about a week. Why host this game and not Wayne Bradier, which has been ready since late July? The main reason is the amount of free-for-all mafia games that have saturated Circus Maximus over the past couple of months. Pretty much all of our small games were FFA, and I wanted to host a more traditional game to give newer players and people who dislike the FFA format a chance to play outside of a big game.
The village was designed to have a lot of information gathering power, but not too much night power otherwise. I definitely went overboard on this - full inspector alongside tracker/watcher with a gimped name checker to boot is quite a bit of information gathering, and most of the village lynches were a direct result of sunny004 or soul_survivor/Raidenchu catching someone in a lie. There were probably too many redirector roles too - I thought it was a fair trade for the lack of a safeguard or hooker, but it was probably too powerful overall. Miller and rogue were intended to cause mistrust within the village, but for some reason people accepted Celever without question and though there was a bit of suspicion on penguin near the end of the game, it was never enough to get him onto the chopping block.
The mafia was directly designed to fuck with the village - a hooker and a mole to thwart information gathering, an inspector to pick out kill targets, and Clarence BEEFTANK to completely negate any attempts at protection on the village's part. Honestly, I thought the faction was designed pretty well, as despite some terrible strokes of misfortune (sorry kom :[) they managed to remain relevant almost to the end. The only thing that I would have done differently is that I actually would have given the mole a negative vote so he could prove himself and be useful after his cloak was broken - looking back I have no idea why he didn't have it from the beginning.
The wolf duo was basically a souped-up version of the duo that got absolutely shitstomped back in Yet Another Stupid Mafia. The power boost given by one member's death was absolutely critical to the duo's near victory near the end of the game, and I think overall the pair was designed very well.
Timeline of Events
N0: Blue_Tornado hits kingofmars with his martyr and nothing happens, leading b_t to trust kom almost unequivocally and setting up the Pros quite nicely early on. Infinity.Cypher, however, actually hits him with the name check, but for some reason never bothers to tell anyone involved in village leadership and nothing comes of it. The village does manage to catch a break when Ullar gets tracked by sunny, who sees him visiting two people - a direct contradiction to his claim.
D1: B_T manages to get the village organized despite being silenced, and the steamroller quickly comes for UllarWarlord. Ullar eventually claims solo wolf to B_T and Celever in hopes that he can trade control of his actions for his life, but nothing comes of it. At this point, B_T adds penguin344, whose role PM he had gotten from Ullar, to his sheet.
N1: kom does his BEEFTANK thing and nails B_T through munchyoshi's protection. Jalmont unfortunately squanders his first night of double-killing by wasting one trying to hit B_T himself, which the BG protection does manage to block. More Cowbell is randed as Jalmont's other target, and poor Infinity.Cypher takes a vigilante explosion to the face and perishes. Erstwhile tracker sunny again gets lucky, catching Expulso hooking penguin when he claimed not to have a night action yet. By far the biggest stroke of luck, however, was B_T's dying action: he martyred soul_survivor, who had been previously idling his watcher ability. This allowed kingofmars to be seen visiting B_T when he had previously been free and clear. All in all, it was a really shitty night for the Pros.
D2: Confusion over who, if anyone, had access to B_T's sheet comes to an end when Celever says fuck it and steps up as new leader, creating an entirely new sheet. He was eventually able to hook up with penguin and compare notes with B_T's old sheet, but I'm not actually 100% sure when that happened. What DID happen on D2 is that soul_survivor got subbed for Raidenchu, who managed to get on IRC long enough to claim his results to Celever, leading to kom being expunged from the village's circle of trust. It was Expulso, however, who was lynched, thanks to Celever considering sunny slightly more trustworthy than Raiden.
N2: Another shitty night for the Pros, thanks to the combined powers of crossfire and Jalmont having higher priority than kingofmars led to the hapless kom dying and the Pros' kill failing altogether. The village, however, didn't fare much better, as sunny managed only to hit smashlloyd on his off night and Raiden was hooked, not to mention the death of inspector Haunted.Shadow. Celever's original plan was to keep kom alive and have Pokeguy redirect him onto preferred kill targets, but that wouldn't have worked, so the crossfire really screwed the Pros over.
D3: No obvious lynch target presented itself. Haunted.Shadow had managed to "clean" Serious Bananas, Jalmont was relatively trusted, and Empoof hadn't made any obvious slip-ups. Pokeguy and smashlloyd were also under some suspicion, the former for having yet to prove his role, the latter for reasons unknown to me. Celever decided to roll the dice and lynch Empoof, whose fakeclaim was "worded weirdly" in Celever's words. The gamble paid off, and the Pros were all but screwed at this point.
N3: This night ALMOST went very well for anti-village forces - almost. Jalmont aimed for Raiden and munchyoshi, two very important village roles. The former he managed to kill, but the latter kill was redirected to Cancerous instead. Not a huge problem. Unfortunately, Jalmont had listed hooking Infinity.Cypher in his final (and he did specify that they were final) list of actions, despite me giving him a decent heads-up that he should change this. Infinity.Cypher, you might recall, had been dead for a few nights at this point. Would this hook have helped Jalmont towards victory? Perhaps. But what's done is done. The other potential stroke of luck for the forces of evil came when Pokeguy was tracked as targeting Raiden, who died, casting extreme suspicion on Pokeguy.
D4: I'll be honest, at day start I thought Jalmont was most likely to win. Celever and sunny trusted him, and more importantly, didn't trust Pokeguy, and even penguin was starting to come under suspicion after Celever realized that the one who cleaned him was the goddamned wolf. And then... they decided to lynch Jalmont. For no discernible reason. The post in the thread claiming he had targeted two people? Complete lie. Jalmont was never tracked, and a watcher never spotted him. Even with all the suspicion on Pokeguy, they went for Jalmont. And he took the bait, confirming their suspicion. It was a decent play by the village, but really it was just lucky as hell. With Jalmont dead, Serious Bananas didn't have nearly enough firepower to finish the rest of the village off before they inevitably randed him, and the Scrubs took victory.
Players
More Cowbell - William Henry Harrison - Mayor - Scrubs - Died via lethal injection N1
I don't think More Cowbell actually did much of anything, mostly because of how early he died. He voted for Ullar in the first lynch and then got randed by Jalmont.
Blue_Tornado - The Diamond from Mafia Mafia 2 - Martyr - Scrubs - Run over N1
Blue_Tornado did a great job of getting the village organized and rolling, even when silenced, and his sniffing out of Ullar was a good play on his part. I have to dock him a few points for trusting kingofmars so thoroughly, but in fairness to him it was a very convincing setup. Overall, good job.
Infinity.Cypher - Mark Sanchez - Last name checker - Scrubs - Exploded N1
Cypher didn't do so well this game, mainly due to not claiming his result to B_T... or claiming at all, actually. His lack of claim led directly to him being shot by the vigilante, and the information he had could have saved the village from kingofmars even earlier than they already did.
Haunted.Shadow - Brooke Baldwin - Inspector - Scrubs - Died via lethal injection N2
Haunted.Shadow was easily the unluckiest villager. Real life issues caused him to miss deadline and not even send an action Night 0, he "cleaned" Serious Bananas on Night 1, and then on Night 2 he got randed by Jalmont before he could inspect... Jalmont. Missing the first deadline was pretty bad, but after that his luck was just in the toilet, so most of his misfortune was not his fault.
soul_survivor Raidenchu - The Cabbage Merchant - Watcher - Scrubs - Died via lethal injection N3
Neither soul_survivor or Raidenchu showed outstanding levels of activity, with soul_sur having to be subbed out. Raidenchu was incredibly confused upon entering the game, but managed to claim to Celever and give crucial results implicating kingofmars, so props for that. He then was pretty idle until he died as a result of Jalmont inspecting him.
Cancerous - Jar Jar Binks - Reverse Martyr - Scrubs - Died via lethal injection N3
Cancerous's name was brought up quite a bit on Day 1 due to some apparently shady IRC practices, but I think this is more a result of Cancerous' personality than of any sort of mafia deficiency. He played pretty decently, taking orders from village leadership until he served his purpose by dying in place of the BG.
smashlloyd20 - Michael Bay - Vigilante - Scrubs - "Lynched" N3
For some reason, smashlloyd never found himself fully trusted by the village leadership, even after he proved himself by blowing up Cypher. Outside of that, he didn't do much, dying to Bananas after being inspected before he could get his second kill off.
Celever - Ash Ketchum - Miller - Scrubs - Won N4
As much as it pains me to say, Celever actually played pretty damn well this game. He did a great job of helping the village recover after the death of B_T's sheet, being so trustworthy that people were willing to claim to a miller. What impressed me the most was that he correctly lynched Empoof and Jalmont based on what apparently were just gut feelings. Definitely one of the best players for the Scrubs.
munchyoshi - Hestia - Bodyguard - Scrubs - Won N4
Munch played pretty solidly, following Celever's orders and keeping a low profile in order to survive. He was mostly protecting Celever despite the fact that his protection might have been better on a power role, but I don't know if that was his decision or if it was at Celever's behest, so I can't really judge him for that.
sunny004 - Uncle Grimmly - Tracker - Scrubs - Won N4
Sunny played outstandingly for a newcomer, effectively tag-teaming with Celever to dictate village actions and figure out who the bad guys were. He somehow managed to avoid getting randkilled or even randspected, and his own randtargets were en pointe.
penguin344 - Julian Zhu - Rogue - Scrubs - Won N4
My one complaint where penguin's concerned is that he didn't step up after B_T's death, considering he had his sheet. This is slightly redeemed by the fact that he eventually hooked up with Celever to compare notes, and the rest of his play was pretty solid.
PokeguyNXB - Mark Goldberg - Redirector - Scrubs - Won N4
Fun fact: the person I described in the role PM is named MIKE Goldberg, and nobody noticed - including, until about 20 minutes ago, myself. The man behind the role, Pokeguy, was another guy that was never trusted, partially because his redirect targets had a tendency to either not have an action or to die. I still don't know how he managed to not get lynched when he was seen targeting Raidenchu, so if you talked yourself out of that, props.
Expulso - Gabe Newell - Hooker - Pros - Lynched D2
Expulso was definitely the weakest link on the Pros. He was very rarely on IRC, was pretty lazy, and got caught out pretty early. You don't seem like an idiot, so you've got some potential, but playing mafia well requires lots of communication with your teammates, so keep that in mind if you decide to play in the future.
kingofmars - Clarence BEEFTANK - Unblockable Kiler - Pros - Died via lethal injection N2
kom played extremely well, and during the early portion of the game was the main planning force behind the Pros. He played well enough that both B_T and Celever were absolutely convinced that he was village, and he only got caught due to a stroke of absolutely abysmal luck, then died to a complete rand. You definitely deserved to live longer than you did.
Empoof - Fox McCloud - Inspector - Pros - Lynched D3
Yea, I totally rewrote this role after I saw Empoof's signup post. Empoof generally played pretty well from a planning and communicating standpoint, but his shaky fakeclaim ultimately led to his downfall.
Serious Bananas - the_sea_prince - Mole - Pros - Surrendered N4
The recipient of my favorite role in the game flavor-wise, Serious Bananas played pretty well for most of the game, helping Empoof with planning after kingofmars died. He was probably correct to surrender in the end, as 5v1 are not very good odds.
UllarWarlord - Turk - Inspector/Silencer - Pros Wearing Scrubs - Lynched D1
Ullar found himself on the chopping block pretty quickly due to a randtrack from sunny. He did a good job in that he nearly managed to escape death and had B_T convinced for a bit that he was a lone wolf, but B_T managed to make the right call and go through with the lynch, and that was the end of that.
Jalmont - JD - Hooker/Bodyguard - Pros Wearing Scrubs - Lynched D4
It's a shame that Jalmont was lynched on a complete guess at the end of the game, because he definitely played well enough to earn a win. He had everyone convinced that he was a villager, and had munchyoshi not voted he had a very solid plan to stealth with Serious Bananas, which could have given him a very easy win. Let it be known that I was kinda rooting for you :(
Final Thoughts/Awards
Lucky randtargeting played a pretty big role in the final results of this game, which was pretty unfortunate. Still, it was a fun game to host, and I hope that it was a pretty fun game to play!
And now, some awards.
Best Scrub: Celever
Best Pro: kingofmars
Best PWS: Jalmont
Best luck: sunny004
Worst luck: kingofmars (honorable mention: Haunted.Shadow)
Most active player: Celever (honorable mention: sunny004)
Least active player: Infinity.Cypher
Ugliest spreadsheet: Celever's sheet, first iteration
Best play: kingofmars claiming not to have a night action, causing him to be trusted (honorable mention: Celever's gut feeling lynches on two bad guys)
Worst play: Infinity.Cypher concealing his results (honorable mention: Haunted.Shadow idling N0)
Luckiest play: The chain of events that led to kingofmars being discovered
Unluckiest play: Pokeguy's target dying the night he gets tracked
MVPs: Celever/sunny004
Thanks for playing!