The Players
So obviously this was a Standard game, so we didn’t have too much control over which players we did and didn’t get. That said, the playerlist for this game was pretty excellent. And the fact that signups filled up in less than a day after posting the thread was pretty exciting.
Despite the fact that I sort of pretended like we were going to fully randomize sometimes, it was usually pretty obvious that at least some of the roles would be assigned, since full randomization is just a recipe for disaster. As always, a few people requested certain things, and we were actually pretty good about honoring requests, I think.
The Patients
There’s more to say about the Patient factions in their respective sections, but something we did make an effort to do was include some strong players on the Patient factions and not get all of the stronger players on the Staff/Neutrals, especially since they would have to work in the post-Split environment.
Quagsires
Having been the host of TTV Mafia (which Eep and I were both in, and won >.>), and also as a replacement cohost for FF5, letting Quags have some input on what type of role he wanted was fine. Sadly, the types of roles he requested (most notably Recruiter) weren’t in the game. So instead he got the third thing he asked for, which was a role that could kill. The fact that it had one of the cooler features of the game tacked onto it was a nice bonus, too.
Since Huntington’s was definitely something that required a combination of competence and a lot of activity, Quags seemed like a good fit for the role. The activity requirement was to ensure that, after dying (which was completely inevitable), he would stick around the channel and keep paying attention to the game, despite not being able to discuss it with anyone, which was essential for his post-death ability to be effective in the slightest.
Quags’ earlygame play was fine. At one point he said something about wishing he could have tried to lead the Patients (which would have been awesome for flavor, coincidentally), but with the scramble for leadership that happened early on he didn’t bother throwing his name in for consideration.
He was, regrettably, picked off by the Staff on N1, but chose to target with his one-shot kill that Night, and thus took kingofkongs down with him. And the fact that his role was going to automatically die when the Patients split anyway meant that killing him essentially robbed the Staff of a “better” kill, though they couldn’t have possibly known that at the time.
Post-death, Quags was fine. He idled his ability the first couple times, but that’s usually pretty expected when it’s something with limited uses. When he finally did use the Possess, he hit Flamestrike, robbing the Staff of another kill. And his final action robbed the Staff of a third kill as well, which really contributed to their loss (and Quags’ win, of course).
3rd Floor Patients
So first up for the post-Split factions is the winning bunch, the 3rd Floor Patients. Overall, this group had a few players who were pretty highly involved with the game and making good decisions. Of all the factions in the game, the hosts pretty much felt that the 3rd Floor most deserved the win, so it was nice to see them pull it off, even though it was a Kingmaker scenario instead of a grand blaze of glory or something cooler like that.
GoldenKnight
The biggest concern here was that one of the first things GK said was that he was going to try and abuse his role to the point of breaking it, which was certainly a concern, since the role was pretty wide open in that sense. However, he ended up using it initially to check a win condition, and then later to act as a full role PM inspection, which was fine (though not exactly what his role was intended for).
Probably the funniest part with GK was when he tried to catch the hosts lying, since “Don’t share Role PMs yet” was posted in red text on Night 0. But that was, sadly just coincidence.
After that, GK was just sort of uninterested in the game, unfortunately. He got his actions in, for the most part, but wasn’t really particularly engaged. Finally, after the Split, he said he was going to start getting serious, which was pretty exciting. Which was just about when the Staff killed him.
danmantincan
Not really much to say here, good or bad. He was active early on, which is always a good thing. Like everyone else, he claimed to Da Letter El. Maybe a slight misplay in that he (assuming he was a normal inspector) went along with DLE’s target, instead of confirming DLE’s claim for himself, but it wouldn’t have made any real difference, since he wouldn’t have been able to put the “result” to any use.
His Night 2 action was reasonable, since ginga was trying to become a major player in the Village, and clearly they had just been “led” by the Wolf, so checking out the leader was important. Sadly, DLE’s actions earlier meant the Staff knew that dan was an inspector, which pretty much sealed his fate.
macle -> iiMKUltra
So first up is macle. He ended up getting subbed out Night 0 because he was going on vacation (and going to be unable to use IRC), so pretty much nothing to say on that front. iiMKUltra to the rescue.
iiMK did a good job, considering that he really didn’t have too much to work with for a lot of the game. He was active enough in the channel and votes. The real problem was that his ability didn’t give him much to go on. The two times he actually had an ability (SG on N2, Hook on N6) he idled, but in both cases he didn’t really know that he had an ability. Other Nights he idled his non-ability except for once, when he targeted Walrein, but had no effect. It’s definitely regrettable that a good player got landed with a role that ended up being not-so-great.
Where iiMK really shined, however, was that he was the first (and pretty much only) player to figure out that the number included in every PM was the number of what floor that person came from (assuming they were a Patient). Regrettably, this came pretty late in the game, after most factions had pretty well united and everyone’s alliance was essentially known, but it’s still satisfying to see some of the things thrown into the game actually get picked up on.
zorbees
zorbees was a player who suffered from having a pretty poor role for a significant portion of the game, since he didn’t manage to collect any abilities until the end of Day 5, after ginganinja was lynched. As a result, he couldn’t do too much besides talk and negotiate with other players for the former half of the game.
Once he got his first ability, BG, he became a much better force in the game, especially since the 3rd Floor had gotten somewhat united at that point. Unfortunately, while his team was excited at the prospect of having a reliable BG to work with, neither of the times zorbees protected anyone were really successful, and he never used his Hook.
When zorbees was in charge of the 3rd Floor kill (Night 5, right after gaining his BG) he killed Crux, which essentially eliminated anyone who was in any kind of leadership role in the 4th Floor Patients. So that definitely made a pretty notable contribution to his win.
J-Man -> theangryscientist
So J-Man was another person who was subbed out Night 0. While subbing someone this early would make t seem like there’s no way he could have had a big effect, positive or negative, his lack of activity actually did hurt a couple of other players. As the “leader” of the little three-man voting alliance that his role created, he was the only one who knew what “looking for a friend” would really entail. However, since he wasn’t on IRC when Yeti and later Aura Guardian said they were seeking a “friend,” it hurt the two of them and made everyone assume that those two were just twins.
tas followed, but, unfortunately, the damage was pretty much already done. To the hosts’ knowledge, the little voting alliance never really got together properly, which sort of killed the fun of the Williams Syndrome role, both in its double-mayor power and the confusion it could have caused in the post-Split environment.
Overall, tas did fine. The Staff killed him promptly after the Split, to prevent him from being lynched and throwing off the next vote, but he was active while he was alive, even if he wasn’t really as aggressive with finding “friends” as he could have been.
askaninjask
So aska pretty much ended up being in charge of the 3rd Floor and leading them to victory; easily MVP of the faction. He was happy enough with his role, which was clearly a support role, so he didn’t bother trying to make a run for a village leader position in the earlygame. Had aska’s ability been successful Night 1, he would’ve been out of the game very early, and the outcome would have been changed pretty dramatically, most likely.
Post-Split, aska pretty much asserted himself in a leadership position within the 3rd Floor, generally working to coordinate actions and make good decisions. He managed to mole ginganinja hard by helping him set up the 4th Floor IRC channel and got 4th Floor sheet access. His real misplays were that he was a bit too trusting of some of the Staff claims, and was pretty susceptible to moling at first, but made some good decisions with who to check, so it didn’t hurt the faction.
One of the best moments for aska was when he took part in negotiating the lynch of ginganinja, which was to be followed by Aura Guardian using his Global Hook effect. Pidge, who learned that Night that his ability was actually SG, then targeted the killer that Night, zorbees, making him immune to the Hook, and thus allowing the 3rd Floor to get a kill, the only one that Night. While aska’s ability didn’t play any part in it, he was pretty much the one who coordinated the whole thing.
Pidge
For someone who had one of the more frustrating roles (not knowing his own ability’s effect), Pidge did well. He was involved with the decision-making, regularly active, and so on.
Pidge’s ability played a pretty big role in two places. The first was Night 1, when he targeted iiMKUltra, thus negating the other abilities that were used on him (Inspection and Suicidal BG). Had that not happened, iiMK would have been a pretty considerable powerhouse Night 2. The other time Pidge’s ability played a pretty major role was Night 5, when his SG essentially enabled the killing of Crux and the end of 4th Floor leadership.
Pidge was also the only person who was ever hit by the Tourette’s role’s effect, and the way he handled it was pretty much amazing.
Yeti
Yeti succeeded in being pretty hilarious throughout the game, which was more or less what her role was supposed to do. The post restriction she had to work with was made for her, but she definitely went above and beyond with it, and never failed to be hilarious with her in-thread posts.
Other than that, Yeti didn’t really have much she was able to do in the game. And the fact that MUDS was coming up so soon was probably a big factor for her not being a bigger force in the game. It would have been cool to see the ability get used properly, but she pretty much just idled it until she was killed.
4th Floor Patients
The 4th Floor went into the post-Split game pretty strong. ginganinja (who had been publicly cleaned, of course) made efforts to organize the faction and they had a pretty solid core of leadership calling the shots for a while. However, once the main leaders were killed, the faction completely stopped functioning and ended up being resigned to the role of Kingmaker in the endgame.
Nightmare Jigglypuff
NJigglypuff started off the game pretty strong, but then completely fell apart and had a pretty negative effect on the gameplay.
When everyone was claiming to Da Letter El, NJigglypuff’s claim was considered, by DLE, to be one of the most trustworthy, so he got added to DLE’s very comprehensive spreadsheet. Another great thing for him was that he targeted Ditto Night 1, which meant that Ditto would be forced to either idle his ability or pretty much be outed as a Staff member.
Sadly, that’s where the good part ends. NJiglypuff’s activity dropped off some after the earlygame leading up to the Split. After the Split, he was the first member of the 4th Floor Patients to have the kill. He was not, however, active anymore, and thus idled the kill. Something this game-changing wasn’t something that the hosts wanted to happen, certainly, in particular because it was happening right after the Split.
The problem was that, while NJigglypuff the killer was idling, he was also being targeted by the 3rd Floor’s kill. So while subbing NJigglypuff out for someone else was strongly considered, we weren’t about to make someone join the game and take time to get up to speed only to be immediately killed off. That was definitely a pretty game-changing choice, but inactivity almost always has some pretty nasty consequences. But subbing someone who is guaranteed to die that cycle is just rude to the sub, as well as a waste of someone who could be a good sub for another player (at the time we were considering subbing out two other people who weren’t being particularly active).
Crux
Crux, in addition to being one of the better players on the 4th Floor, had an enormous impact on the flow of the game early on.
After Da Letter El pretty much won the fight for Patient leadership, Crux was one of the people who was wary of DLE, and thus targeted him with his alliance check on Night 1. He was fairly confident that his ability was reliable. When his result turned up “Foe” the next Day, he immediately went to ask if he was paranoid. “No paranoids” was confirmed, which was another one of the several host errors, and this was all Crux needed to hear to lead a charge against DLE to get him lynched, and also inevitably led to DLE giving sheet access to the Staff. A few other people (askaninjask and Yeti were two) brought up the possibility of Crux being non-sane, pointing out that he could be and Insane Inspector without being a Paranoid Inspector, but the damage had already been done, as DLE had already thrown away any chance of him surviving the lynch that Day. So while it was a bit of a fluke, Crux did save the Patients from being led by the Wolf.
After that, Crux continued to play pretty well, though he was hindered by the fact that he was a pretty big target because of how public he was about being in charge of the 4th Floor along with ginga. The two of them did a good job leading their faction together until they were taken out and the 4th Floor pretty much fell to pieces. Because the two of them didn’t really let the other 4th Floor members into the loop as much (which was understandable, since uniting the Patient factions was near-impossible), this was kind of inevitable.
Dubulous
Dubs was kind of disappointing in the game because he never really got involved, but was never quite idle enough to merit subbing him out. VGC had a pretty big part in that, and it’s just a shame that timing issues like that always show up.
His ability was definitely a tough one to work with, since it was a a pseudo-Hook, so it was hard to be really effective with it. He got a bit mad when Eep cncnd’d whether or not his ability would have stopped a killer from choosing another target (which it would have, though this never ended up being an issue). He did cause askaninjask to target a dead character once, but it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway.
The real low point was that dubs was lynched Day 6 with a measly 2 votes, both cast by Staff. That lynch was certainly one of the low points of the game for everyone, but the fact that Dubs failed to even attempt to defend himself was just depressing. Had he not died for some reason, he would’ve been subbed afterward, no doubt.
Cereza -> capefeather
Initially, Cereza was a bit of a concern, since the hosts weren’t really confident in her activity and IRC presence. Right away, Cereza received an IRC 101 from Eep, which seemed to help, since she did manage to get on a few times throughout the game. The IRC use was definitely less than we would have liked, but Cereza was good about voting in the lynches and using her abilities (once she gained them), so we couldn’t really complain.
For no reason that the hosts can figure out, she started claiming Wolf or something after the Split. Which was... interesting, let’s say. It certainly threw the Staff off, and they spent a good portion of the rest of the game concerned.
Cereza only ever used the BG ability, never bothering to use the SG ability. This wasn’t really a problem, but, had she used the SG on Dubs N5, the 4th Floor would have had a successful kill (like the 3rd Floor did) and askaninjask would have been taken out, which would have hurt the 3rd Floor pretty significantly.
When Irene hit, Cereza lost the ability to get online for a few days, which meant she had to be subbed out, since we couldn’t be sure how long she would be out of commission. So, even though it was pretty much endgame, capefeather was subbed in to prevent the 4th Floor losing another kill due to not submitting a target.
Cape pretty much joined and was instantly put into the Kingmaker position because the rest of the faction had been picked off, making it all but impossible for the 4th Floor to pull off a win, and leaving a solo Cereza/capefeather to finish out the game. In the end, the substitution worked out pretty nicely, as it meant that cape was on IRC (which Cereza usually wasn’t) to negotiate in the end.
Objection
Ok, gonna lead this one off with an apology. Misspelling bipolar was definitely one of the more prominent host errors in the game, and we of course feel pretty awful about it. In the end, he wasn’t ever mistargeted as a result of the error in the earlygame, and the Split pretty much managed to work out the problem, since he became confirmed as a 4th Floor member.
No objections about activity. When he idled his vote it was because of being a Negative Mayor, and there was never really any reason to fight the votes he took part in. He was killed before any real vote shenanigans could take place between the three factions, which is kind of regrettable.
ginganinja
ginga spent a pretty significant part of his time in the game complaining, both to the hosts and publicly, about how awful his role was. While it was annoying, it also meant that Life (the Drug Dealer neutral) went and asked him about it. Then, Life posted a log of the conversation in the co-inspection Quicktopic thread, to try and get ginga inspected. This meant that when Da Letter El ragequit like a foo and sent ginga his role PM, it ended up with ginga finding out that Life was the second Neutral.
That was pretty much the highlight of what ginga managed to do leading up to the Split. When the Split came, danmantincan, the amnesiaic inspector whose results were revealed on death, happened to die right after inspecting ginga. And so ginga thought he was dead, since he apparently doesn’t actually read the updates at all.
After that, though, ginga took some good initiative and started leading the 4th Floor Patients along with Crux. The two of them did a solid job while they were alive, but were also two pretty big targets within their faction. In the end, they both got killed off and the 4th Floor fell apart.
Like a lot of other players, ginga was subject to some moling. askaninjask, who was a leader for the 3rd Floor, moled him for a while. Which included aska actually walking ginga through how to make an IRC channel, which was equal parts painful and hilarious to watch, as it revealed more than half of the 4th Floor to aska. As a suggestion to everyone, don’t ask other players in a mafia game to show you how to do stuff on IRC. Find one of the non-players or something, since they won’t try to trick you at all.
billymills
billy was kind of a let down in this game, since he never really made any major contributions. In his defense, his role wasn’t something that could be majorly effective in the game. Sadly, that was kind of calculated, since it was somewhat expected that he would be (annoyingly) targeted purely because he was billymills, and we didn’t want to give him a massively important role to the Patients and risk it being killed or over-targeted for a stupid reason (which did sort of happen, as the Staff chose to redirect him multiple times).
Like it was said in the Roles section, the role billy was landed with was probably one of the worst in the game, since it wasn’t really random, despite saying it was, and with little to no way to verify otherwise. As a result, the role ended up having a few notable impacts on the game. One was Night 1, when he unintentionally saved askaninjask from suiciding. And he also managed to Hook Pidge on the Night he was killing, which saved Cereza, who had idled.
Trying to lead the village initially was just a joke, though it did add to the fun off all the potential village leaders.
Aura Guardian
AG was one of the four people to attempt to lead the village in-thread, though he ended up being beaten out by Da Letter El, of course. After that, AG was active enough in lynch votes, while he idled his Night action, saving it until the right moment.
AG was a pretty big part of Night 5, since it was when he finally used his action, Hooking all players with lower priority than his Global Hook (which was a pretty fair amount). Of course, this ended up not working out ideally for AG and his faction, as their remaining leader was killed in the process, and AG was pretty much as a Vanillager afterward.
It’s disappointing that AG didn’t really step up after Crux’s death, since he could have really helped his faction out. And the fact that he was a Vanillager would mean that another faction would have to forgo killing off a power role in order to take out the leader.
Getting himself godkilled by breaking a persuasion was a pretty bold move on AG’s part, since it essentially handed the 3rd Floor the win by keeping askaninjask alive. Had he not done that, it’s not really sure what the final outcome would have been. but a Staff win would have been much more likely.
The Staff
The Staff definitely had a rough game, and that’s putting it kindly. The game design was purposely set up to favor the Patients pre-Split, there’s no question about that, but the Staff definitely made some questionable, if not bad, moves throughout the entire game.
The Staff roles were purposely given to some of the newer players, since having a mafia faction with some inexperienced people helps those newer players get better by being able to watch others. It also gives them a united faction to discuss stuff with. Unfortunately, we pretty much went overboard with this, with four players being first-time Mafia members, and one player being pretty drastically new to mafia as a whole.
One of the hosts’ issues with the Staff, though it ended up not being a problem, was that some of the Staff members were pretty obnoxiously vocal in the public channel, and a few times it seemed so bad that someone could have potentially drawn a conclusion that they were a united faction. “Chumminess leads to scumminess” was one of the many host mantras during the game.
Flamestrike
Flamestrike was definitely the MVP of the Staff, without question. He was active and usually was the voice of reason on the Staff, stopping the other members from making some rather poor decisions on multiple occasions, and pointing out that some of their theories about the game were pretty crazy on others. Using his lynch stop ability so early was kind of regrettable, but it worked out pretty well since it essentially saved bearsfan from being lynched for two Days, since Da Letter El was a much bigger target Day 2.
The fake role PM he put together was good, since it kept him under the radar in the earlygame. He made an effort to mole the 3rd Floor later on, but got outed, which put an end to that. But he did a good job at helping with coordinating the Staff’s targets, and certainly never hindered the faction.
Walrein
Walrein had requested to be mafia, and we gave him what he wanted, since we were looking to have some new people on the Staff. Walrein was a good Staff member in that he was probably one of the most active players in the game, but he tended to make incorrect assumptions (and was usually very sure of himself in these cases), and also had some questionable targeting choices. He was pretty massively affected by Cereza’s trolling about being another Wolf, and he was all but convinced that zorbees was also a neutral. The worst choice of the game, by far, was when he submitted makiri’s action, choosing to inspect in the endgame instead of persuade. Madness.
Walrein’s fake role PM was written well, but claiming yourself as a BPV with nothing else just reeks of scumminess, so a poor decision there.
Early on, he was pretty much eclipsed by Ditto, who was in command of the Staff at that point. As the game went on, Walrein became much more vocal in the Staff’s decision-making process, for better or worse. The biggest thing he did was constantly harass the hosts asking if all acitons had been submitted (this started after Chenn’s failure to submit an action Night 2).
Another of Walrein’s issues was that he was one of the Staff that was entirely too chummy in the public channel. Do what you want in the mafia channel, but keep it down when it’s public. Also, he made a comment along the lines of “die staff scum” directed at bearsfan in a public area, which is pretty much along the same lines. Fortunately for Walrein, he was too new for anyone to have a real read on his play style, so it ended up not really hurting him.
bearsfan092
Handicapable was bears’ second mafia game, and, unfortunately, it didn’t really go too well for him. After writing a serviceable fake role PM (despite not using one of the safeclaims), he made the error of sending the wrong version of the PM to Da Letter El, and the one he sent didn't’ contain any bold words. This, of course, instantly outed him as mafia and there wasn’t much he could do about it.
After that, it was pretty much just a waiting game for bears to get killed. The Day 2 lynch of DLE certainly prolonged his life, but, in the end, he was pretty much finished in the game on Day 1. He went along with the decisions made by the more experienced players, which is what’s generally expected of new people.
Something good (well, good in the sense that it helped the Staff, but not really “good” in that it was a horrible game-breaking moment) that came out of bears being a confirmed Staff member so early on was that, when DLE went and lost his mind, he willingly handed over his complete spreadsheet and list of the full text of all Patient role PMs directly to bears. So there’s that.
CHENN -> makiri
CHENN wrote a pretty solid fake, and going with a backup inspector claim was definitely a good move, especially since it fit perfectly with his actual role, which gave him an inspection every Night if he wanted. He was a bit too friendly with other Staff members in the public channel, but it didn’t really hurt him in the end.
CHENN’s pretty much went along with what the leaders of the Staff (whoever they happened to be at the time) asked. CHENN’s only real failing was inactivity (due to vacation). Night 2 he failed to submit an action, which hurt the Staff somewhat. Failure to submit actions wasn’t really a problem after that, thanks to Walrein. But the Night 2 idle pretty much led to CHENN getting subbed out for makiri.
makiri was never hugely involved in the game, but he was active enough to work, or at least not quite idle enough to merit another sub (which would have just been infuriating). The combination of CHENN’s fake and makiri’s relative non-presence actually kept him out of harm’s way until Night 6, when he was finally taken out.
Ditto
When Ditto was put on the Staff he was expected to be one of the leaders, and he delivered in that sense. He was one of the leading voices early on in the Staff, which is what an experienced player should be. Publicly, Ditto was one of the people who took part in the race to be village leader, a good thing for a mafia member to be. But, of course, he was beaten out by Da Letter El.
Now, Ditto’s failing really came in that he was determined to lead the Patients by having an easily verifiable role and then gathering claims once he had proven himself. And the most obvious choice for that would be Announcer. Unfortunately, the Announcer was kingofkongs, not Ditto. So when Ditto claimed Announcer publicly it made for some very awkward tension in the Staff channel.
The fake that went along with his claim was decent enough, but the problem was mostly that KoK died right off the bat, so if anyone ever tried to re-challenge the Announcer claim Ditto was out of luck. What did him in, however, was a chat with ginganinja after the Split, in which Ditto came off as scummy, which led the 4th Floor to rally against him in the lynch, and the 3rd Floor wasn’t far behind.
kingofkongs
KoK was a Dick.
Well, Dickens, at least. KoK was another first-time-mafia placed on the Staff (also by request). And he really managed to hurt his faction more than help it.
When the Staff realized that they weren’t going to get a sixth safeclaim, KoK pretty much decided he was going to “take the bullet” for the team and pick a non-safeclaim to use for his fake role PM. And he somehow landed on bipolar disorder, an exceptionally well-known disorder, and decided to make himself a priority-changer. While the ability claim was fine, that was where his fake stopped being acceptable. The format of the PMs in the game was missed, which was particularly rough. In the ability line, he put periods outside of quotes, which was not the case in any of the nine PMs we was able to look at (three samples in the OP, plus the six Staff PMs), and no amount of telling him it was incorrect ever got him to notice the periods. There were a few other inconsistencies, but the periods outside of quotes was just offensive.
His bipolar claim, of course, met instant trouble because the actual bipolar disorder claimed as well. However, the error in Objection’s PM meant that the double-claim was a bit of a toss-up. It ended up being mostly remedied by the fact that KoK was killed early on by Quagsires, and thus revealed as Staff, of course.
As an Announcer, KoK of course wanted to be able to use the easy claim. Unfortunately, Ditto kind of stole it from him by claiming as Announcer publicly first. So, of course, KoK was then responsible for Announcing whatever Ditto needed said to prove himself. That would have been fine, except KoK failed to actually submit anything for the Announcement on Night 1. Because we’re kind hosts (and the Staff was getting pretty fucked at the time) it ended up getting added, despite never being formally submitted. But really, now.
The Dickens was another mess on KoK’s part. For whatever reason, KoK was convinced that he was going to be inspected Night 1, and used his ability on himself, even though the “orders” were to use it on Ditto. It didn’t matter in the end, since, of the two info roles used on Ditto Night 1, one wouldn’t have been blocked by the Dickens (Nightmare Jigglypuff’s Track/Watch) and the other ended up failing because half of the Neutrals’ co-inspection was Hooked.
KoK didn’t submit any actions at all for Night 2 (he was on a cruise or something at that point), but it was pretty irrelevant, since he was already guaranteed to die Night 2 via Quagsires’ prior attack. Had he not been killed, there’s really no telling what he would have done, but it probably wouldn’t have been great.
Overall, KoK really suffered from the fact that he made extremely rash decisions without adequately consulting the other Staff members. At one point, he managed to take a log about him making a fake PM and send it to Da Letter El, which was pretty ridiculous as misplays go. Had KoK just slowed down a LOT, and kept a more open channel of communication with the more level-headed players it might have gone better for him.
The Neutrals
Da Letter El
DLE’s play in this game was pretty much the thing most worth talking about it. He went from the obvious choice for game MVP to an absolute failure in pretty much nothing flat. It was pretty mind-boggling. We wanted a very capable person to be in charge of this role, since any Wolf needs to be able to rely on himself, but also wanted to make sure it wasn’t someone who would be seen as an obvious candidate for a Wolf. With him leading the village to victory in the NOC game still relatively fresh in everyone’s mind, DLE seemed like a pretty great choice for a Wolf.
Right off the bat, DLE went for the highly aggressive approach and tried to lead the village, counting on his Mole PM to guard him from anyone trying to verify his claim. He was up against Ditto, Aura Guardian, and billymills (though he wasn’t really serious). For whatever reason, presumably the fact that DLE was pretty forthcoming with his claim of ADD/Hooker, DLE came out on top and promptly started collecting claims.
Once he had started collecting claims, DLE had two (or three, depending on how you look at it) good targets almost immediately. A mistake meant that bearsfan was outed as Staff, and then the double-claim of bipolar from Objection and kingofkongs (both of whom had inconsistencies in their PMs, one of which was due to host error) meant that both of them were suspicious, and one was Staff.
Interestingly enough, DLE felt that Objection was more trustworthy than KoK, so he had KoK pegged as the Staff member. However, because Objection’s ability gave him an auto-kill in the event that he was lynched, DLE actually was not opposed to “mislynching” Objection, since it would be in his favor, obviously, to get that extra kill. Thoughts like these were definitely some of the high points in DLE’s scheming, since it looked like he might actually be able to plan enough that he could pull off one of those notoriously difficult Wolf wins.
Really, during Night 0 and Day 1, DLE made a whole bunch of good moves that were laying the groundwork for him to control the Patients and remain in control for a while. The Split would have certainly been an enormous wrench in his plans, but there was no way for him to plan for that, since no one knew it was coming, obviously.
At some point or another DLE was the one who noticed the spacing inconsistency in the role PMs. Some poor decisions were made and it ended up with the accidental cleaning of half of the Patients. But since DLE died pretty soon after that, it didn’t really make a difference.
Night 1 was the beginning of the end.
DLE did some decent coordination of the Night actions for the Patients Night 1 (there were quite a few Idles, but those were all generally unavoidable because of how a lot of the roles worked). He tried to abuse iiMK’s copy role by having the Suicidal BG, Inspector, and mystery role all target it, which didn’t really work out so well, since the mystery role was SG. However, it did tell DLE that Pidge’s role was SG. He kept that to himself, however, so Pidge remained in the dark about his ability for a good while longer.
Two actions that DLE didn’t have control over, however, were Crux’s Alliance Check and GoldenKnight’s Question Ask/Lie Check. DLE did receive claims from them, however, so he knew what was coming when he got the question from GoldenKnight, and knew not to lie, since it would be revealed. However, he faltered here, since he didn’t think that his Mole PM of ADD would block the Question Asker, so while he phrased his answer so that it wouldn’t show up as a lie if it were used on his Psychopath PM, there were some lies that popped up based on the ADD PM, which made it look really suspicious.
Crux, however, was what really did him in. The Insane Alliance Check meant that, when inspecting the role of ADD, it turned up as “Foe.” And the moment Crux saw “Foe” as his result for DLE and had gotten “no paranoids” confirmed, he led the lynch on DLE.
This is where it turned shitty. The most upsetting part of the whole DLE ordeal was that, prior to the Night 1 actions, DLE had considered that Crux might have been paranoid. However, seeing the line of log that said “no paranoids” made him completely panic. And that was game over.
For no reason that anyone can figure out, DLE sent a copy of his full role PM, the Wolf one, to ginganinja. That right there would have been more than enough to end him. Had he not done that, the other people who questioned the sanity of Crux’s role would have probably been enough to save him. But a word from ginga would have been plenty to kill him.
Oh, but he didn’t stop there. No.
DLE proceeded to make one of the most offensive and gamebreaking moves he possibly could have, and proceeded to give the Staff (via bearsfan, the confirmed Staff member) access to not only his spreadsheet, but the full text of every single claim he had received as village leader. This pretty much gave the Staff a ridiculous edge over the Patients, as they now knew almost everything about every role. The fact the Staff had been playing poorly overall up to that point made it even more infuriating, since it gave the Staff a ridiculous sense of accomplishment that was completely undeserved.
DLE’s intention for giving the Staff the information was because he wanted to give them a fighting chance or some nonsense, since the ratio of Patients to Staff was pretty skewed (roughly 3:1 in a 1v1 game on Smogon is pretty overwhelmingly Village-favoring). Of course, he did this without knowing about the Split that would happen the next Day cycle. Because of who DLE had shared his spreadsheet with prior to this, it essentially meant that almost every player in the game ended up with a near-complete list of roles by the midpoint of the game, which was insane, and contributed enormously to so many of the roles not being able to function like they were meant to.
After DLE gave the Staff access to all of his info the game was actually almost canceled, because of how broken it was going to inevitably become with all of the role information so freely accessible. As it ended up, the Split somewhat fixed the massive unbalance created by DLE’s antics. But regardless of whether or not it was fixed, DLE’s actions on Day 2 were pretty much completely unforgivable.
LifeAdmiral -> Paperblade
Life got the role because it was expected he would do a pretty good job of talking with a lot of the players in the game, which was absolutely necessary for the Drug Dealer role to even have a chance at success. Sadly, Life wasn’t really happy with his role initially, as he was a neutral without being a “harmless” neutral. The most frustrating thing about his complaining was that he pretty much identified the way the role was supposed to play (loose alliances with everyone) in his rant, but didn’t seem to care.
Later on, Life got a lot more into his role, which was nice. He sort of slightly missed the mark on the role’s purpose (it wasn’t necessarily an “equalizer,” but it certainly required a close finish to have any chance at victory). Life was pretty open about being a Neutral, telling people about the Steroid ability, but keeping Persuade under wraps. He did well enough with laying the groundwork for the role, even though all of the people he used Steroids on ended up dying (and thus not contributing to his win condition).
Life ended up asking to be subbed out, so Paperblade picked up where he had left off.
Paperblade got to work after that, trying to get some good targets Roided, since it wasn’t looking like he’d be able to pull off the win at that point. But due to a combination of good choices and negotiating he ended up giving Steroids to people who survived to the end. Really, the only massive misplays Paperblade made was persuading Pidge to vote for askaninjask, which would have killed off one of the people who had received Steroids, and then trying to use Steroids on aska a second Night in a row when there were other targets still alive who had yet to receive Steroids.