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Big Multifaction Recruitment Mafia 2 - Freelancer Boogaloo - Game Over, Freelancers + Electric + DBD Win

Gg all, especially shout out to me teammates who carried I didn’t do much.

I didn’t like into the small details of the game but just going to offer a few thoughts.

First off appreciation to Sam, the game obviously had a lot of thought go into it and while I think it scaled out of control mid to late game I did think the early game server divide helped solve some long running smogon oc problems re: balancing player agency, so good job and fair credit for that.

I agree with some stuff that was said before but not gonna list it all again like complexity and stuff, but just going to say I do think that like - there’s a problem sometimes where a host includes something a lot of the playerbase knows is a bad idea, even if they are very experienced but it’s missed because usually one guy on his own isn’t good at checking himself. For example in my game I got carried away with npcs, here Sam lost the plot with ensures, and if I’m fully honest I think even his pulled back “if I ran again idea” is potentially going to make his next game unplayable because even +1 priority for every action is insane power.

That being said, I think like a lot of games would end up being more well rounded if we started working together even if you main host. 4 eyes help check better than 2 and even the best host in the world has biases whether it’s making a game too complex etc, if the goal is to please a playerbase then I do encourage people going forward to try work together. It also obviously lightens the work load.

Aside from that I do think smogon oc has a host etiquette problem that doesn’t exist in noc. If you are hosting a game, please realise that you are hosting, not playing. People will make mistakes and sometimes you want to comment or get involved in discussion but it’s REALLY game damaging to even make light comments because people will read into them. So I would just say to people try your absolute bestest to not comment on things even if you feel like a game isn’t going how you want or you disagree with the players in your game!
 
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the-office-handshake.jpg
 
So my role was designed as a PD point printer and I was one of the richest people in the game for a while… and then I died because I forgot to buy an easily affordable status heal. Great job me, real big W. Imagine being able to afford insurance in the American healthcare system and then forgetting to use it lmao

Anyway, the next NOC game (designed and hosted by yours truly) needs a little more time to be ironed out with Celever and then approved, and it’s also the holidays so nobody’s in a huge rush. As such, we’re not doing the instant transition between games Circus has been used to this year, but signups should hopefully be posted in the next few days.
 
Duskfall98 said:
Aside from that I do think smogon oc has a host etiquette problem that doesn’t exist in noc. If you are hosting a game, please realise that you are hosting, not playing. People will make mistakes and sometimes you want to comment or get involved in discussion but it’s REALLY game damaging to even make light comments because people will read into them. So I would just say to people try your absolute bestest to not comment on things even if you feel like a game isn’t going how you want or you disagree with the players in your game!
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Big agree
 
Water Discord Link - Vanity search to your heart's content!

Ok I've had some time to stew on my thoughts a bit more. This was actually my first time leading a faction in a multifac game, and despite the fact that it could not have come at a worse time, I had a lot of fun. WP to the winners, especially Electric for their comeback victory! (I'm also just glad that one of our allies won; Fire + FL victory would have been the bad ending for sure)

To key everyone in on the player selection process here, I was originally supposed to be DLE's role (Manaphy), and he was supposed to be Blastoise. Because he was busy during C0 and my own hubris in not telling Sam of my own schedule, we were swapped. My early-game strategy was just to get another old / sweat on the team, so someone would be available to plan actions when I would inevitably be unavailable for the faction leader-level planning ~C3-4 (exams). I thankfully lucked out in that regard, and I'd like to think that Water didn't do too bad for itself, given our (interesting) role recruitment choices. Hindsight being 20/20 being Manaphy would definitely have been better paired with my exam schedule / general playing philosophy and personality, but I'm glad I had a chance to lead a faction for the first time.

I hope everyone enjoyed my antics after I got outed by DLE; it was a lot of fun threatening to recruit everyone and being the "bad guy" for once. I hope everyone also enjoyed our player subbing antics - I think my slot had 6 people by the time I died (if we count all of the joke FL subs)? We didn't really expect the stealth vote subs to work, but thought it would be funny anyways and went for it.

I'm gonna repeat some of my general thoughts w/r/t priority wars and comms here, but:
1) I will stand by my point that restricted inter-mafia comms in a game of this scale and complexity were more detrimental than beneficial. I endorse the general premise (getting more players involved in comms), but taking time zone differences into account it was just too clunky. IMO the best alternative would be that if two faction players "establish contact" (i.e. are in the same role server and know the other is on a faction) they should be able to communicate with a small group containing both faction leaders and "linked" players (if that makes any sense).

2) Actions wholly centered around Speed / Priority actions means that the game is played in terms how many ensures / speed boosts a faction has / are utilized, and this takes the focus away from the actions themselves. I, for one, think that ensure is so powerful that it should be lumped in with a BPV / LPV in terms of frequency or ease of acquisition.

3) The aspects felt too strong but I acknowledge that is more of a "vibes" thing on my end. I also did not enjoy how the only counterplay to a watcher was via speed boost/prio up; it felt a bit too clunky.

Finally, I'd like to give some shout-outs to each of my teammates and some others:
C0:
AligningStar - I am genuinely so sorry that you got randed recruit + immediately outed; I can tell that you were excited to play, but you got really unlucky. I very much appreciated your early activity, and completely understand how being an early kill can be so boring.

CrreamyKitty - My early-game comms master! Prior to ECat's recruitment, CK was the Grass-Water link b/w Former and I. Our time zone difference was a bit frustrating to work around, but I know that you were trying your best, and that’s what’s important. Without you our early actions would have been even WORSE, so thank you!

C1:
Ditto - Thanks for being so chill about being recruited and for helping me with questions here and there

C2:
Thetwinmasters - The undisputed GOAT. Twin single-handedly took over negotiations+aspect planning once my exams were in full swing, and he is the sole reason why we lasted so long. I'm sorry that I didn't put us in a great position by the time you joined the team (e.g. recruiting Maushold and DLE in part because I went "fuck it" and decided to go for the funniest outcome), but you made the most out of the hand you were dealt, and actually gave us a slim shot at winning at one point. Excellent work!

Clouds - The mafia champion proved his worth when he got immediately outed by GCat and then managed to convince the FLs to shift the vote off of him to a different target. I think you promptly died afterwards, but you definitely pulled your weight for the 2 cycles you were alive.

Da Letter El - I'm glad that we finally got to play together, even if it was through my madman action of recruiting an outed rigged water alias. Hopefully the curse is broken(?) and I can play more games on the same team with sunny004's bottom girl!

SSep (lol)
Sam summarized the situation fairly well in post #189, but I will provide a bit more context. I knew that the inspectors were doing an inspect chain C2 to clear themselves. I knew SSep's role (either I inspected it myself or Grass passed it to me, I forget which) beforehand, so in order to subvert this + hopefully gain a mole, I recruited SSep's alias while framing it to appear as a freelancer. This succeeded, so LN believed that USN was the last remaining non-FL inspector; LN then reached out to the four "confirmed" FL inspectors to coordinate. However, SSep (either because he was truly clueless or salty b/c he got recruited), said this, and shared the water discord invite:
Mast a Crysm — Yesterday at 9:48 PM
Nah I’m recruited
Got recruited yesterday
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I believe Sam's retcon was justified because I had already known about SSep's PM beforehand and because SSep's throwing ruined what otherwise would have been a successful mole. Other points re: host intervention aside, I believe retcons should be reserved as an extraordinary / emergency measure to preserve the integrity of a game, and this was one of the rare scenarios where such measures were actually merited.

Other teams:
Former and the Grasses - I'm glad that I eventually just went "fuck it" and fully revealed both teams to each other. Once we began working as one cohesive unit the kills ramped up significantly, and I think that is what gave both of us (and especially you) a fighting chance to begin with. Sorry for screwing up the C1 joint kill; Mekkah I think you would have been the rand target. Diff timeline, I guess.

Electric Team - Very well-deserved! Y'all got totally boned at the beginning; ironically, I think that fact is part of why Grass didn't just wipe you out mid-game. Shout-outs specifically to rssp1 and bluedoom (and a fairy before you got sniped) for being chill af negotiators.

NightEmerald - I forgive you for nearly shattering my dreams this game; I get why you had to do it. But I was still upset ;(

LonelyNess and the FLs - WP, I still do think that the aspects were a bit too strong, but this game was whack in a lot of other ways and y'all did a good job sorting through it. LN you did semi-spew your un-recruitable status to me when I was making jokes of trying to find you, but I don't think that that was a big deal in the end.

Finally, a huge shout-out to UncleSam for putting in an insane amount of work to host this game. I think the host critiques that others have posted are valid, but they should be taken as constructive feedback that can (hopefully) be implemented iteratively if/when a similar version of this game is hosted in the future. Hiccups aside, I did genuinely have fun playing this game, so it was a success in my mind. Just dear god please reduce the ensures.

Anyway to reiterate, I had a lot of fun as a first-time faction leader; hopefully I get the chance to do it again soon (but not during my exams!)
 
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Written Postgame

Having had some time to reflect, I wanted to post a few amalgamated thoughts before this game was too far in the rear-view mirror for me. I don't plan on posting comments for every single player (though we did discuss every individual player in the video postgame, which NE posted above), but more wanted to discuss how the game went, some highlights / lowlights, and general design thoughts.

Game Overview:
  • Cycle 0
    • GMax chose to join the Roleblockers server and Celever chose to join the ISJ server, while most other things were set in stone for this cycle. Most players simply submitted rands for their actions and waited for more interesting things to happen, but, as expected, the Framers ended up having zero non-Freelancers join the server, which they kept to themselves in order to avoid the mafias purposefully targeting their server. Dak claimed there were 11 in the ISJ server to try to mess with things, I'm still not quite sure why but it led to an enormous amount of chatter / calcing from the other servers. Blazade claimed to Former and got recruited to Grass, and Former also randed Adam from the SG server, which ended up being two crucial recruitments for them. Water randed AligningStars from the inspector server and CrreamyKitty from the mayor server, while Electric and Fire picked up Dak (who immediately claimed to Celever) and NE (who was the rigged Fire recruit), respectively. Poor Jalmont got randed by multiple inspectors this cycle, while most other inspectors saw little of interest (although Grass did inspect Sacramento, which directly led to Realiti's recruitment later on). Water inspected the framed Meowstic PM on Bass / Harrisburg, which directly led to the mafia never realizing what Bass' role was for the entirety of the game.
  • Cycle 1
    • While Dak and Celever clamored to vote out Night Emerald (who got outed via Lechen inspecting him and LonelyNess making the curious choice to out an allied faction member), Night Emerald made the choice to out DLE as Madison the rigged Water recruit (who was not yet recruited to Water). This resulted in DLE outing Sunny as Blastoise, then being watched endlessly just in case Water did decide to recruit him later on. Neither of these vote options was particularly good for the Freelancers, so they ended up voting out poor Jalmont. The mafias killed FrostWandered / Blissey, the Status Healer + BPV, and SirFish, one of the ISJ Freelancers. The former of these roles I accidentally flipped publicly and retconned to being an innocent child BPV, chalk this up as Host Mistake 1 in the log (there were several, sadly but predictably). Grass recruited Realiti / Sacramento the ensurer and ElectricityCat / Concord the BG + RB. Water recruited Ditto / Atlanta out of the ISJ server and Phoenix / SSep, which I ended up retconning / force subbing out during Cycle 2 due to this user effectively refusing to join Water and continuing to play as a freelancer during Cycle 2. Electric picked up A Fairy, their rigged recruit, while Fire picked up Frankfort / Gragson, the Framer Mimikyu who ended up having one of the most broken roles in the game.
  • Cycle 2
    • The Framers were unhappy that one of their own had been picked up but Fire decided to out Gragson in order to help them unite. I do think that Fire was treated unfairly by the Freelancers later on considering it is very unlikely the Freelancers would've been in any kind of position to win the game had this not happened, but more on that later. Water tried to Frame AligningStars to avoid the inspect chain strategy, but unfortunately it was high-speed aska who was inspecting him which circumnavigated the Frame. This resulted in an easy vote on Aligning / Water. The Inspectors and Framers both united, because once SSep was retconned to be Freelancers the Inspectors (and force subbed for Redless), the Inspectors basically had a free unification. Water recruited Oklahoma City / Clouds, Santa Fe / Twin, and decided to just recruit DLE / Madison anyway so that they could all go down with the ship together. Grass recruited Columbia / Internet (who unfortunately swapped into this alias slot at mach speed due to aska using a secondary ability ensurer on his already-ensured ally switch role), in a situation that unfortunately devolved for Grass come the next cycle due to aska and LN not figuring out what happened. Grass also picked up Providence / SaberSlasher11 to get more kill power, Fire picked up Montpelier / TheChickening, and Electric picked up Bismarck / Rssp1, who had the most broken role in the game. In terms of deaths, Celever died to the joint Grass + Fire kill this cycle, after being inspected by Grass during Cycle 1.
  • Cycle 3
    • This begins the cycles where there were way too many kills flying around. Internet / Columbia was voted out because the Freelancers didn't understand what happened with his Ally Switching with Joey and didn't realize that it was a 50 / 50 between him and Joey. Honestly the FLers deserved to misvote here given their other information, but can't argue with the result. Fire and Grass managed to kill both Dak (ensured) and A Fairy (via burn), which started the endless cycle of boosting all kills from this point on. The mafias killed four Freelancers at high priority in what would become a trend that was oft-memed about (for good reason). Finally, Dead By Daylight died due to not BGing himself to heal his own status. Fire picked up Joey / Lincoln and Bluedoom / Little Rock was picked up by Electric in the last recruitments of the game. The Roleblockers (thanks to Mekkah with his dying breathe), mayors (zorbees + Skipper), and BGs (literally only Tommy after Joey was recruited, lol) united this cycle, while ISJ 'united' due to being wiped the past cycle. That left only the Safeguards as the last holdouts.
  • Cycle 4
    • I think this was where a lot of people started getting frustrated by the endless ensures effectively reducing action planning to 'which actions can we boost to absurd priority, while everything else doesn't matter'. It also began the long string of Bismarck / Clefable being complete unkillable. The Safeguards united due to the rest of the Freelancers figuring out that Laurel had to be with them, given other results. Adam did a commendable job of moling right through Cycle 4, however, and was definitely the player who tricked them the best. Night Emerald finally died to a joint kill this cycle, while the Freelancers dismantled the strong core of Water roles in Santa Fe / Twin and Atlanta / Ditto (technically swapped in terms of aliases at time of death) via high-priority ISJing with Yeti / Jackson (who had copied the OKC Maushold role, including the ISJ primary ability) and voting out Santa Fe. Three more Freelancers died at various stages of priority, including their last Bodyguard, Duskfall98.
  • Cycle 5
    • This was the critical cycle where Fire stabbed Grass, effectively making a play to win with the Freelancers and wipe out Water. GMax mentioned this earlier, but I think the Freelancers should've had to commit to a vote on Water to get them to do this. The Freelancers basically said 'thanks for stabbing your other ally' while not really committing much of anything on their end to that cause and continuing to straddle the fence of working with Fire / Electric. Electric ended up openly working with Water anyway, so I do think this was a questionable strategic call vs. wiping out Water. Freelancers killed Blazade and voted out Saberslasher from Grass this cycle, while killing ECat and Clouds via delayed-frostbite + Frame and effectively killing Lansing / CrreamyKitty by Sleeping + Framing + Frostbiting him. Fire failed a kill on Madison and failed to re-burn Montgomery this cycle due to Feint being blocked by a +3 Bene SG on Montgomery that was largely unintentional - the double-Ben SG + primary ensure combo was discovered on accident, and basically lost Fire the game because their +3 Feint suddenly wasn't nearly as effective. Yet another in a long line of bad breaks for Fire. Four Freelancers died once again this cycle, and the Freelancers misunderstood an answer I gave (though my answer was accurate) and lost some ensures during Cycle 6 as a result. I will commend the Freelancer actions during Cycle 4 and 5 outside of this, however, and will note that they really turned things around after a questionable Cycle 3 action plan. They really started using their frames and frostbites effectively and were locking out more and more mafia aliases from healing, and simultaneously were juggling priority boosting with their available roleblocker tools really well. Alice, Yeti, LN, Bass, Dusk, SB., aria, and many others were actively contributing to their planning, and they really came together as a team during this time. While I think they were very overly sour about certain things, I also need to give them props for pulling things back and really playing well during this time to give themselves a good chance going into endgame.
  • Cycle 6
    • This was the height of the kill insanity, with 11 players dying this cycle. On the one hand I wanted the game to be fairly kill-happy in order to keep things short and avoid the game dragging on endlessly, as MRM1 did. The mafia killed 5 of the remaining 10 Freelancers at high priority, including all of the remaining inspectors outside of the swapped one onto Harrisburg / Bass. They left Jackson / Yeti's purchased BPV intact, however, which was crucial for the endgame as she was their best role remaining. Twin organized a destruction of the Fire faction with Grass and Electric that I really do not think Grass should have gone along with - I understand that Grass was mad about the Cycle 5 stab, but if Grass had killed a Freelancers instead of chickening Grass probably wins this game (and Fire very possibly does as well). Anyway, Sunny dies to the vote this cycle due to Gragson / Frankfort surviving (the only Fire survivor, due to how busted Disguise was). Yet another in a long line of things Fire did to save the Freelancers that were not repaid in any way.
  • Cycle 7
    • This was basically the endgame, with all factions still having a chance of winning. Twin tried to (and almost did) organize a complete Freelancer wipe this cycle, but the BPV on Jackson meant that this plan would always fail. Skipper managed to rogue the Water kill while Harrisburg / Bass was Leech Seeded, resulting in his death on C8. Lechen died to Frostbite while AG was framed + frostbitten, and two of the Framelancers died in Alice + aria. Finally, it initially appeared that Gragson would survive this cycle, but the Freelancers killed her and Fire by ensuring Electric's abilities. The Freelancers almost lost themselves as a result of this, but managed to Frame AG and steal his vote to survive by a single vote and kill Twin / eliminate Water alongside Fire.
  • Cycle 8
    • It was Aura Guardian + Adam + Former against the three remaining Freelancers (Yeti / Skipper / Bass, who was on death's door from Leech Seed) and the two remaining Electric members (Bluedoom + Rssp1). Rssp1 came in huge in this endgame, planning actions for both remaining factions against Grass and coming up with a nearly unbeatable plan. Former / Grass came up with a really, really good plan as well, and I want to commend them for sticking it out in what was a really tough slog of a game. They ended up losing the vote onto Adam by the vote tiebreaker, which the FL + Electric only even got to due to Clefable's being so broken that it could revive A Fairy AND Fairy could use abilities / votes that cycle, which was better than the PD revive ability and wasn't what I intended when designing it (I went with what was written vs. what I intended in all cases throughout the game, however).
  • Cycle 9
    • Game was basically over, technically Electric could've taken a solo win if they wanted but Rssp1 wanted to win with the Freelancers and so he, Bluedoom, and Yeti (the last surviving Freelancer) were able to stall out Grass and win via the vote. DBD won as well as a of the neutrals having dumb win conditions.

Overview / Thoughts:
  • It might be obvious from the above summary, but a lot of things went wrong this game. I do think that the design was really detailed, intricate, and interesting, but many players simply didn't want to engage with it at the level needed to in order to even begin to play. This should've been obvious given the state of the forum in 2024 / post-revival, and in the future I will make sure that my games have significantly reduced action complexity in order to improve accessibility. I do think that the general framework of this game 'worked' in terms of panning out about as I expected, at least. I listed a number of simplifications I would make already so I won't re-hash that here.
  • I think it is really unfortunate that the two best players in my opinion (GMax and Twin) ended up on opposing teams and basically focus-fired each other into a mutual loss. It's also unfortunate that DBD won while doing almost nothing and neither of the two neutrals who played the entire game out (Lechen and AG) did. It's also unfortunate that Former and Grass came so close on multiple occasions (deservedly so, as they played their hearts out) only to have it slip away at the very end.
  • I do want to emphasize that I think the FL and Electric were deserving of the win, as many players on both teams played really well.

Specific factions:
  • Grass
    • Poor Former did not want to be Venusaur it turned out, but I didn't know this until after Role PMs were sent out. He played great and basically carried his team the entire game. Blazade knew he wouldn't be that active but helped out when he was active, and Realiti carried the midgame action planning / negotiation stage with Twin. Finally, Adam was the moling MVP this game and I want to give him huge props for how he played as well as how hard his role carried, even though I think he wasn't the most interested in the negotiation / action planning phase of things, which is fine.
  • Water
    • Twin was probably the most involved player in the game in terms of negotiations, and really turned things around for Water after a rough start. If he had arranged for AG to be protected from being framed on Cycle 7 then Water wins this game in a walk and actually gets to pick which of Electric or Grass to win with (it would've been Grass for sure). Sunny was pretty busy but did a commendable job of organizing things throughout the game, DLE did a great job of moling and helping to make sure the SGs were the last group to unite, and everyone ended up being active / chipping in a bit through the midgame as well.
  • Fire
    • Poor GMax got insanely unlucky again and again this game, and I feel really badly about it. I think I probably heard more about the Fire plans than any other faction's throughout this game, and I think that they grasped the intricacies of the design more quickly than anyone, outside of two critical details: the primary SG and inspection bonus interactions. Given the multitude of other things happening, this is a very reasonable oversight and it is unfortunate that the mason factions got punished so hard for missing small things due to their miniscule size. Gragson / Mimikyu was a beast this game, and Night Emerald helped action plan all game and survived all the way to Cycle 4 in spite of being outed by the Freelancers as early as Cycle 1, which was a big accomplishment. Really well played all around to Fire.
  • Electric
    • I think Dak and Celever did a good job of organizing things but kind of disappeared after dying. Fairy stuck around a bit to chat, but really Bluedoom and Rssp1 did most of the lategame action planning that carried the game for them. Rssp1 in particular did a lot of the Freelancer + Electric action planning in the endgame phase against Grass and really surprised me with how well he played. Of course, having the most broken role in the game helped a lot in this regard.
  • Freelancers
    • Oh boy, where to begin. Did they deserve to win? Absolutely, they played tremendously well for long stretches and many players contributed - all of the Framelancers (Alice, Aria, Pidge, Bass, and Yeti) contributed mightily, and LN / SB. from the inspectors formed the basis of the towncore alongside the other two thirds of the Regi trio (HayesL and Duskfall98). I think that dealing with them as a host was less than pleasant at times, but I've been more than guilty of that as a player myself over the years so it is karmic justice in a way. They probably had the most ups and downs of any faction as well as the most varied strategic negotiations, simply because they had so many minds contributing that they were a bit less focused than any other team, both for good and for bad. Overall they played excellently, united quickly, and utilized their tools (particularly the Frames, which everyone maligned at the beginning of the game) to achieve a deserved win.
MVPs:
  • Grass
    • Former and Realiti both carried this team and to give it to just one of them would be a disservice to the other.
  • Water
    • Twin hard carried his team through most of the game and was an absolute beast.
  • Fire
    • GMax almost achieved one of the most impressive carries I've ever seen. It's just really unfortunate (for both him and Twin) that the two most active negotiators were diametrically opposed to one another.
  • Electric
    • Rssp1 played brilliantly and is definitely the reason they won, both role-wise and due to his spectacular play.
  • Freelancers
    • Going to give this to the Framelancers jointly (Aria, Alice, Yeti, Bass, and Pidge). All of them were instrumental to the victory and to give it to just one of them wouldn't feel right. The other Freelancer groups definitely owe this win to them, though the inspectors group was also instrumental to the win.
I want to thank everyone for playing, say sorry for the fact that past Cycle 4 or so the engagement level really fell off due to the action complexity, and express my hope that everyone will feel up to coming back and trying out Multifaction Recruitment Mafia 3 in...about a year or so. Maybe longer. Or never. Hopefully it will re-capture the magic of Cycles 0 - 3.

GG all.
 
UncleSam said:
Water recruited Oklahoma City / Clouds, Santa Fe / Twin, and decided to just recruit DLE / Madison anyway so that they could all go down with the ship together.
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Hell yeah :pimp:

Edit: I've been thinking about this some more.
UncleSam said:
It might be obvious from the above summary, but a lot of things went wrong this game. I do think that the design was really detailed, intricate, and interesting, but many players simply didn't want to engage with it at the level needed to in order to even begin to play. This should've been obvious given the state of the forum in 2024 / post-revival, and in the future I will make sure that my games have significantly reduced action complexity in order to improve accessibility.
Click to expand...
Is there any other possible option besides just dumbing down the complexity? One of the issues that I had with the ruleset was not that it was too complex per se, but rather that it was difficult to comprehend the scope of the rules themselves. I'm not sure if more TL;DR'ing can help fix this problem, but it's interesting food for thought.
 
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i think that two google docs' worth of rules and unique features of the game is daunting to any newcomer or non-sweat to try and understand. a lot of the newbies were happy to be along for the ride but overwhelmed by all the complexities and choices. temple has a long AF op but most of that is pictures and descriptions of the temples, which are a lot easier to parse and fun for people to work together to solve the entrance riddles. here you had to break down each primary's specific interactions and keep track of them all to optimize your strategy.

my other thought is there were simply too many complexities. if there was ONLY a PD shop, for example, and everyone had one action, we would be able to wrap our heads around the PD shop fairly easily. or if there was no PD shop, and just the primaries and everyone's secondaries, we could spend more time on understanding every perk. as it was, well, sam designs games he wants to play, and he wants to play complex and convoluted designs that reward fixating on the rules until you understand how to manipulate the game's specifics to your advantage. unfortunately, the number of other players who actively want to absorb the tomes into their brains is probably a dozen at most, and more people would prefer a less taxing setup.

i am sure you COULD see this game played out by brilliant tactical minds if you could find 50 sams to play it, but we do not have 50 sams who want to make mafia games their second jobs for 3 weeks, so i think future OCs should keep this in mind and focus on one complex gimmick. i also think these overly-complex games lead to sam's complaints about the FLers' negativity. when you have 10 people up at all hours trying to wrap their heads around the setup and then you see 5 of your dudes die anyway because you didn't think about all the wonderful ways the mafia could prio boost around your defenses, you've asked those people to spend those hours on your setup when it feels stacked against them (and sam did think the mafia were most likely to win prior to the game starting). when they start to feel like those hours are worthless due to mechanics, or they struggle to absorb everything they need to absorb, the crankiness sets in.
 
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