Faction designs and Individual Roles/Players
Faction design was really tricky. I wanted largely bottom up mechanical designs that also felt flavorfully resonant. I wanted to give every team something largely the same level of access to basic things like protection or information, or at least justify any asymmetry. I wanted to make every individual role not entirely garbage if left by itself at endgame. And I wanted each faction to feel unique without any one of them doing something obviously broken. It remains to be seen how successful I was at all of that, but I think I came pretty close. The factional abilities were meant to hammer home the flavor and give a one time, uniteractable, undiscoverable edge that enhances the “Big” splashy feeling of the game. One thing I made sure to do was design these so they were often better to use early or at parity, to discourage hoarding. You could gain measurable advantages using them at the right time, but you would have to be careful or social factors could come back to bite you.
Heroes
The Heroes were meant to have strong, straightforward roles, be good at protecting themselves, and be paid off for doing so. Their factional ability, which roleblocked all killers in a cycle, was a little awkward to use, requiring them to anticipate when they were in trouble (which may be why it never got popped), but is the surest possible way to make sure they can cement an advantage. While they were the first to be eliminated, they played exceptionally well and were in my opinion a very strong threat to win the whole game at every moment right up to their elimination at the end of Period 2.
Alice Kazumi - Stocke/Glues two players together/Gains votes when Heroes avoid death/Died C7
Role: This role was well protected, only being exposed to information roles on Cycle 3 when CK was retroactively voted, and for good reason. This target doubling role is really strong when players don’t know about it, and caused a lot of havoc in the early cycles. The fact that it doubles protection meant that I hadn’t considered it a super reliable way to double kills, and in practice this bore out. As people learned what was happening, the double kills disappeared unless backed up by time locks. As for the mayor aspect of this role, I had ruled that if a saved Hero is later revised to not be saved, the vote gain is also revised to not occur. This is because I had designed this role, and indeed, the factional ability, as ways to creatively rack up lots of votes if they really wanted to get after it. Using the double targeting on the Heroes, as opposed to their enemies, would allow you to martyr a killer, double the kill, double the protection, and pick up two votes. If you copied a martyr, you could blank a whole cycle of kills and pick up 4 votes, and because you’re using the martyr it’s difficult to revise this. I envisioned the Heroes as trying to do this as a social favor, figuring out where kills went and offering to “save” other factions, all while picking up an absurd amount of votes in the process and some favor in exchange. It’s difficult to predict exactly how things will go! None of that even remotely happened, and Alice kept a tally of 2-3 votes all game. The ability was largely used to double up on disruption and kills, and largely successful at doing so. If I could change one thing, it would be to not allow Alice to carry the factional kill unless she was the last Hero, to emphasize the support flavor and to limit the damage that could be done by revising the active ability and the kill at the same time.
Player: Alice wasn’t someone I would consider active, but she was a more talkative player than anyone I would consider an idler. She would check in with Twin every now and then and ask what was going on or provide some comments. I hope she had fun playing this game!
CreamyKitty - Link/Inspect+Item Track/Items are Empowered/Died C3
Role: The first of the Inspect roles with mid-endgame utility. I knew that if you could revise inspections and had access to ability checking items, you would get through most of the game in about 5 or 6 cycles. So I tried to offer as much utility to these inspection roles as I could in other contexts. Getting item info is obviously a strong rider, and getting to use items more effectively is good in the mid-endgame. Even this passive is vulnerable to the vote, however, which is what broke up CK’s chain of protection as things retroactively fell apart Cycle 3.
Player: Status: Idler. Not much to say, plenty of players signed up only to probably realize this shit was too crazy for them, and to them I apologize and hope I can meet your needs better in the next game.
Thetwinmasters - Marty McFly/Hook Two Conditional/Passive True Vote Count/Died C6
Role: This was another relatively controversial role. Initially reviewed by Twin as garbage, it was actually very common for the condition (two players targeting a third or one targeting another) to occur. Most coordinated attacks would involve multiple roles or items, and most protection requires someone to target another. This was a real backbreaking role at times, capable of undoing an entire faction’s defensive network if applied correctly or duplicated with Alice’s role. There were a couple of mitigating factors that I had anticipated that never came into play. First, I figured that faction info might be less open in the early cycles as people might be hesitant to cast votes, making surgical application of this role early more difficult. I also assumed that the hook being strong but conditional had additional play in a Time Travel setting. If you find that your two teammates' actions failed and you’re meeting the condition, a single revision can undo that and all of the sudden it’s a blowout in your favor. Twin was often open to inspect but managed to intimidate away the inspectors with his Swagger, so it took a while to figure him out. The passive is a really useful piece of information that basically rounds out the entirety of the time travel nonsense the Heroes have access to (like I said, straightforward roles). Getting up to date vote counts can be suggestive of item use, track scaling mayors on other factions, and outright monitor all transportation time travel if it’s obvious enough. It was well employed in action planning.
Player: Twin was exceptional this game, basically batting solo for the Heroes in negotiation and action planning. Things didn’t work out for the Heroes, but only because they were able to consistently present a strong enough threat to merit action against them. Even then, they were nearly able to beat the odds and make it to the endgame.
StupidFlanders - The Terminator/2xBG+2xDecoy/BPV/Died C3
Role: A workhorse role for the heroes that offers a lot of protection and one extra life that makes their protection chains harder to pick apart. There isn’t really much to say, this role was well protected and got rand targeted by the Villain unblockable kill (more on that later) before again being targeted cycle 3 with vote backup. And probably rightly so, as the defensive options that the heroes have are greatly expanded when The Terminator is on the table.
Player: Status: Idler. And a shame, too. I was really hoping that StupidFlanders would enjoy this one, but I think he was hoping to be the face of negotiations and dropped off quickly when that didn’t happen. I did want to keep some faction mystery at the beginning (even if it couldn’t last more than 2-3 cycles) and this was perhaps an inevitable casualty of that. I hope I can meet your needs better in the next game.
Villains
The Villains, like the Heroes, were meant to have relatively straightforward roles. Unlike the Heroes, a lot of their roles have a controlling element or a uniqueness factor that “feels” villainous. The line on this was kind of hard to place, and some roles went through a lot of tweaks to make sure I was doing something that felt broken and had legitimate utility without actually being broken. The Villains had a near monopoly on time locking, another potentially dangerous thing to give them, especially with a factional that freezes an entire cycle and allows them to tweak their own actions. That ability was surely instrumental in their win, cementing a profitable Cycle 5 and allowing them to make deals in their favor or shrug about the losses absorbed by the Scientists. It wasn’t their fault that other people stabbed them while the Villains froze the cycle, after all. The ultimate goal in designing the faction is to give them the tools to make surgical, but splashy big moves that if employed correctly would be backed up by a sense of inevitability. They would attract attention, but be worthy of it.
Aura Guardian - Heiss/Inspect+Surveil Time Travel/BG one of your targets/Died C1
Role: A strong and flexible role at every point in the game. The time travel surveillance never came up, but this is one of the few roles in the game that can directly monitor the cycle someone’s trying to go to with transportation time travel, and the only one that can pick up extra revisions. I have to imagine this would have been an important factor if it lived to Period 2 or 3. The ability to apply a BG rider to one of your targets, role or item, is initially a way to make an inspect useful after you know all the roles, and otherwise a way to make resilient BGs (by targeting with a role and item simultaneously) allows for a Self BG with any self targeting item, and upgrades other crappy items like the info shield when their use runs dry. No team has an every night BG without downsides, and this is already better than that.
Player: Aura Guardian was a reasonable internal contributor right up until his death, after which he understandably became a lot less invested. During the game, the Villains sent him to Cycle 4 as a precaution, but losing his BG, votes, and items for Cycle 3 proved costly, and the Wanderers went back in time to shoot him in C1 for reasons still unknown to me.
Dead by Daylight - Lavos/Time Lock+Faction Rogue/Delayed Unblockable Kill/Died Cycle 4
Role: Ooooh boy, this one’s a doozey. From the beginning of Villain faction design, I wanted a role like this to exist. Something that announces a kill, creates a problem for other people to solve, and is impossible to change unless you “take down the villain”. Early versions of this role let you choose someone ahead of time to get announced in Cycle 3 and die in Cycle 4 in addition to the kill. Other versions were also stronger, and used this extra kill as the active (only usable once), and folded AngryPidgeon’s passive into the equation (we’ll get to that). But while I wanted something splashy, I also wanted it to actually work. Like Villain design as a whole, it needed to be strong, and feel strong, but walk a fine line where it doesn’t turn the whole game against you. If the thing that you get out of the Doomsday Kill is inevitability, but it modifies a factional kill instead of adding to it, then you aren’t making enemies except the person you’re killing. Then I get to add in a nice protective and useful active ability. If your only enemy is the person your killing, and kill cycles are easy to track, a faction rogue is really useful. Even outside of that, the only nightly Time Lock in the game is strong when you start figuring out what the good roles to use it on are. This was used to strip StupidFlanders’ BPV as a rand, the one role in the entire game which wouldn’t outright die to this kill. This was the source of some consternation, since I treat BPVs as an extra life rather than a BG item. It was relevant, however, since it did cut through protection in order to crack that BPV.
Player: DBD was an active negotiator and one of the early front-men for Phase 1 negotiations. I think that some of his diplomacy came back to bite him in the mid game. I wasn’t privy to all of what was going on in the early phases since some of it was taken to DMs and not all the logs were posted, but the other teams started to get the idea that DBD and the Villains in general were being duplicitous, making fake logs and being caught in obvious lies. Sentiment turned against them in Cycle 3, and they ate a bullet from every single faction when the dust settled at the end of Period 1. Again, I don’t know exactly what happened, and I appreciate the effort that DBD put in. Risky maneuvers are fun in part because of the risks, after all, and the payoff can be huge! I would encourage DBD to review some past interactions and reflect on what aspects worked and what didn’t, and I expect great things in the future.
AngryPidgeon - Xehanort/Redirect Non-Killers/Needs to be targeted by every living faction to die/Won C12
Role: Redirecting non-killers is a bit of a flavor miss, since it’s more “turning someone to the dark side” style puppetry. But it was very important for me not to include ways to redirect kills in this game (see bluedoom’s role later). As the threads on bus driving have highlighted, there are certain kinds of roles with outsized impact even in higher power games. I endeavored to close the gap, making most individual roles have more complexity and power, and curbing the threat profile of the redirector and the bus driver. It was suggested to me that this could affect kills and be okay, but consider the implications of finding any and all killers and using time travel to disrupt SGs and redirect them. This role then just controls most of the kills in the entire game, and I would have to change how factional kills are assigned, and maybe half of the roles to account for this. It’s pretty uncommon for this to fail while item actions succeed on a single target, so using it to find the killers in the first place is actually incredibly useful, and something other factions can’t do as easily. As for the passive, it’s another artifact of me giving villains flashy abilities that often have unique or public results. I wanted them to have more protection. In a game with this much targeting via items, it’s not a difficult condition to meet, and being able to kill AP if he has no friends or in any endgame scenario felt balanced enough. I also expected entire factions to drop off the map sooner than they did, given how dangerous and swingy time travel can be a comeback mechanic. This worked at BPV priority, too, by the way. Unstrippable by the vote or other protection piercing effects like Mekkah’s, as a counterpart to the Hero version of this role. In fact, much like the Terminator, I expected AP to use decoy items and martyrs to act as early to midgame protection. This didn’t happen, and instead the ability was used to keep him alive in the midgame, since with at least one friend it’s difficult to be eliminated.
Player: Everyone on the Villains had put up some notable performances in past games, and AP was no exception. I was looking forward to seeing how he played here, and when all hope seemed lost for them in Period 2, AP stepped up and took over negotiation and action planning entirely, and did a great job of it. With a strong social strategy and well timed use of his abilities, he ensured his own survival and gave himself the only real chance of winning the endgame that the Villains had. Great job!
Former Hope - The Master/Item Hijack/Votes for targets/Died C3
Role: This was by far the most flexible Villain role on the roster, the only one that does anything with items, and one which doubles as both protection and disruption. This was derided as a “glorified item hook” but on its own, a nightly item hook would be a strong role, and copying your item action on top of that makes it more resilient. It cuts through the redirection from bluedoom’s item drive and works synergistically with AP’s redirect allowing you to change your own targets without affecting the copy. It also has defensive applications that were wholly underutilized, in being able to copy Self BGs, Self SGs, or mayors onto your own teammates while they use no items at all. That said, this role is one I would change the most on the Villains, since some of the flexibility is a bit fiddly and situational. A lot of the time you might not need a second copy of your same item and targets to exist. It would obviously be too good if you could pick the targets of the copy, but maybe there was a middle ground I could have searched for that would have been more appropriate. Changing the items but keeping the user’s original targets, perhaps? As for the passive, the Villain’s scaling mayor was not permanent, but was very fast in how it could grow and capable of scaling with the pace of the game as other Villains died and Former was allowed to use more items. This role consistently had 3-4 votes in the early game, and could have done more if it survived longer. Being able to revise your actions to become successful (or unsuccessful if you think you’ve been persuaded) is also another reason why I felt this was justifiable as a variation on the mayor role for this faction. Part of the mayor asymmetry in the factions is adjusting the vote cap and speed of achieving it, and this is far on the short end of that spectrum. In keeping with Villain theming, it allows for big plays if planned for correctly, but is open to disruption if everyone stands against them at once.
Player: Former Hope was absent after his death, but put in a lot of work as a negotiator and planner during Periods 1 and 3. Admirable considering he told me he wasn’t going to put in a lot of effort. He was instrumental in figuring out the right endgame actions even when he was on vacation. Former Hope was not happy with the game experience as it stood, he did not enjoy playing the roles on the Villains, and did not enjoy the convoluted rules at times. I truly appreciate the effort that was put in in spite of that. I also genuinely apologize for providing a poor game experience, and I hope that next time I will be able to predict the game flow better and anticipate how fun the roles and mechanics I design will be.
Scientists
The Scientists have item-centric roles. A bit unorthodox, but since items encompass a lot of standard role power, you can create some non-standard roles by combining or modifying items in the right way. By interacting with items in useful ways, the scientists have a lot of flexibility in how they can approach their game plan. They’re vulnerable to item disruption, though, and their factional ability is meant to give them a shot in the arm and cover for their biggest weaknesses. The Scientists didn’t make the strongest use of their roles and items in the early to midgame, but probably had the strongest social game out of everyone, only losing a 1v1 they weren’t specifically prepared to beat. They got greedy in Cycle 5, however, and didn’t use their factional to cement the lead they had over the other factions, getting caught with their pants down by 3 kills and a mass time lock in the process.
Lechen - Lucca/Empower other factions/Items don’t get used up/Died C11
Role: One of the strongest workhorse roles on the Scientists. The active was meant to be used as a social bargaining chip, but it was idled nearly constantly. Oh well, like I said, it’s difficult for me to predict social factors. The active was meant to be weak because the passive is one of the strongest in the entire game when combined with Doc Brown’s item making machine, and still very very strong in the absence of that when you can use 2-4 items without fear of them going away. This was a very important role at all levels of the game, but really shone in the endgame when the vote math explodes just by having repeatable vote interaction roles over 3-4 cycles
Player: Lechen was one of two strong contributors on the Scientists and he did a lot both in negotiation and action planning. I’m glad to see that, because I’ve seen him in Diplomacy and in other games and was looking forward to his performance here. The Scientists never had a shot fired at them intentionally in Period 1, and went through multiple stabs without damaging their reputation. Bluedoom played good cop, but Lechen was an effective bad cop, someone who could handily back up negotiations and who had the guts to submit riskier action sets that might tick someone off.
Pulsar/Celever - Doc Brown/Item Inventor/Can use extra items when Time Traveling/Died C5
Role: The other main combo to work with Lechen. Initially this was misunderstood, it makes copies of the items used to invent the new one, not using them up. This role and Lechen’s essentially “create” an extra item per cycle for resource draining purposes, which is important in a faction which wants to have more options and flexibility for what to do with items. It’s also important because this passive and the Scientist factional both have the ability to drain more real items than the pool than you might have access to. This was the perfect role for this passive because it never wants to be time traveling. Whatever you make, someone’s probably using, so editing that action is suicide. So giving this role a reward for doing so is important for tension reasons. Being able to add item actions after the fact is very powerful and entirely unique to this faction. It never came up, though, mostly Celever just made broken items like BG+Self BG until his death in C5 was made inevitable by the mass time lock.
Player: Status: Idler. I’ve been appreciating the output from Pulsar lately, and she’s done well in a lot of these games. It was one of the reasons I was reluctant to mess with the rand even if the Scientists didn’t have any “old players” on it. But this was an instant sub request, not what she signed up for I guess. Fair enough, but I couldn’t get Celever in fast enough for him to feel like contributing. Even at the end of the period with a clean slate, the train had well left the station. I decided not to pursue other subs after that happened. It was really funny when Celever would be told he was dead or alive by other factions and act genuinely surprised about it. Hopefully next time I won’t overwhelm either of you, and you can enjoy the game you signed up for.
Saberslasher - The Time Traveller/Inspector/Stacking Mayor/Died C5
Role: This was the only piece of fiction in the entire game that I hadn’t already engaged with, so this role was a total phone in flavor wise. It’s also an easy include for the inspect on the scientist team, no frills, just a very consistent stacking mayor that’s meant to get to 5 at endgame. It’s why the inspect itself doesn’t have any riders on it. Even so, this role grew in strength slightly faster than I’d like, but the thirds help it become visible to the Sports Almanac and leave it exposed to disruption at times. It was the source of a lot of in game worries, and persuaded relatively frequently as a result, since unlike the other stacking mayors, most people had a good idea what this was worth from seeing the death flips.
Player: Status: Idler. Saber barely spoke at all, and I think he was following the game decently but it’s hard to say. Again, I hope I meet your needs better in the next game.
Bluedoom - Reverse Flash/Item Bus Driver/Hook one of your targets/Died C5
Role: A strong role. Bus driving is a powerful effect, and even if you aren’t getting kills with it, there is a lot of standard role power concentrated in the item actions, and plenty of important protection to strip away. Getting an unconditional hook as a rider is the cherry on top, as those were not handed out lightly in the game. Much in the same way AG’s BG was difficult to disrupt, so too was Bluedoom’s Hook hard to stop, especially if the item drive is taking away safeguarding done by items. This role exemplifies how I used flavor to justify filling in certain aspects of mechanical faction design. The Scientists needed a controlling role, so they were given a villainous scientist. The Wanderers need a protective role, so they’re given a heroic wanderer, and so on. This role caused a lot of problems in the early to mid game, especially for the wanderers, who found their protection chains broken up in Cycle 2 leading to their near extermination.
Player: Bluedoom was the other strong player and strong rep on the scientists, putting in work essentially the entire game and toeing a very careful social line while doing so. He was by far the most active when it came to action planning, and info misunderstandings (which are my fault) aside did a good job of it. Much like all of the other active players, It was a joy to watch him work and negotiate. Thanks for playing!
Wanderers
The wanderers are all about time travel manipulation and generally being really weird. All of my craziest ideas went here, and it showed. The effect they had on the game was outsized as action planning on the Wanderer side was ridiculous and action planning around them was similarly ridiculous. The dynamic was supposed to be that they had lots of ways to mess with the past and get what they wanted, but only if they knew what was happening and what was relevant to change, and they had very few tools to figure that out. They were meant to leverage their social game to close the info gap, and they did, collecting way more than even I expected. As played, the Wanderers were a significant favorite going into the endgame by my accounting, only messing up by, in my opinion, getting a little too creative and conservative with their actions. They were saved from extermination by the goodwill of the Villains before stabbing them, worked with the Scientists before stabbing them, and never got on with the Heroes. Their factional ability to take actions in every cycle may be one of the strongest (mitigated by the fact that it’s difficult to cause serious damage with their role actions alone), and nearly allowed them to power through and take the brunt of the consequences of their bridge burning. Ultimately, they were ganged up on in endgame, and the actions of the other two factions were proper and well coordinated.
Mekkah - Akemi Homura/Delay/Strongman failed targets last cycle/Died C9
Role: This was a really weird disruptive role in that it delays both their stuff and your items if successful. That can make it exceedingly difficult to plan around, and it was often idled for fear of bumping Mekkah’s protective items away from a cycle where they were needed. But that wonkiness also offers flexibility. If it turns out you did need your items to move a cycle ahead or back, you could adjust that, too, and it makes you think hard about your item choices. Other players would often be unhappy to have this stick, since most actions would be worse when resolved later, but it wasn’t inconceivable for it to still have value. That makes revising this action feel weird, what jenga blocks are we pulling out of not one, but two cycles, by changing this target? I felt it was an interesting experiment that played out mostly as I expected it to. As for the passive, again, this was the only place it could go. Because of the way the delay works, it’s really difficult for mekkah to be successful with it and properly turn on the passive, but rewarding when you do because it makes him a solid kill carrier. Never came up, though. The looping part of this action was to give it more utility and dovetail with the flavor of the role. You gotta have loops in the game somewhere!
Player: Mekkah stepped up as a negotiator and did a generally good job of it, and he also talked through actions with zorbees often. While the Wanderers lied and stabbed they generally made lots of deals and got information that was beneficial to them, and I consider Mekkah to have been a strong component for why they were able to do so. I’m glad I was able to host a game for you after years of reading the ones you put out for the community
Sunny004 - The Unmarried Mother/JOAT/Submits actions out of order/Died C10
Role: Ooooooh boy we’re getting to another controversial one. Convoluted Narrative, both in its flavor and its effects, may be my single favorite thing that I added to this game. I struggled in design with the idea, is it a drawback, is it a benefit? But this movie is emblematic of a thousand shitty time travel movies I’ve watched over the years with the same plot where every character is the same person, and it’s the ur-example of it, so I had to make something like this work in the game. The active presents this as a very strong, very flexible role, with two abilities that other factions don’t get access to that they VERY much want (the kill and the Neg SG), and two abilities the wanderers don’t have enough of that they VERY much want (the BG and inspect). But you have to make your choice for two of these abilities ahead of time, along with your items, and that’s a huge ask. You get paid off by getting to submit for two cycles with foreknowledge though, sometimes a lot of foreknowledge, and that can be a big deal. I think getting the only extra kill in the game is a fair enough trade for this level of constraint and no access to an every night inspect or BG, but it’s possible that this whole gamble was unfair. I do think this whole package only makes sense as a JOAT role of some kind with strong rewards for planning properly, so whatever tweaks I would make would still place it in this general structure. Sunny is also straight garbage at using the Wanderer factional by design, because he would be unable to use his role a total of 7 times in a period, although it does iron out the narrative and let him submit in order if he wants.
Player: Status: Idler. Sunny told me he’d be busy, and it’s why I was happy he was on a team with some sweats. I wish he’d contributed more, but very much understand why he largely sat this one out.
NightEmerald - The Doctor/Jailkeep+Time Lock/Fast kill that works on killers/Died C2
Role: This is the Wanderers’ main form of disruption. It’s very fast and can take someone out of the equation and mess with a team’s actions, but not be used to kill that specific person easily. The pacifist kill was a flavor thing that also helped to make this role better in endgame. None of that mattered because NightEmerald died super early and was never successful with his actions.
Player: Status: Idler. NightEmerald seemed to follow along, and chimed in every now and then, but couldn’t make decisions or plan actions. Which was a bit of a shame, because he was often the only Wanderer around at deadline. I hope that I can meet your needs better in the next game.
Zorbees - Donnie Darko/Safeguard+Info Shield/Gains votes from changing votes and deaths/Died C8
Role: This is perhaps the role I’m most disappointed in. It came about because for all the weird designs I had came up with, the Wanderers needed a workhorse role to support them. I think at the time I had designed this, basic safeguards didn’t protect against information roles, so this had extra utility. I wouldn’t make it much differently, mind you. The wanderers were long on disruption and designed to be short on ways to protect themselves from kills. Something like a safeguard is what I needed and filled out the needs of the team in the way I was hoping. I just wish I could have settled on something more unique. The mayor stacking for this role was meant to be intentionally difficult for someone with a defensive role, to motivate them to go and do something interesting like changing votes or kills to collect votes. Zorbees did just that at a couple points of the game, and died with 4 votes in his pocket. This is about the progression I was hoping for, and I’m happy with how that went.
Player: Zorbees put in a herculean amount of work action planning, submitting actions for the hardest team of roles to work with in the game when they were being put in do or die positions at multiple junctures. He figured out a lot of the nuances of the time travel dynamics faster than most (matched closely by Twin in this area) and capitalized on them to ensure his faction’s well being. I couldn’t have asked for better, even if your luck ran out in the endgame.
And that’s it for now! I was going to try and write a summary more succinctly explaining what happened in the game, but that seems like a really difficult task. Maybe ask me whatever questions you have about how things went down, and I’ll do my best to answer them. Perhaps I’ll write that short summary if I have a moment to myself over the next couple days. Until then, thank you again for playing!
