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Mafia vs Village Weeb Mafia: GAME OVER! Postgame in #504-505
- Thread starter Blazade
- Start date
Wayan Vistar
formerly Flyhn
For the record, the only reason I was THAT close with US is because when I DO start going after him, i'm always wrong. Of course the one time I don't he's actually scum. I should've immediately turned on him when he started brining up balancing in his reasoning, but honestly I was starting to worry about doing so because if he were to flip scum, I was his suspected partner and I don't trust my ability to defend myself after doing so little for town this game .-.
On a second note, it was probably me/kirsche talking on Showdown. I thought it was Sam on the other end.
I take it DLE redirected the kill then? That was my first reaction but then the 'KidsAnimeUser' alt heavily implied you intended to kill Yeti and I was like ???
Also it was a combination of Yeti/myself Aubisio, not sure if you could tell the change in tone or not.
I thought this was a really well-designed game so thank you Blazade and maybe Walrein idk how much designing you did but gj anyway haha
Only issue I had with it was my role, which just seemed so passive and useless when something more dynamic would've been a lot more fun.
What people didn't get (since they had little reason to suspect this) was that the Good Anime had terrible roles to offset having the 'good'/experienced players, while the Kids had weaker roles but were all relative Smogon Mafia newcomers. That's what the balance idea was, so while everything I said was accurate and made a lot of sense (and I did in fact request village), it was a bit misleading because I was leaving out some facts that no one could've possibly known (aka that the Good Anime roles were, in general, incredibly weak).
GG all, I honestly think that it was just activity that did the village in, if people had been paying a bit more attention then I think they would've caught on. Haruno had an interesting plan regarding godkills that I'm not sure would've been allowed to go off, but he put a fair bit of thought in and basically agreed that Eagle4's posts were really scummy (which to be honest they were; deflecting off of oneself is just a really weird go-to). I don't think Eagle4 played badly at all and he raised some good points, but he needed to go harder in addressing things about himself and then pivot to also raising things missed by myself and/or about others.
Anyway I'll post more later, I do think there's a lot to learn on all sides from this game though.
Also it was a combination of Yeti/myself Aubisio, not sure if you could tell the change in tone or not.
I thought this was a really well-designed game so thank you Blazade and maybe Walrein idk how much designing you did but gj anyway haha
Only issue I had with it was my role, which just seemed so passive and useless when something more dynamic would've been a lot more fun.
What people didn't get (since they had little reason to suspect this) was that the Good Anime had terrible roles to offset having the 'good'/experienced players, while the Kids had weaker roles but were all relative Smogon Mafia newcomers. That's what the balance idea was, so while everything I said was accurate and made a lot of sense (and I did in fact request village), it was a bit misleading because I was leaving out some facts that no one could've possibly known (aka that the Good Anime roles were, in general, incredibly weak).
GG all, I honestly think that it was just activity that did the village in, if people had been paying a bit more attention then I think they would've caught on. Haruno had an interesting plan regarding godkills that I'm not sure would've been allowed to go off, but he put a fair bit of thought in and basically agreed that Eagle4's posts were really scummy (which to be honest they were; deflecting off of oneself is just a really weird go-to). I don't think Eagle4 played badly at all and he raised some good points, but he needed to go harder in addressing things about himself and then pivot to also raising things missed by myself and/or about others.
Anyway I'll post more later, I do think there's a lot to learn on all sides from this game though.
Aubisio, Yeti was killed Night 3 and kirsche submitted that action while you confirmed it. Idk what happened there but one minute you were talking to Sam about killing Nomark and the next both of you submitted the action to kill Yeti. kirsche can you perhaps explain night 3 a bit better?
First of all I'm kind of pissed off because of UncleSam's abuse of requests (the post where he said he couldn't be scum because of game balancing). Can someone explain to me why this is allowed?
Second of all, the Luck of the Kids Anime was bullshit. Me, the leader / best role of the kids anime, getting randomed night 1, host mistakes, etc.
But this was still a fun game to watch, and props to Blazade for almost balancing a setup where UncleSam and Yeti are on the same team!
Second of all, the Luck of the Kids Anime was bullshit. Me, the leader / best role of the kids anime, getting randomed night 1, host mistakes, etc.
But this was still a fun game to watch, and props to Blazade for almost balancing a setup where UncleSam and Yeti are on the same team!
Here's what happens 100% of the time if I don't host mistake there:
-sunny004 gets force subbed for having his action decided for him and not talking to anybody.
-New sub once I painstakingly find them gets instantly grilled on their role and what happened to their ALLIANCE CHECK night action the night before.
-Meanwhile trusted vig rssp1 comes up with Kids anime BPV flavor when killing sunny and tracks him to DLE when there was absolutely no reason for sunny to be doing that.
-sunny, who was condemned form the start of D2 is lynched D3. Sub is pissed because I subbed him into a shit position.
Host mistaking (and my solution) was slightly better for the Kids (who got to know aubisio got inspected) and DLE (who avoided getting seen as targeted by scum JOAT). Not saying that I don't feel bad about being sloppy but I do think I handled that extremely fairly and that in the end it worked out to be very similar to reality.
It was an unfortunate host mistake but the damage had been done to the Kids at that point and we knew both sunny and Aubisio were mafia. And it gave us two solid places to aim village lynch and vig that weren't us.
Sam was only the alt after I died smh trying to steal my credit
Sam was only the alt after I died smh trying to steal my credit
I didn't play in this game but:
King was obviously town from what twin had been telling me like N2 or whenever he was village leading, but that doesn't mean he played well. It's just I felt he'd had a pattern of questionable plays (especially when it comes to interacting with other players in the game), so when twin said "Oh King is refusing to claim he must be mafia" I thought to myself "I dunno this sounds like something King just does, and I don't know if he would think to fake this as non-town." Being obviously town doesn't mean much when you refuse to communicate with anyone and aren't even using your role, I'd rather have a player I could actually talk to and know would follow my plans if they're town that I can trust like 75% rather than some wildcard who might just screw me over because he's doing his own thing that I 100% know is town.
Speaking of twin: I've told you this a thousand times, but your #1 flaw as a player (and maybe just as a person because you do the same shit when we play Dota) is you are incredibly arrogant. You are overconfident in your reads on the game state and other players as well as your plan going forward, and then when things go wrong you don't take responsibility for it, you just blame the setup, the other players, anything but yourself. Not only does this prevent you from improving but it makes everyone else hate you. The King thing was one example but you were also mega-wrong about the tsundere bodyguard (which was too funny to be a fake, c'mon)
I didn't rly follow the game much after twin died because he was the only person really talking to me about it so I can't comment on anything else
King was obviously town from what twin had been telling me like N2 or whenever he was village leading, but that doesn't mean he played well. It's just I felt he'd had a pattern of questionable plays (especially when it comes to interacting with other players in the game), so when twin said "Oh King is refusing to claim he must be mafia" I thought to myself "I dunno this sounds like something King just does, and I don't know if he would think to fake this as non-town." Being obviously town doesn't mean much when you refuse to communicate with anyone and aren't even using your role, I'd rather have a player I could actually talk to and know would follow my plans if they're town that I can trust like 75% rather than some wildcard who might just screw me over because he's doing his own thing that I 100% know is town.
Speaking of twin: I've told you this a thousand times, but your #1 flaw as a player (and maybe just as a person because you do the same shit when we play Dota) is you are incredibly arrogant. You are overconfident in your reads on the game state and other players as well as your plan going forward, and then when things go wrong you don't take responsibility for it, you just blame the setup, the other players, anything but yourself. Not only does this prevent you from improving but it makes everyone else hate you. The King thing was one example but you were also mega-wrong about the tsundere bodyguard (which was too funny to be a fake, c'mon)
I didn't rly follow the game much after twin died because he was the only person really talking to me about it so I can't comment on anything else
Twin has a lot of really good reads but when he misreads someone he tunnels on it WAY too hard and pushes a mislynch/misvig. It's one thing to misread someone and discuss it with others and come to the conclusion you're wrong but when you just act on it as a snap decision you get the Oddish kill and it hurts your own chances of winning.
How dare you
You are forgiven
I had to kind of stop myself for how long it was getting hihi ^^'' *punts it into a corner* but here it is!
Allow me to invite you to gander over my own little list of recommended anime and a few blurbs to why *finger guns* the list is in no specific order
Also! I typically watch everything in SUBS but thats just my own personal preference, you do you my dudes
Cowboy Bebop - link to opening credits
I see it fitting to introduce this first seeing as it was the role I played haha.
Cowboy Bebop features a series of 26 episodes [ called "sessions" like musical sessions when a band gets together ] the majority of the episodes are stand alone, but there is some sense of order if anyone decides to binge watch it.
Remember when I said the episodes are called "Sessions" like a band, well I guess its safe to say the 'flavor' of the show in itself is very Jazzy (and I don't mean with just the ol razzle dazzle), music plays a pretty big part in the show in its tone its style and story telling.
The stories circle around this band of space bounty hunters who end up being their own kind of dysfunctional family. The show has its serious tones, as well as light hearted ones, but there is also this sense of empty weight to it as well. By which I mean almost a sort of poetic nihilism, all the characters feel so much, but god forbid anyone admits anything, and depending on your own personal stance on the matter it could be either (as I placed it) poetic, or slap-dash use of "The Rule of Cool". If I had to explain it quickly, I'd say "Imagine 'Casablanca', in space."
Regardless the animation is stunning, the music is phenomenal, and I highly invite to give it a go watching (if anything the first 2 episodes).
Uchouten Kazoku - link to opening credits
DO IT
The English title being "The Eccentric Family" it follows the family shenanigans of shapeshifting raccoon dogs enjoying pretending to be human while trying not to be eaten. They also uncover a family secret. The animation is eye-gasmic and its a sort of series filled with stories that really pumps the watcher (in my opinion) about doing things for the reasons of "why the fuck not" and blaming it on having the "blood of a fool" and loving and living life to the fullest while also loving your family.
same bros that made Tatami Galaxy - ALSO AMAZING think Groundhog Day but with college choices, down side the episode could start seeming a bit repetitive, but with every similarity in the episode there's also a difference as the main character slowly learns some sort of moral about "The thing you seek was in front of you all along"
Michiko to Hatchin - link to opening credits
YO You want an amazing show with a kick ass awesome Female POC leads filled with heart, amazing animation and bad-assery?!? Then take a gander at this amazing gift of a show!!!!
To put it simply an escaped convict saves her child from a horrible extra religious extra hypocritical adoptive home and goes on an adventure to find her baby Daddy all while being AMAZING. The mother and daughter grow on one another and is probably the most touching bad ass
Actually I probably don't even have the right words to convey how awesome this show is, so please
she collapsed later
also
The show is from the same studio that brought you
Samurai Champloo link to opening credits
Who are also the same bros that brought you Cowboy Bebop, but can't quite live up to it (or so some say). Like Cowboy Bebop the episodes are pretty stand alone, don't always follow the same line, but do have their own sort of wonky order if binge watched. It is also another anime highly influenced by its own music, this time with a more hip-hop mix with classic Japanese, as the name of the show goes, Champloo derives from a Japanese word I'm too lazy to look up that means a mixture.
This mixture also transcends into the plots and what the characters are faced with from time to time, the most hilarious I can think of off the top of my head is a baseball episode, and some dude who beatboxes, also (and my personal favorite) a graffiti tagging contest.
Fun Fact: remember the well done re-cap episode from LOK [Legend of Korra]? The creators were inspired by the well done re-cap episode from Samurai Champloo to do it...and yeah, its really well done.
Following a cast of three, Blue dude is a disgraced actual samurai, hot red dude is a rouge and looks like Spike, and pinky girl enlists these unlikely friends into looking for someone, shenanigans ensue.
AND YET
Are the same bum holes that brought you
Space Dandy link to opening credits
Imagine Johnny Bravo in space, but not cool enough to be a Bebop bounty hunter. The animations as some really brilliant moments, and really great moments of heart in some episodes. My favorite episode probably being the Zombie homage.
As for the plot...hahahahhahahahaha
Nah I kid, the plot is also stand alone. Something great to kick back and watch after a hard day if you're not looking for something too heavy.
What possible connection could this silly boob joke filled show have to the poetry of Cowboy Bebop I hear you ask?
There it is
Hyouka link to opening credits
Scooby Doo but in a Japanese school setting with amazing animation, lots of heart, and really good story telling. Did I mention the animation? Cause....fuck. Soundtrack is pretty fantastic too!
School kid main protagonist main motto is about trying to use little energy in life as possible, ends up being the school's Sherlock Holmes.
Mushishi / Zoku Shou link to opening credits
The Art. The Soundtrack. The Storytelling. Its a very calm series based on the 'other' or 'supernatural' of life, very poetic. Imagine a hot summer day and listening to spooky stories at a bomb fire, then that feeling of pause while watching fireflies. Its, its a very refreshing anime. I don't want to say too much, I fear giving things away, but its quite the experience.
(gosh I hope I didn't overhype )
Xam’d: Lost Memories link to opening credits (the best I could find on youtube, sorry bros)
Some might say its a spin off to Eureka 7, and that could be the case (Though I've yet to finish watching Eureka, and I did watch Xam'd first)
It is heavily a very "The fuck is going on???" anime, but if you're down with sticking through a show while not knowing 100% of the time what is going on, or being spoon fed answers, and are okay with probably still not knowing the ending...then I highly recommend this show! Because let me tell you the ride along the way is one hell of an emotional rollercoaster and I have no shame in admitting it left me in tears on the ground multiple times.
Supernatural Scienc-fiction mix meets the recovery of some war against something, but there are still heavy lock down rules in place. A cult. Amazing animation worth eye-gasming about and an incredible soundtrack reminiscent to a Nausea Valley of the Wind's step child.
Kuragehime link to opening credits
Also known as "Princess Jellyfish" full of heart and hilarity and also, great animation.
Follows a dysfunctional family of outcast girl roommates [whom call themselves the Otaku Nuns]. The main female is obsessed with jellyfish, is great at drawing, has a fateful encounter with someone while trying to convince an aquarium shop owner that a certain jellyfish they're displaying is at risk of dying because its sharing a tank with another more predatory jellyfish. The shop owner doesn't listen, enter glorious babe whom the main protagonist views at first glance to be 'wow a princess!'
Babe turns out to be a bro, bro
Moral of the story: "Everyone and anyone can be a princess!"
Did I mention how positive and hilarious this show is?? The manga is pretty great too, and its still on going!
Tamako Market link to opening credits
Oh dear, the moe is strong with this one. GREAT art and animation, so full full of heart, very easy going. I've probably re-watched the series 3 times personally, including the continued movie that came out a year or so ago called 'Tamako Love Story'
I wouldn't take the light heartedness for granted, there's a lot of relatable stuff that happens and quite a great use of story telling.
Some lovely things include: The protagonist living as a daughter to a mochi maker, everyone in the market place being adorable and knowing her - thus she gets free stuff sometimes (hihi), batons! A sassy cockatoo
Katanagatari link to opening credits
Very underrated in my opinion, recognized as GORGEOUS to look at across the board. Granted the first few episodes are VERY W O R D Y which is probably why so many people haven't watched it, but if you can muscle through that then buckle up for AN AMAZING experience like WHOA. Was I in bittersweet tears by the end? Yes, very much yes.
Kyousougiga link to opening credits
In short, Alice in Wonderland, but remastered, or rather a Japanese take on Alice...I mean I guess the most wonderland thing is the use of rabbits, and this bombastic chick going into another dimension, there's probably other stuff too P: Very special full of family values, and family healing. EXCELLENT art direction and use of 'show don't tell'. A stylized atmosphere, high energy and just all around pleasing to watch in my opinion.
Anohana link to opening credits
A fun nostalgic anime about childhood friendships, and how the said friendships change when people grow up ( be it apart, or closer) .
Its fun! and there's totally no crying whatsoever, absolutely nothing emotionally heart wrenching about it!
And the fact that I've never been able to bring my self to re-watch it due to its heavy emotion, and realistic characters has nothing to do about it Fun for the whole family! (bring tissues)
Also! I typically watch everything in SUBS but thats just my own personal preference, you do you my dudes
Cowboy Bebop - link to opening credits
I see it fitting to introduce this first seeing as it was the role I played haha.
Cowboy Bebop features a series of 26 episodes [ called "sessions" like musical sessions when a band gets together ] the majority of the episodes are stand alone, but there is some sense of order if anyone decides to binge watch it.
Remember when I said the episodes are called "Sessions" like a band, well I guess its safe to say the 'flavor' of the show in itself is very Jazzy (and I don't mean with just the ol razzle dazzle), music plays a pretty big part in the show in its tone its style and story telling.
The stories circle around this band of space bounty hunters who end up being their own kind of dysfunctional family. The show has its serious tones, as well as light hearted ones, but there is also this sense of empty weight to it as well. By which I mean almost a sort of poetic nihilism, all the characters feel so much, but god forbid anyone admits anything, and depending on your own personal stance on the matter it could be either (as I placed it) poetic, or slap-dash use of "The Rule of Cool". If I had to explain it quickly, I'd say "Imagine 'Casablanca', in space."
Regardless the animation is stunning, the music is phenomenal, and I highly invite to give it a go watching (if anything the first 2 episodes).
Uchouten Kazoku - link to opening credits
DO IT
The English title being "The Eccentric Family" it follows the family shenanigans of shapeshifting raccoon dogs enjoying pretending to be human while trying not to be eaten. They also uncover a family secret. The animation is eye-gasmic and its a sort of series filled with stories that really pumps the watcher (in my opinion) about doing things for the reasons of "why the fuck not" and blaming it on having the "blood of a fool" and loving and living life to the fullest while also loving your family.
same bros that made Tatami Galaxy - ALSO AMAZING think Groundhog Day but with college choices, down side the episode could start seeming a bit repetitive, but with every similarity in the episode there's also a difference as the main character slowly learns some sort of moral about "The thing you seek was in front of you all along"
Michiko to Hatchin - link to opening credits
YO You want an amazing show with a kick ass awesome Female POC leads filled with heart, amazing animation and bad-assery?!? Then take a gander at this amazing gift of a show!!!!
To put it simply an escaped convict saves her child from a horrible extra religious extra hypocritical adoptive home and goes on an adventure to find her baby Daddy all while being AMAZING. The mother and daughter grow on one another and is probably the most touching bad ass
Actually I probably don't even have the right words to convey how awesome this show is, so please
she collapsed later
also
The show is from the same studio that brought you
Samurai Champloo link to opening credits
Who are also the same bros that brought you Cowboy Bebop, but can't quite live up to it (or so some say). Like Cowboy Bebop the episodes are pretty stand alone, don't always follow the same line, but do have their own sort of wonky order if binge watched. It is also another anime highly influenced by its own music, this time with a more hip-hop mix with classic Japanese, as the name of the show goes, Champloo derives from a Japanese word I'm too lazy to look up that means a mixture.
This mixture also transcends into the plots and what the characters are faced with from time to time, the most hilarious I can think of off the top of my head is a baseball episode, and some dude who beatboxes, also (and my personal favorite) a graffiti tagging contest.
Fun Fact: remember the well done re-cap episode from LOK [Legend of Korra]? The creators were inspired by the well done re-cap episode from Samurai Champloo to do it...and yeah, its really well done.
Following a cast of three, Blue dude is a disgraced actual samurai, hot red dude is a rouge and looks like Spike, and pinky girl enlists these unlikely friends into looking for someone, shenanigans ensue.
AND YET
Are the same bum holes that brought you
Space Dandy link to opening credits
Imagine Johnny Bravo in space, but not cool enough to be a Bebop bounty hunter. The animations as some really brilliant moments, and really great moments of heart in some episodes. My favorite episode probably being the Zombie homage.
As for the plot...hahahahhahahahaha
Nah I kid, the plot is also stand alone. Something great to kick back and watch after a hard day if you're not looking for something too heavy.
What possible connection could this silly boob joke filled show have to the poetry of Cowboy Bebop I hear you ask?
There it is
Hyouka link to opening credits
Scooby Doo but in a Japanese school setting with amazing animation, lots of heart, and really good story telling. Did I mention the animation? Cause....fuck. Soundtrack is pretty fantastic too!
School kid main protagonist main motto is about trying to use little energy in life as possible, ends up being the school's Sherlock Holmes.
Mushishi / Zoku Shou link to opening credits
The Art. The Soundtrack. The Storytelling. Its a very calm series based on the 'other' or 'supernatural' of life, very poetic. Imagine a hot summer day and listening to spooky stories at a bomb fire, then that feeling of pause while watching fireflies. Its, its a very refreshing anime. I don't want to say too much, I fear giving things away, but its quite the experience.
(gosh I hope I didn't overhype )
Xam’d: Lost Memories link to opening credits (the best I could find on youtube, sorry bros)
Some might say its a spin off to Eureka 7, and that could be the case (Though I've yet to finish watching Eureka, and I did watch Xam'd first)
It is heavily a very "The fuck is going on???" anime, but if you're down with sticking through a show while not knowing 100% of the time what is going on, or being spoon fed answers, and are okay with probably still not knowing the ending...then I highly recommend this show! Because let me tell you the ride along the way is one hell of an emotional rollercoaster and I have no shame in admitting it left me in tears on the ground multiple times.
Supernatural Scienc-fiction mix meets the recovery of some war against something, but there are still heavy lock down rules in place. A cult. Amazing animation worth eye-gasming about and an incredible soundtrack reminiscent to a Nausea Valley of the Wind's step child.
Kuragehime link to opening credits
Also known as "Princess Jellyfish" full of heart and hilarity and also, great animation.
Follows a dysfunctional family of outcast girl roommates [whom call themselves the Otaku Nuns]. The main female is obsessed with jellyfish, is great at drawing, has a fateful encounter with someone while trying to convince an aquarium shop owner that a certain jellyfish they're displaying is at risk of dying because its sharing a tank with another more predatory jellyfish. The shop owner doesn't listen, enter glorious babe whom the main protagonist views at first glance to be 'wow a princess!'
Babe turns out to be a bro, bro
Moral of the story: "Everyone and anyone can be a princess!"
Did I mention how positive and hilarious this show is?? The manga is pretty great too, and its still on going!
Tamako Market link to opening credits
Oh dear, the moe is strong with this one. GREAT art and animation, so full full of heart, very easy going. I've probably re-watched the series 3 times personally, including the continued movie that came out a year or so ago called 'Tamako Love Story'
I wouldn't take the light heartedness for granted, there's a lot of relatable stuff that happens and quite a great use of story telling.
Some lovely things include: The protagonist living as a daughter to a mochi maker, everyone in the market place being adorable and knowing her - thus she gets free stuff sometimes (hihi), batons! A sassy cockatoo
Katanagatari link to opening credits
Very underrated in my opinion, recognized as GORGEOUS to look at across the board. Granted the first few episodes are VERY W O R D Y which is probably why so many people haven't watched it, but if you can muscle through that then buckle up for AN AMAZING experience like WHOA. Was I in bittersweet tears by the end? Yes, very much yes.
Kyousougiga link to opening credits
In short, Alice in Wonderland, but remastered, or rather a Japanese take on Alice...I mean I guess the most wonderland thing is the use of rabbits, and this bombastic chick going into another dimension, there's probably other stuff too P: Very special full of family values, and family healing. EXCELLENT art direction and use of 'show don't tell'. A stylized atmosphere, high energy and just all around pleasing to watch in my opinion.
Anohana link to opening credits
A fun nostalgic anime about childhood friendships, and how the said friendships change when people grow up ( be it apart, or closer) .
Its fun! and there's totally no crying whatsoever, absolutely nothing emotionally heart wrenching about it!
POSTGAME
Sheet with Role PMs and night actions: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jMPudKjLP1zFC5HPHkGvNUePbueWyNXvDfNWg3AuFuY/edit?usp=sharing
Yo this postgame is gonna get real long and rambly but that's just who I am, deal with it. I really appreciate any feedback, and the stuff I've already got is great.
Overall Design Principles and Hosting Philosophy
So I guess even when I try to make a game that's relatively standard a lot of the roles come off as weird, so let this be a lesson: the games I design are always going to be weird in some way or another. Long story short, I wanted to make a game that didn't have any new fundamental mechanics affecting the design structure, while not being afraid to present standard concepts in a new light. I wanted to have fun with the Anime Mafia theme, so it was important to me to have a lot of the roles be top down design (match flavor first while still very much keeping game balance in mind). However, I know that even if I'm on Smogon there aren't a whole lot of anime buffs and even less that know most of the shit I was willing to throw in. That's why this was "Weeb Mafia" and not something more serious like "Anime Mafia", a game where everyone can read the flavor and laugh at all the shitty anime and wacky tropes while learning a bit more about a lot of the stories out there, and why I didn't use any anime that people had referenced in recent past Smogon games. Finally, I wanted the game to be swingy, giving every faction a lot of power to work with because I thought it would be overall more fun that way.
Faction wise, I wanted the Good Anime to have roles that felt "powerful" in the sense that they had clearly defined strengths that set them above similar standard village roles, or allowed them to be confident about their position in many 1v1 conflicts. FMA doesn't just protect from a kill, it profits from it. LoGH isn't a mayor, it's guaranteed confidence that when an ability is used you know exactly how the lynch will work. Cowboy Bebop pointed at their target and killed with absolute confidence.
Similarly, I wanted the Kids Anime to be more subtle, and a lot of their roles focused on controlling information in some way or another. The Transporter was an extremely powerful and versatile role, which was ultimately supposed to do a ton of heavy lifting during the night, replacing Hookers, standard BGs, and protection from investigative roles. Outside of that, the results thief, hook flavored safeguard, no cardflip (until Yugioh died) effect, and investigation beyond that were supposed to give the Kids everything they needed to try and get sheet and in the absence of that get a sense of the game and push 50-50s with their understanding of what's being manipulated.
A lot of the village was designed around understanding how provable each of the roles were and making sure they had enough power to chew through 2 mafia teams and recover any losses. I really tried to give every role something to do, and even the more passive ones would find themselves in conflict or have the opportunity with ballsy and experienced play to influence the game. This village was also extremely tight in that most niches were covered and the mafia had very little room to maneuver for safeclaims. Many important roles were obviously town, but many others were purposely constructed to be difficult to accept and prove. It was really important to me that the mafia not have a clear cut way to fake into the town and get sheeted simply by proving that they had a role the village couldn't counterclaim because I think the process of coming up with reasonable village fakes for very scummy roles is interesting and shows skill at the game.
Finally, I'll talk about Da Letter El's neutral role when I get to him in individual comments later, but I'll say here that I wanted to experiment with a neutral that was very much anti town while motivated to do town aligned things early to accomplish their goals. I also wanted a wolf win to be representative of an extremely strong social game on the wolf's part without allowing a wolf loss to disrupt the game or add a extra kill into a game with so many already. To negotiate with the mafia, the wolf wouldn't have MUCH raw power to offer, but it would have some, and in many cases I thought it could be reasonable for the wolf to get sheet while the mafia didn't and it could negotiate that way. This was by far the most experimental role I put in the game, and so I made it really conservative and in hindsight difficult to win with. I think its mere existence made the game more interesting in any case.
Here's a few things I did as a host that I guess I can use some feedback on:
1. Ending the day early when people gave up or got inspected, but not implementing a hard hammer rule
2. Taking requests, RNGing after, and attempting to loosely balance faction by players afterward
3. Talking to newer players when I could if they had to make big decisions to make sure they at least understood what was going on even if I couldn't help much.
4. Including flavor in actions and specific kill flavor in updates.
5. Once mafia communication had been established, helping things move a little smoother by telling one mafia when the other's alt would be on.
6. Writing full Role PM fakes for the mafia but not allowing c/ping of Role PMs
Lastly I'll talk about faction balance of players. I got 3 requests: sunny wanted to be Mafia, Yeti and Sam wanted to be on the same team, and Flyhn wanted to be Danganronpa. I wasn't gonna refuse the Yeti/Sam request because they just wanted to have fun together and not have a screaming match especially since they were a relatively new relationship at the time. I considered scenarios where they were both on the village but one of them was Canaan who got forced to Alliance Check the other N0 but even that wasn't particularly fair either and I'm sure that would have made for the most oppressive village leadership of all time. I took a quick look at the Good Anime and Kids Anime roles and I very quickly realized that they couldn't go on the Kids or they would fucking steamroll as well, while the Good Anime needed strong players to survive the claiming process and outplay other factions. So I stuck Yeti/Sam with two complete newbies (which also thankfully let me put Galap on the mafia. I wanted him to see the inside of a village sheet and I thought he had a better chance on the Good Anime than he ever did on the village), gave the newbies the better roles so they couldn't bus easily, and went from there. The Kids Anime would be a faction of smart but inexperienced or less confident players that would find strength as a team, while the village would need people with strong presence like Twin, Jalmont, and Empoof to get things organized in the beginning. Finally, DLE was the person I thought had the best chance to win with my neutral role, and the best person to give my blank check role PM creator to see how creative he'd be with it. Beyond that, I'll talk about player expectations for roles in their comments.
Game Progression and Summary of Events
Cycle 1 - Pancake swaps the "village leaders" for shits and giggles, and instead of cleaning twin Empoof cleans Sam leading to a very tense village leader race indeed. Twin didn't exactly have the proof he needed to be 100% clean, but after hearing about being inexplicably cleaned Sam waited a while to step up and in that time Twin had already sent PMs asking for claims from everyone in the game. This let him get Nomark's rolecop claim before Sam could get to him and perhaps cover it up to protect his clear and manipulate through the kids. pancake gets manipulated into claiming the nerfed transporter role, a "Deflector", and outs himself as mafia before being quickly lynched. Twin not only gets cleared by his push but also the implications of the Transporter flip. Collecting claims and organizing actions, he set up a damn fine sheet for the next clear, Nomark to take over after he died.
Cycle 2 - DLE went FULL YOLO and decided to protect Sam in effort to overthink himself into the ground. The Kids offered to use their 1 time SG to break up village leadership, but DLE would have been able to save through it if he stayed. Meanwhile, Sam promptly killed the alliance check that "cleaned" him and Twin misvigged SomewhatOddish for asking what her claim was supposed to be even though she was the kill hooker to his non-kill hooker. If Twin had talked to Empoof at all about this, I am sure that vig never would have happened. This left Nomark alone with the sheet and unsure of what to do and how to scumhunt. After thinking over it, Nomark decided to enlist a little help, but he prioritized experience over cleanliness in adding Yeti and Jalmont. Jalmont promptly kicked Yeti off the sheet before reading her as a plausible third info role. Like a kid in a candy store, they had too many possible scumreads, but Yeti was able talk them out of voting her GMaxed buddies, and somehow the double BG claim issue got brought out into the public. This was something I expected to be handled a lot more quietly and really fucked village's chances of having ANY BG last a long time. Mithril put up a really towny looking defense but it didn't save him. sunny hadn't turned in an alliance check result on Nico? as promised, and by the end of the day had resigned in Jalmont's mind.
Cycle 3 - After the Mithril mislynch Jalmont was dead set on a lot of scumreads, and prepared to take them all out. He even suspected a mole Yeti and hid night 2 actions from her until the very last possible second, making it impossible for her to counterkill rssp1. This let his vig shot on sunny go though while keeping the newly sheeted DLE out of the dark AGAIN as to who he needed to protect. Everything went as planned for the Good Anime as an unexpected slam dunk guilty on Aubisio let them stave of the lynches and vig shots for another cycle. Aubisio claimed Sam was scum and approached Sam privately with his role to talk, but he ended up outing kirsche by revealing too much about his team's roles instead.
Cycle 4 - The Good Anime tell the Kids to kill Nomark, but the Kids bet on...something? allowing Aubisio to live through the night and getting to steal from Nomark instead. Not running this by the Good Anime really dicked the Goods over and ensured that the Kids would get persecuted in the late game before they could stab further. On the other hand, Yeti hadn't made the connection that shubaka getting his results stolen meant they were confirmed town and so she never put shub on her out of not very well thought out suspicion and not a lot of effort in planning. The Kids, who shot DLE the night previous, got contacted by him as he claimed neutral, but their poor communication with the Goods about why DLE survived meant that nobody believed his claim, leading to the scum wasting 2 shots on what they thought was a second BG and the best possible night for town you could ask for. Shub got cleaned instead of King_, who the Goods had inspected and set up for a mislynch while using their Dictatorship to protect from shenanigans.
Cycle 5 - Shit gets worse for the village as leadership had broken down. Nomark released the sheet to everyone, so Sam rounded rssp1, flyhn, Nomark, and shubaka into a mini leadership convo where they'd tell him all their actions. He also convinced rssp1 to shoot tropius over Nico by claiming Nico said she had another shot to test with. This led to another triple town death (including the ever-powerful vig) while letting Sam take all the initiative and credit for a Nico mislynch. kirsche tries to privately cast some shade without outing himself to little effect, but everyone has a pit in their stomach about trusting Sam. Wary of a kirsche stab (and rightly so as kirsche was killing him), Sam hooks and kills the last Kids anime and resolves to take the game in one more mislynch.
Cycle 6 - Sam was prepared to bus Galap if others were dead set on it, but Eagle4's defense and the NOC-like connections others were building basically solidified the win for him. Flyhn wasn't as proven to the village as he was to the Goods and Haruno was neither clear nor ready to vote out Sam. In the end, the day was allowed to go to deadline and apathy won it for the Goods.
Hopefully this puts a bit more perspective on the timing of things and on some of the private conversations that were going around for each faction.
Player/Role Comments
Bad Anime
SomewhatOddish/Kill Hooker/Died N1
Player Comments: I'm so sorry, SomewhatOddish. I meant for you to hang back and help out while slowly learning the game but you got shamefully misvigged instead just for looking like you'd slipped when you were really trying be cooperative. Hopefully this doesn't happen again and you'll have better luck next game.
Empoof/Alliance Check/Died N1
Player Comments: I gave this to Empoof because I felt Empoof was proficient at negotiation and being discreet when he needed to be, so I thought he'd do just fine in an investigative position. Claiming to Sam after clearing him isn't bad play by any means, and even if clearing Sam is a little random when Twin steps up that's not bad either. It's a casualty of the Transporter working the way it does, and a matter of circumstance that he died, but while he lived he helped Oddish with the game and played an integral role in raising red flags against Sam when he died. Under different circumstances, he could have been in Nomark's position this game.
Thetwinmasters/Non-Kill Hooker/Died N1
Player Comments: Twin did everything I wanted him to as a leader, cleaned himself quickly and assertively, collected claims, lynched scum, and coordinated actions very nicely. He set himself up as a strong threat that needed to die early even if he fucked up misvigging Oddish or would have racked up another mislynch or two along the way. Even if town lost, they had a strong chance all game and I don't think that would have been the case if it wasn't for Twin's efforts.
Mithril/Tsundere BG/Lynched D2
Player Comments: Mithril got RNGed this and I was very happy about that since he did exactly what I wanted him to. I pegged him as a player that could defend himself and handle arguments and in the game he did just that to become so obvtown that Jalmont got suspected as Kids by the Goods for continuing to push it. This death wasn't your fault, but that of moles and an apathetic town.
Jalmont/Backup/Killed N2
Player Comments: Jalmont probably should have kept Yeti off the sheet and gone with his gut but respecting Nomark was a good call and being the face of town Day 2 let him control Night 2 beautifully. Nomark got protected for another night while Yeti was cut out of the loop, providing a firmer foundation for a lot more scumreads. We've talked about the Expert Killer and I'm sorry you couldn't protect yourself to establish an even stronger foundation but outside of the Mithril lynch you did great and filled exactly the role I needed from you if you were going to step up in the early game.
King_/Item Creator/Lynched D4
Player Comments: I gave this to King_ because I felt he wasn't having enough fun in OC games since he was always under suspicion. This role was meant to give him sheet and I just severely underestimated the level of paranoia he was going to have. We've all gone over this and I think he's learned what's up at this point; he definitely doesn't deserve all the abuse and frustration he's gotten. Not claiming even when you're getting lynched can be pretty frustrating, however, so I hope King_ learns to take a bit more of an active role in his next game when he decides to join it. No hard feelings on my end, and I hope you had fun in any case.
tropiusisbae/Beloved Princess/Killed N4
Player Comments: I moved Tropius to this slot because I wanted to give it to a NOCer (the have tendencies to make Unconventional Plays in my experience) but if I wanted some silly shit I should have given it to pancake or better yet, Haruno. I can't fault Tropius for not doing anything since I didn't explicitly give her anything to do but at the same time that's what I got. I hope you enjoyed anyway, next time talk to me about how you can get more engaged if you're bored.
rssp1/Vigilante+Tracker/Killed N4
As Yeti said town could win the game handily by lynching correctly every time (which is fine by me balance wise), but then you have to consider the vig. The vig is both fallible and exploitable (by the Counterattacking BG and the Transporter which never got a chance to shine) and acted as an effective counter to shit like the Expert Killer and Transporter (what the mafia has in precision kills, the town makes up for in power). Even if the mafia knows that there IS a vig the counterplay is available to them because it's all target based, and design wise I don't think there's a fundamental problem with lategame scenarios in which the town can come from behind after pinpointing exactly who the scum are. There was more early crossfire than I expected this game, but even if DLE was lynched instead of killed twice like he should have been I think that would have made for a far less overwhelming game for the mafia factions. This game was compelling all the way to the end and I think this role was a reason why. Perhaps a numbers adjustment would have been in order, but I did think about numbers and counterplay quite a bit during design.
If it wasn't obvious by now, the "Track on protection" contingency was an incentive to prove Geneshaft and this role in one fell swoop. Since there was a "slam dunk" vig target night 1 that wasn't going to happen but I have to believe in many scenarios it would have. Just another way DLE got shafted by circumstance this game...
Player Comments:
Trace idled his track before getting force subbed, but rssp1 took an active presence and convinced Twin right off the bat that he was town. He should have gotten sheeted after proving his kill power (and flavor too I might add, Mirai Nikki is a 1 on the list I linked there's not really an excuse for that), but alas, he didn't get to take much of an active role before getting brutalized night 4. He was willing to defend himself against allegations he was a wolf by Jalmont, and willing to make up a wolf team and claim to the mafia if he got lynched. Man, that would have been hilarious if it happened. No problems here, though, and I can't wait for him to lead in the future.
Nomark/Role Cop/Killed N4
Player Comments: I thought Nomark would work great in an investigative setting, he had a few games under his belt, he could lay low and do his job. And that's exactly what happened until he got put in a position where he was the only one with sheet. The Goods knew who he was but all the same he didn't want to be exposed so he went to find others to help him analyze and be the public face. He chose poorly in Yeti and arguably Jalmont but not nearly as poorly as he could have in that position. Releasing the sheet when he knew it was compromised and hidden from exactly one mafian was a great play as well, even if it gave Sam a little more authority than he should have had. Nomark passed on adding rssp1, and didn't really work at solving the game as well an experienced player might. He didn't have a lot of confidence in his actions as a result, but I think this was a big stepping stone in that regard. This game gave him an opportunity to get a feel for village leadership and I'll be happy to see him more active in future games.
Eagle4/Rogue/Lynched D5
Player Comments:
Tymano and DeathbyWobbuffet both idled until I finally got Eagle4, who I thought put up a fine stand in the lategame, only losing because UncleSam is louder and often has giant arrows pointing to his village leading dick. Not much to say but it was a good effort, sorry again that I couldn't give you a better experience.
shubaka17/Decoy/Endgamed
Player Comments: shubaka was really level headed this game, and if they were more assertive on the last day I think they could have gotten Sam lynched. It's a bit frustrating to have your redirection stopped twice but your role was never meant to just stop kills and focus on directing other actions, which leaders used to help clean a lot of town this game. Plus when the Expert Killer died you could cover the BG, AND you almost won the game for town by taking a bullet for Haruno. Followed village and defended themselves, good show.
Haruno/Community Mayor/Endgamed
Player Comments: Man why does Haruno have to act so god damn scummy all the time? You just read conversations and it constantly sounds like he's hiding something. All that said he stayed alive, racked up the votes, and didn't get lynched. He probably shouldn't have been stacking votes on vulnerable leaders but he got there in the end.
Flyhn/Safeguard/Endgamed
Player Comments: Flyhn did his job and thought for himself. The guy gets better at mafia every time I see him, but this wasn't the game where he needed to make a big play and he did just fine outside of not being active enough on the last day.
Conclusion:
Overall, the town came together strong in the early game, fought against outside influence and moling to a degree, and had many opportunities to take it to the end and win. I think this game showcased an interesting town dynamic where leadership and decisions are clearly in everyone's hands at some point. I think if they take anything away from this game, it's that they should be more assertive while still being careful. While many mistakes in the endgame led to an eventual loss, I think there's a lot to be commended as well.
Kids Anime
pancake/Transporter/Lynched D1
Player Comments: pancake was the natural leader I expected him to be, writing everyone's fakes and coordinating night actions. He pulled a couple fakes straight from mafia scum and I think it should have tipped him off that I wouldn't include a role in a game if I had to ask what it was. He understandably didn't handle himself properly in the tight spot he created by fakeclaiming to twin, and even though he was rolecopped an extremely strong player may have been able to read the conversation between the lines and talk their way out of it. The only bad thing I have to say about pancake is he abandoned his team right after he got lynched. He was a strong voice that I was counting on to hold them together through stratalking and instead he left them to idle and die. I've got confidence he'll do really well in future games with better luck and more experience.
sunny004/Jack of All Trades/Killed D2(or Lynched D3)
Player Comments: sunny004 idled more than he could have, and was someone I thought could take more initiative in leading a mafia team from the games I read in the past. I never played with him though, so maybe I should have listened to Walrein. He didn't actually play poorly, though, even if a significant amount of activity could have helped his problems somewhat. It was kirsche who ignored his request to help prove his fakeclaim by inspecting Nico? After that he was confirmed scum in the eyes of leadership and there was no escaping the damage done to the Kids by losing their two best roles. Sorry again about the host mistake, and I'm also sorry for giving you a more inexperienced team when you requested mafia.
Aubisio/Team BPV+Results Theif/Killed N3
Player Comments: I think Aubisio learned a lot being on an OC mafia team, and he was looking like the townier rogue until he got inspected. He could have been more active and assertive, and he could have been more careful about slipping team info during negotiations, but that's about it.
kirsche/Mayor+Inspector/Killed N5
Player Comments: kirsche stepped up and made important calls when he needed to in the late game. He had the best fakeclaim by far, handled negotiations with the other mafia, and cast shade on Sam when he could. He played fine as a member team crippled by luck, but also had a hand in putting them in that position by ignoring sunny's request to investigate Nico and the Good Anime's request to kill Nomark, both of which would have been easily remedied by better communication within the team (which was at least as much the rest of the team's fault as it was kirsche's imo).
Conclusion
The Kids Anime were luckfucked and some poor choices defined their fate, but even if they tightened up their game they were never as willing to be proactive as a group as the other factions were. They were the easy targets for all the aggression when the Good Anime picked up the sheet, and the Kids should have been the faction better equipped to take sheet access and start selling out Good Mafians. With more activity this could have been a great group, however, and I'm looking forward to seeing them in future games.
Sheet with Role PMs and night actions: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jMPudKjLP1zFC5HPHkGvNUePbueWyNXvDfNWg3AuFuY/edit?usp=sharing
Yo this postgame is gonna get real long and rambly but that's just who I am, deal with it. I really appreciate any feedback, and the stuff I've already got is great.
Overall Design Principles and Hosting Philosophy
So I guess even when I try to make a game that's relatively standard a lot of the roles come off as weird, so let this be a lesson: the games I design are always going to be weird in some way or another. Long story short, I wanted to make a game that didn't have any new fundamental mechanics affecting the design structure, while not being afraid to present standard concepts in a new light. I wanted to have fun with the Anime Mafia theme, so it was important to me to have a lot of the roles be top down design (match flavor first while still very much keeping game balance in mind). However, I know that even if I'm on Smogon there aren't a whole lot of anime buffs and even less that know most of the shit I was willing to throw in. That's why this was "Weeb Mafia" and not something more serious like "Anime Mafia", a game where everyone can read the flavor and laugh at all the shitty anime and wacky tropes while learning a bit more about a lot of the stories out there, and why I didn't use any anime that people had referenced in recent past Smogon games. Finally, I wanted the game to be swingy, giving every faction a lot of power to work with because I thought it would be overall more fun that way.
Faction wise, I wanted the Good Anime to have roles that felt "powerful" in the sense that they had clearly defined strengths that set them above similar standard village roles, or allowed them to be confident about their position in many 1v1 conflicts. FMA doesn't just protect from a kill, it profits from it. LoGH isn't a mayor, it's guaranteed confidence that when an ability is used you know exactly how the lynch will work. Cowboy Bebop pointed at their target and killed with absolute confidence.
Similarly, I wanted the Kids Anime to be more subtle, and a lot of their roles focused on controlling information in some way or another. The Transporter was an extremely powerful and versatile role, which was ultimately supposed to do a ton of heavy lifting during the night, replacing Hookers, standard BGs, and protection from investigative roles. Outside of that, the results thief, hook flavored safeguard, no cardflip (until Yugioh died) effect, and investigation beyond that were supposed to give the Kids everything they needed to try and get sheet and in the absence of that get a sense of the game and push 50-50s with their understanding of what's being manipulated.
A lot of the village was designed around understanding how provable each of the roles were and making sure they had enough power to chew through 2 mafia teams and recover any losses. I really tried to give every role something to do, and even the more passive ones would find themselves in conflict or have the opportunity with ballsy and experienced play to influence the game. This village was also extremely tight in that most niches were covered and the mafia had very little room to maneuver for safeclaims. Many important roles were obviously town, but many others were purposely constructed to be difficult to accept and prove. It was really important to me that the mafia not have a clear cut way to fake into the town and get sheeted simply by proving that they had a role the village couldn't counterclaim because I think the process of coming up with reasonable village fakes for very scummy roles is interesting and shows skill at the game.
Finally, I'll talk about Da Letter El's neutral role when I get to him in individual comments later, but I'll say here that I wanted to experiment with a neutral that was very much anti town while motivated to do town aligned things early to accomplish their goals. I also wanted a wolf win to be representative of an extremely strong social game on the wolf's part without allowing a wolf loss to disrupt the game or add a extra kill into a game with so many already. To negotiate with the mafia, the wolf wouldn't have MUCH raw power to offer, but it would have some, and in many cases I thought it could be reasonable for the wolf to get sheet while the mafia didn't and it could negotiate that way. This was by far the most experimental role I put in the game, and so I made it really conservative and in hindsight difficult to win with. I think its mere existence made the game more interesting in any case.
Here's a few things I did as a host that I guess I can use some feedback on:
1. Ending the day early when people gave up or got inspected, but not implementing a hard hammer rule
2. Taking requests, RNGing after, and attempting to loosely balance faction by players afterward
3. Talking to newer players when I could if they had to make big decisions to make sure they at least understood what was going on even if I couldn't help much.
4. Including flavor in actions and specific kill flavor in updates.
5. Once mafia communication had been established, helping things move a little smoother by telling one mafia when the other's alt would be on.
6. Writing full Role PM fakes for the mafia but not allowing c/ping of Role PMs
Lastly I'll talk about faction balance of players. I got 3 requests: sunny wanted to be Mafia, Yeti and Sam wanted to be on the same team, and Flyhn wanted to be Danganronpa. I wasn't gonna refuse the Yeti/Sam request because they just wanted to have fun together and not have a screaming match especially since they were a relatively new relationship at the time. I considered scenarios where they were both on the village but one of them was Canaan who got forced to Alliance Check the other N0 but even that wasn't particularly fair either and I'm sure that would have made for the most oppressive village leadership of all time. I took a quick look at the Good Anime and Kids Anime roles and I very quickly realized that they couldn't go on the Kids or they would fucking steamroll as well, while the Good Anime needed strong players to survive the claiming process and outplay other factions. So I stuck Yeti/Sam with two complete newbies (which also thankfully let me put Galap on the mafia. I wanted him to see the inside of a village sheet and I thought he had a better chance on the Good Anime than he ever did on the village), gave the newbies the better roles so they couldn't bus easily, and went from there. The Kids Anime would be a faction of smart but inexperienced or less confident players that would find strength as a team, while the village would need people with strong presence like Twin, Jalmont, and Empoof to get things organized in the beginning. Finally, DLE was the person I thought had the best chance to win with my neutral role, and the best person to give my blank check role PM creator to see how creative he'd be with it. Beyond that, I'll talk about player expectations for roles in their comments.
Game Progression and Summary of Events
Cycle 1 - Pancake swaps the "village leaders" for shits and giggles, and instead of cleaning twin Empoof cleans Sam leading to a very tense village leader race indeed. Twin didn't exactly have the proof he needed to be 100% clean, but after hearing about being inexplicably cleaned Sam waited a while to step up and in that time Twin had already sent PMs asking for claims from everyone in the game. This let him get Nomark's rolecop claim before Sam could get to him and perhaps cover it up to protect his clear and manipulate through the kids. pancake gets manipulated into claiming the nerfed transporter role, a "Deflector", and outs himself as mafia before being quickly lynched. Twin not only gets cleared by his push but also the implications of the Transporter flip. Collecting claims and organizing actions, he set up a damn fine sheet for the next clear, Nomark to take over after he died.
Cycle 2 - DLE went FULL YOLO and decided to protect Sam in effort to overthink himself into the ground. The Kids offered to use their 1 time SG to break up village leadership, but DLE would have been able to save through it if he stayed. Meanwhile, Sam promptly killed the alliance check that "cleaned" him and Twin misvigged SomewhatOddish for asking what her claim was supposed to be even though she was the kill hooker to his non-kill hooker. If Twin had talked to Empoof at all about this, I am sure that vig never would have happened. This left Nomark alone with the sheet and unsure of what to do and how to scumhunt. After thinking over it, Nomark decided to enlist a little help, but he prioritized experience over cleanliness in adding Yeti and Jalmont. Jalmont promptly kicked Yeti off the sheet before reading her as a plausible third info role. Like a kid in a candy store, they had too many possible scumreads, but Yeti was able talk them out of voting her GMaxed buddies, and somehow the double BG claim issue got brought out into the public. This was something I expected to be handled a lot more quietly and really fucked village's chances of having ANY BG last a long time. Mithril put up a really towny looking defense but it didn't save him. sunny hadn't turned in an alliance check result on Nico? as promised, and by the end of the day had resigned in Jalmont's mind.
Cycle 3 - After the Mithril mislynch Jalmont was dead set on a lot of scumreads, and prepared to take them all out. He even suspected a mole Yeti and hid night 2 actions from her until the very last possible second, making it impossible for her to counterkill rssp1. This let his vig shot on sunny go though while keeping the newly sheeted DLE out of the dark AGAIN as to who he needed to protect. Everything went as planned for the Good Anime as an unexpected slam dunk guilty on Aubisio let them stave of the lynches and vig shots for another cycle. Aubisio claimed Sam was scum and approached Sam privately with his role to talk, but he ended up outing kirsche by revealing too much about his team's roles instead.
Cycle 4 - The Good Anime tell the Kids to kill Nomark, but the Kids bet on...something? allowing Aubisio to live through the night and getting to steal from Nomark instead. Not running this by the Good Anime really dicked the Goods over and ensured that the Kids would get persecuted in the late game before they could stab further. On the other hand, Yeti hadn't made the connection that shubaka getting his results stolen meant they were confirmed town and so she never put shub on her out of not very well thought out suspicion and not a lot of effort in planning. The Kids, who shot DLE the night previous, got contacted by him as he claimed neutral, but their poor communication with the Goods about why DLE survived meant that nobody believed his claim, leading to the scum wasting 2 shots on what they thought was a second BG and the best possible night for town you could ask for. Shub got cleaned instead of King_, who the Goods had inspected and set up for a mislynch while using their Dictatorship to protect from shenanigans.
Cycle 5 - Shit gets worse for the village as leadership had broken down. Nomark released the sheet to everyone, so Sam rounded rssp1, flyhn, Nomark, and shubaka into a mini leadership convo where they'd tell him all their actions. He also convinced rssp1 to shoot tropius over Nico by claiming Nico said she had another shot to test with. This led to another triple town death (including the ever-powerful vig) while letting Sam take all the initiative and credit for a Nico mislynch. kirsche tries to privately cast some shade without outing himself to little effect, but everyone has a pit in their stomach about trusting Sam. Wary of a kirsche stab (and rightly so as kirsche was killing him), Sam hooks and kills the last Kids anime and resolves to take the game in one more mislynch.
Cycle 6 - Sam was prepared to bus Galap if others were dead set on it, but Eagle4's defense and the NOC-like connections others were building basically solidified the win for him. Flyhn wasn't as proven to the village as he was to the Goods and Haruno was neither clear nor ready to vote out Sam. In the end, the day was allowed to go to deadline and apathy won it for the Goods.
Hopefully this puts a bit more perspective on the timing of things and on some of the private conversations that were going around for each faction.
Player/Role Comments
Bad Anime
SomewhatOddish/Kill Hooker/Died N1
Role Comments: One half of the Hooker Twins, only hitting kills is a weak role, so it would hook any action they were performing as long as part of what they were doing was killing. I thought that was a pretty fair exchange, and the hooker twins were meant to be easily confirmable town with more utility than a standard hooker while keeping things interesting for more players. Twin the Non-Kill Hooker couldn't see this though, and went for the blind vig.
Player Comments: I'm so sorry, SomewhatOddish. I meant for you to hang back and help out while slowly learning the game but you got shamefully misvigged instead just for looking like you'd slipped when you were really trying be cooperative. Hopefully this doesn't happen again and you'll have better luck next game.
Empoof/Alliance Check/Died N1
Role Comments: Splitting up the inspect into pieces on town is pretty standard practice these days but more than welcome in my opinion, especially in this game where the rolecop put in work. The show it's based on is kind of a guilty pleasure of mine because it uses synesthesia as a storytelling element while also being fucking ridiculous, so this was one of the first roles I designed.
Player Comments: I gave this to Empoof because I felt Empoof was proficient at negotiation and being discreet when he needed to be, so I thought he'd do just fine in an investigative position. Claiming to Sam after clearing him isn't bad play by any means, and even if clearing Sam is a little random when Twin steps up that's not bad either. It's a casualty of the Transporter working the way it does, and a matter of circumstance that he died, but while he lived he helped Oddish with the game and played an integral role in raising red flags against Sam when he died. Under different circumstances, he could have been in Nomark's position this game.
Thetwinmasters/Non-Kill Hooker/Died N1
Role Comments: Nothing special, as the other half of the Hooker Twins. This was the role I most often saw leading village to start and I was right, go figure.
Player Comments: Twin did everything I wanted him to as a leader, cleaned himself quickly and assertively, collected claims, lynched scum, and coordinated actions very nicely. He set himself up as a strong threat that needed to die early even if he fucked up misvigging Oddish or would have racked up another mislynch or two along the way. Even if town lost, they had a strong chance all game and I don't think that would have been the case if it wasn't for Twin's efforts.
Mithril/Tsundere BG/Lynched D2
Role Comments: I wanted a Tsundere role in the game because of the theme, and as my design with Geneshaft got fleshed out I polished off this role as a potentially interesting conflict for them. I also thought it was cool to make the bodyguard specifically motivated not to protect inspectors before they were investigated since that's a crucial role of the BG. To top it all off, Bakemonogatari isn't even that bad a show and could easily be on the Good Anime if I wanted it to be, furthering the ambiguity. Unfortunately the BG conflict wasn't settled in the shadows, but splattered all over the floor of the Day 2 lynch. Not what I expected at all.
Player Comments: Mithril got RNGed this and I was very happy about that since he did exactly what I wanted him to. I pegged him as a player that could defend himself and handle arguments and in the game he did just that to become so obvtown that Jalmont got suspected as Kids by the Goods for continuing to push it. This death wasn't your fault, but that of moles and an apathetic town.
Jalmont/Backup/Killed N2
Role Comments: In a game as swingy as this, where the vig can die early and there are a lot of diverse, important roles, I think a Backup is really important. Stepping up early and taking a bullet accomplishes a similar purpose, however.
Player Comments: Jalmont probably should have kept Yeti off the sheet and gone with his gut but respecting Nomark was a good call and being the face of town Day 2 let him control Night 2 beautifully. Nomark got protected for another night while Yeti was cut out of the loop, providing a firmer foundation for a lot more scumreads. We've talked about the Expert Killer and I'm sorry you couldn't protect yourself to establish an even stronger foundation but outside of the Mithril lynch you did great and filled exactly the role I needed from you if you were going to step up in the early game.
King_/Item Creator/Lynched D4
Role Comments: The Town version of the JOAT role, this was slower and less effective, but very provable and interesting in potentially allowing any townie to use the presents when they wanted. This role actually caused 3 secret thieves to be in the game (Eagle4, Galap, and Aubisio would steal from whoever they targeted), because I didn't want to give away the existence of items but I wanted factions to theoretically have the power to steal if they really needed it. This would be pretty uncommon though, and I just couldn't resist the opportunity to put Santa in the game since I thought it'd be fun.
Player Comments: I gave this to King_ because I felt he wasn't having enough fun in OC games since he was always under suspicion. This role was meant to give him sheet and I just severely underestimated the level of paranoia he was going to have. We've all gone over this and I think he's learned what's up at this point; he definitely doesn't deserve all the abuse and frustration he's gotten. Not claiming even when you're getting lynched can be pretty frustrating, however, so I hope King_ learns to take a bit more of an active role in his next game when he decides to join it. No hard feelings on my end, and I hope you had fun in any case.
tropiusisbae/Beloved Princess/Killed N4
Role Comments: This role was the first one I designed (guess that didn't bode well for the sanity of the rest of the game) because Clannad is such trash and this made so much sense for it. I pulled the role straight from a Mafiascum game I read once. It seemed interesting enough, especially in a game with a Backup that could WIFOM copying this instead of a more immediately powerful role. It's not very provable (by design), but I overestimated the Weeb Power Level of the town and thought that people would resonate with the flavor if it was explained. I also thought they had a lot to gain by using it for big plays. Testing investigators that seemed scummier, fakeclaiming it on the sheet to test if there was a mole, there were a number of open possibilities that I wanted to see people experiment with without expecting anything in particular. Town would be rewarded with good use of the role by potentially stopping the Expert Killer and probably figuring out who it was when their fakeclaim can't do anything the next night (almost certainly getting other scum in the process). Unfortunately this fell through when no one townread this thing and I didn't give it any reason to do anything outside of weird shit. If I had to do it again, I would have given it a low impact night action of some kind in addition to it's passive effect.
Player Comments: I moved Tropius to this slot because I wanted to give it to a NOCer (the have tendencies to make Unconventional Plays in my experience) but if I wanted some silly shit I should have given it to pancake or better yet, Haruno. I can't fault Tropius for not doing anything since I didn't explicitly give her anything to do but at the same time that's what I got. I hope you enjoyed anyway, next time talk to me about how you can get more engaged if you're bored.
rssp1/Vigilante+Tracker/Killed N4
Role Comments: Ah, the every night vigilante. This role was extremely top down and definitely going to be in this game because it followed the formula of gimmicky diverse anime I could explain quickly and easily define roles for that basically accounted for the whole game. I thought a LOT about including this role in the game and it's implications, because I kept hearing how vigilantes were too powerful to be used every night without actually seeing why. On the contrary, I figured that limited shot vigilantes performed BETTER for town because they would only use it on confirmed scum, and expected about a 50% success rate for an every-night one like I saw here. Rather than have an explicit, clunky, and unfun drawback (which doesn't even feel right for a serial killer anime anyway), I made the drawback be an opportunity cost. If you felt like you had confirmed scum, you could shoot, if you didn't, maybe you were better off tracking and figuring things out. It's a fun little thought experiment, but how effectively do you think we would have lynched if this tracker were also online investigating suspect claims? A lot of the scum were under real suspicion very early this game, and that kind of evidence was all that was necessary.
As Yeti said town could win the game handily by lynching correctly every time (which is fine by me balance wise), but then you have to consider the vig. The vig is both fallible and exploitable (by the Counterattacking BG and the Transporter which never got a chance to shine) and acted as an effective counter to shit like the Expert Killer and Transporter (what the mafia has in precision kills, the town makes up for in power). Even if the mafia knows that there IS a vig the counterplay is available to them because it's all target based, and design wise I don't think there's a fundamental problem with lategame scenarios in which the town can come from behind after pinpointing exactly who the scum are. There was more early crossfire than I expected this game, but even if DLE was lynched instead of killed twice like he should have been I think that would have made for a far less overwhelming game for the mafia factions. This game was compelling all the way to the end and I think this role was a reason why. Perhaps a numbers adjustment would have been in order, but I did think about numbers and counterplay quite a bit during design.
If it wasn't obvious by now, the "Track on protection" contingency was an incentive to prove Geneshaft and this role in one fell swoop. Since there was a "slam dunk" vig target night 1 that wasn't going to happen but I have to believe in many scenarios it would have. Just another way DLE got shafted by circumstance this game...
Player Comments:
Trace idled his track before getting force subbed, but rssp1 took an active presence and convinced Twin right off the bat that he was town. He should have gotten sheeted after proving his kill power (and flavor too I might add, Mirai Nikki is a 1 on the list I linked there's not really an excuse for that), but alas, he didn't get to take much of an active role before getting brutalized night 4. He was willing to defend himself against allegations he was a wolf by Jalmont, and willing to make up a wolf team and claim to the mafia if he got lynched. Man, that would have been hilarious if it happened. No problems here, though, and I can't wait for him to lead in the future.
Nomark/Role Cop/Killed N4
Role Comments: Role Cop was real good this game since every scum role was impossible to claim as town. I think that's the way it should be most of the time and I like the way this panned out. Sorry to make this Death Note but I couldn't think of a worse anime that fits and Death Note is pretty memetastic in its edginess anyway.
Player Comments: I thought Nomark would work great in an investigative setting, he had a few games under his belt, he could lay low and do his job. And that's exactly what happened until he got put in a position where he was the only one with sheet. The Goods knew who he was but all the same he didn't want to be exposed so he went to find others to help him analyze and be the public face. He chose poorly in Yeti and arguably Jalmont but not nearly as poorly as he could have in that position. Releasing the sheet when he knew it was compromised and hidden from exactly one mafian was a great play as well, even if it gave Sam a little more authority than he should have had. Nomark passed on adding rssp1, and didn't really work at solving the game as well an experienced player might. He didn't have a lot of confidence in his actions as a result, but I think this was a big stepping stone in that regard. This game gave him an opportunity to get a feel for village leadership and I'll be happy to see him more active in future games.
Eagle4/Rogue/Lynched D5
Role Comments: I really didn't want to put a Rogue in this game because rogues are boring but zorbees had me put a townie in for the numbers (probably a good call). It gave me the opportunity to give the town access to the better, more interesting mafia roles if it went off, which could have really cool implications in the lategame, but like any Rogue it's got a really low success rate and no fun until then so it's no wonder this role got double subbed.
Player Comments:
Tymano and DeathbyWobbuffet both idled until I finally got Eagle4, who I thought put up a fine stand in the lategame, only losing because UncleSam is louder and often has giant arrows pointing to his village leading dick. Not much to say but it was a good effort, sorry again that I couldn't give you a better experience.
shubaka17/Decoy/Endgamed
Role Comments: I wanted this to be a Martyr but when I was writing the Role PM I forgot what a Martyr was and didn't catch the mistake until I saw the role on Twin's sheet. Either way a Martyr or Decoy has a lot of utility even if it can't take a bullet for the Expert Killer. They can draw Transportation, mafia protection, investigation, and hooks. Just general utility role that I was happy to include especially since I wanted to include F/SN with the 10/10 flavor.
Player Comments: shubaka was really level headed this game, and if they were more assertive on the last day I think they could have gotten Sam lynched. It's a bit frustrating to have your redirection stopped twice but your role was never meant to just stop kills and focus on directing other actions, which leaders used to help clean a lot of town this game. Plus when the Expert Killer died you could cover the BG, AND you almost won the game for town by taking a bullet for Haruno. Followed village and defended themselves, good show.
Haruno/Community Mayor/Endgamed
Role Comments: One of the scummy town claims that looked like an excuse to target people randomly but it should have been obvious this was town when nothing bad happened to the people it targeted. I wanted a town vote control role with a bit of a skill factor in betting on who's going to be alive in endgame. I think this worked out alright in threatening a mafia win and flowing naturally with the game.
Player Comments: Man why does Haruno have to act so god damn scummy all the time? You just read conversations and it constantly sounds like he's hiding something. All that said he stayed alive, racked up the votes, and didn't get lynched. He probably shouldn't have been stacking votes on vulnerable leaders but he got there in the end.
Flyhn/Safeguard/Endgamed
Role Comments: Standard SG is incredibly necessary in a game like this. wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Player Comments: Flyhn did his job and thought for himself. The guy gets better at mafia every time I see him, but this wasn't the game where he needed to make a big play and he did just fine outside of not being active enough on the last day.
Conclusion:
Overall, the town came together strong in the early game, fought against outside influence and moling to a degree, and had many opportunities to take it to the end and win. I think this game showcased an interesting town dynamic where leadership and decisions are clearly in everyone's hands at some point. I think if they take anything away from this game, it's that they should be more assertive while still being careful. While many mistakes in the endgame led to an eventual loss, I think there's a lot to be commended as well.
Kids Anime
pancake/Transporter/Lynched D1
Role Comments: Yeah this is a Bus Driver, but I think MysticSoul's name for it in DBZ mafia is a lot classier, so sue me. This was EASILY the strongest role in the entire game, meant to have two drawbacks. The first is it's target based broadcasting designed to cause interesting problem solving for the village but allow them to unwind and retrace previous days if they figured it out. The second is the massive amount of heavy lifting the design of the Kids Anime had for this role, there were so many holes they needed to fill in a consistent fashion that each night the Transporter couldn't possibly cover all of them. However, because of the way village investigation worked this was effective at trying for a shitty fake clear play (which is why I didn't put anyone with the balls to do that on the Kids Anime but somehow Sam reaped the benefits anyway lmao), turning a confirmed scum read into a redirected vig shot, letting kills through by transporting likely BGed targets, the possibilities were limitless. Never did I imagine this would get randinspected N0 but such is life. Worth noting is that Geneshaft would be able to protect kills through this effect, and this is what I was designing around when I made the Expert Kill ignore redirection. The Town Safeguard was also an incredibly strong counter. Perhaps this role is too OP for mafia games but this was my attempt to design around it.
Player Comments: pancake was the natural leader I expected him to be, writing everyone's fakes and coordinating night actions. He pulled a couple fakes straight from mafia scum and I think it should have tipped him off that I wouldn't include a role in a game if I had to ask what it was. He understandably didn't handle himself properly in the tight spot he created by fakeclaiming to twin, and even though he was rolecopped an extremely strong player may have been able to read the conversation between the lines and talk their way out of it. The only bad thing I have to say about pancake is he abandoned his team right after he got lynched. He was a strong voice that I was counting on to hold them together through stratalking and instead he left them to idle and die. I've got confidence he'll do really well in future games with better luck and more experience.
sunny004/Jack of All Trades/Killed D2(or Lynched D3)
Role Comments: I don't think I could ignore this fantastic show or make it any other role for that matter. I liked the idea of being able to use different cards. Looking at the kids, they never had a consistent BG or a way to safeguard people, the other two shots played into their theme of diverse info roles and info manipulation. Worth noting is that the Toon World PMs would be released when Yugioh died so the village wasn't forever in the dark, but it's a shame the host mistake fucked that up for even a half cycle. To top it all off JOAT is a pretty good fake claim as far as this game is concerned.
Player Comments: sunny004 idled more than he could have, and was someone I thought could take more initiative in leading a mafia team from the games I read in the past. I never played with him though, so maybe I should have listened to Walrein. He didn't actually play poorly, though, even if a significant amount of activity could have helped his problems somewhat. It was kirsche who ignored his request to help prove his fakeclaim by inspecting Nico? After that he was confirmed scum in the eyes of leadership and there was no escaping the damage done to the Kids by losing their two best roles. Sorry again about the host mistake, and I'm also sorry for giving you a more inexperienced team when you requested mafia.
Aubisio/Team BPV+Results Theif/Killed N3
Role Comments: I don't know how many people watched this show as a kid, but I loved it back then and I had to design a role around Space Medafighter X being revealed as the Phantom Renegade and subsequently kicked from tournaments because he's a known criminal. Anyway, unlike other Team BPVs this one had counterplay because the BPV fails if you kill Aubisio first. Results Thief made sense for info manipulation, allowing the Kids to profit off village info roles and mess with the ways people normally check night actions to clear people. Randing shubaka actually worked out quite well in causing chaos and getting Mithril lynched. Cool role, no regrets, I'll just remember to use it next time.
Player Comments: I think Aubisio learned a lot being on an OC mafia team, and he was looking like the townier rogue until he got inspected. He could have been more active and assertive, and he could have been more careful about slipping team info during negotiations, but that's about it.
kirsche/Mayor+Inspector/Killed N5
Role Comments: The Kids needed a mayor in the lategame and a proper inspector for the early game and guess what? Role flavor works with Pokemon easily. 'Nuff said.
Player Comments: kirsche stepped up and made important calls when he needed to in the late game. He had the best fakeclaim by far, handled negotiations with the other mafia, and cast shade on Sam when he could. He played fine as a member team crippled by luck, but also had a hand in putting them in that position by ignoring sunny's request to investigate Nico and the Good Anime's request to kill Nomark, both of which would have been easily remedied by better communication within the team (which was at least as much the rest of the team's fault as it was kirsche's imo).
Conclusion
The Kids Anime were luckfucked and some poor choices defined their fate, but even if they tightened up their game they were never as willing to be proactive as a group as the other factions were. They were the easy targets for all the aggression when the Good Anime picked up the sheet, and the Kids should have been the faction better equipped to take sheet access and start selling out Good Mafians. With more activity this could have been a great group, however, and I'm looking forward to seeing them in future games.
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Good Anime
Yeti/Counterattacking BG/Killed N3
Player Comments: Yeti carried the Goods to a strong position by getting sheet access with the one good fakeclaim and solid negotiation. She had no business getting back on that sheet after Jalmont kicked her but she somehow convinced him. Subtly leading lynches off of her obvscum teammates without drawing suspicion is commendable, and I'm pretty sure she died being townread by the Kids Anime. If it weren't for her forgetting to protect herself using shubaka, she might have ensured a perfect victory for the faction.
Nico?/Expert Killer/Lynched D5
Player Comments: Nico? carried herself OK in conversation and memed harder than anyone with her original artwork, but she would have probably gotten lynched pretty quickly if Yeti wasn't around to manipulate things. It's fine though, for a first timer she handled herself well and learned a lot for next time.
UncleSam/Ideology Mayor/Endgame Winner
Player Comments: UncleSam never quite shook the suspicion on him this game but he negotiated his way out of investigations in the early game and into extremely important town mislynches in the late game. His worst plays were not realizing DLE could be a neutral and blowing his abilities a bit recklessly; nevertheless it was very well done game as expected from him.
Galap/Hooker+Investigator/Endgame Winner
Player Comments: Galap didn't have the most time to commit to this one and didn't need to lie when his mafia team was covering for him but he was very engaged and learned a lot about the game sitting in the backseat. I'm looking forward to seeing him take a more active role and I'm glad I was able to rope him into this.
Conclusion
The Good Anime had a couple minor hiccups in an incredibly strong game. Working with limited resources and fuckall for provability of safeclaims, they negotiated and precisely killed the correct targets while influencing village actions just enough to avoid suspicion. They got luckfucked by a Kids Anime stab which could have ended their great run in the face of the every night vig that they left up and overwhelming town numbers, but their play shone through even in this tight spot. If any faction "deserved" the win, it was them.
Blazade's Favorite Anime
Da Letter El
Player Comments: DLE did a lot with what he was given, but made assumptions about the state of the game and my own hosting style that ultimately hurt his chances. He also faced a particularly rough game environment for his position, in that Twin decided to use the N1 vig, the BG conflict got resolved via public lynch, Jalmont cut Yeti from night action planning when he needed it most, and the mafia wouldn't listen when he claimed neutral even after taking a shot with a flipped town BG. I've talked to DLE and while Geneshaft is a role about using social connections to gain info in a tight spot, I really could have been fairer to him in giving him an idea of what the game would be like. If he had protected Twin like he was told, this would have been a very different game, as the other goals are significantly easier IMO, but there's a thin line between underpowered with a chance for a hard fought victory and "balanced" but sometimes frustratingly able to get a lucky win over everyone else in cycle 4. DLE gets a lot of extra brownie points for actually watching Geneshaft after getting this role: that's dedication! Next time you won't be a guinea pig for my crazy ideas, and I'm sorry things didn't work out even when you played an admirable game.
Conclusion
I hope the above adequately explained a lot of the hidden interactions this game and my design philosophy for each individual role as well as for the greater structure. Through gameplay I wanted to showcase a few of the zany flavors of the anime world while adding a little more power and mystery to a standard mafia game. I put a lot of work into this game, and watching everyone play with the roles I gave them made me really happy, especially since things mostly went as expected. This ridiculously overwritten postgame provides nice closure for me and I've gotten a lot of fantastic feedback already. Even if I can be stubborn about things I've thought a great deal about, I want to be a better host and I want to hear honest opinions if you have them.
Thank you Walrein for cohosting! It really helped me out to have someone experienced checking over my setup and making sure I was running things smoothly.
Thank you for playing, everyone!
Yeti/Counterattacking BG/Killed N3
Role Comments: Inspired by how I thought the Sacrifice worked in Acid City, I thought this was a great protective role for the Goods, who could use it to anticipate a stab or offensively counter the vigilante. Shame it died early but I still like the design and the threat it presented.
Player Comments: Yeti carried the Goods to a strong position by getting sheet access with the one good fakeclaim and solid negotiation. She had no business getting back on that sheet after Jalmont kicked her but she somehow convinced him. Subtly leading lynches off of her obvscum teammates without drawing suspicion is commendable, and I'm pretty sure she died being townread by the Kids Anime. If it weren't for her forgetting to protect herself using shubaka, she might have ensured a perfect victory for the faction.
Nico?/Expert Killer/Lynched D5
Role Comments: I've talked about Expert Killer in thread, but the fact of the matter is there was a lot of protection and redirection around while the Goods didn't have a lot of offensive presence. I needed to keep the Goods form getting annihilated by the Transporter and thought this role didn't cause a lot of inherent problems in a game with so much information and zero way to prove any possible safeclaim for it. It sucks in the lategame, rewards village for snaking it out, and has real counterplay as well as the threat of a watcher. You may say "then design a game without transporter/ekiller/every night vig" but I wanted to push the limits of this design and make for a swingier game. It only accounted for one out of 2 mafia kills, and it wasn't attached to an item that never went away like in Metagame Mafia. I understand that it's not fun to die when you think you have protection on you, but this role and it's implications were something I thought a lot about from a balance perspective and the flip side of forcing other people to get involved in the mid-late game was worth that risk to me.
Player Comments: Nico? carried herself OK in conversation and memed harder than anyone with her original artwork, but she would have probably gotten lynched pretty quickly if Yeti wasn't around to manipulate things. It's fine though, for a first timer she handled herself well and learned a lot for next time.
UncleSam/Ideology Mayor/Endgame Winner
Role Comments: I wanted to give each faction a vote control role, and I wanted the Good one to feel powerful and splashy, but mafia having a lot of control over the lynch should be difficult or used sparingly in my opinion. Democracy was supposed to be either a niche in endgame to win a tied field regardless of mayors or prove your role in the early game, relatively shitty by design. Dictatorship was supposed to be strong though, and in most cases it would let the mafia decide to win a lynch on their own. Most days in an OC game a lot of people don't even vote so the drawback isn't that harsh. If this gets inspected there's a ton of counterplay, however. Additionally if it triggered an upset and LoGH died later, it could risk outing the whole team, so the Goods would have to be careful when using it. I think Sam underestimated the potency of this effect, but I also gave it clear drawbacks and nothing else to do. I couldn't let him use it during the day because that would cause some garbage stealth lynching, I also think more procs would have been bad. Just something else to do would have been the right fix IMO.
Player Comments: UncleSam never quite shook the suspicion on him this game but he negotiated his way out of investigations in the early game and into extremely important town mislynches in the late game. His worst plays were not realizing DLE could be a neutral and blowing his abilities a bit recklessly; nevertheless it was very well done game as expected from him.
Galap/Hooker+Investigator/Endgame Winner
Role Comments: Early and late game presence? Decisions about which half to prioritize more when targeting? A nice compactification of niches to free up space elsewhere? Definitely a fine design for a good mafia that gave you a sense of overpowering your target, since you got to know exactly what they can do and thus what in the game was affected by your hook.
Player Comments: Galap didn't have the most time to commit to this one and didn't need to lie when his mafia team was covering for him but he was very engaged and learned a lot about the game sitting in the backseat. I'm looking forward to seeing him take a more active role and I'm glad I was able to rope him into this.
Conclusion
The Good Anime had a couple minor hiccups in an incredibly strong game. Working with limited resources and fuckall for provability of safeclaims, they negotiated and precisely killed the correct targets while influencing village actions just enough to avoid suspicion. They got luckfucked by a Kids Anime stab which could have ended their great run in the face of the every night vig that they left up and overwhelming town numbers, but their play shone through even in this tight spot. If any faction "deserved" the win, it was them.
Blazade's Favorite Anime
Da Letter El
Role Comments: My dirty neutral. This anime is near and dear to my heart, and so is the role based on it. I've talked about my goals with a role like this, so let's talk about the goals themselves. I wanted this to start as BG so that it could start trying to block kills as soon as possible, so that it couldn't instantly monopolize village leadership by stepping up with a mole PM, stop a kill early to try and get sheet and lengthen the time of the game, and have an interesting conflict with Bakemonogatari. Beyond that the goals were about reading the game environment as accurately as possible, making pointed but accurate plays with prisoner's dilemma, and exploiting the mafia and vig to get a win with the redirect role in the late game. He's decidedly and provably not town, but doesn't have much to offer the mafia either. He doesn't broadcast as a threat, but has to negotiate a strong social game to acquire the info he needs to accomplish his goals. He has a PM that's flexible, but a role that isn't. A win with Geneshaft should feel like a journey, and I hope I captured that here.
Player Comments: DLE did a lot with what he was given, but made assumptions about the state of the game and my own hosting style that ultimately hurt his chances. He also faced a particularly rough game environment for his position, in that Twin decided to use the N1 vig, the BG conflict got resolved via public lynch, Jalmont cut Yeti from night action planning when he needed it most, and the mafia wouldn't listen when he claimed neutral even after taking a shot with a flipped town BG. I've talked to DLE and while Geneshaft is a role about using social connections to gain info in a tight spot, I really could have been fairer to him in giving him an idea of what the game would be like. If he had protected Twin like he was told, this would have been a very different game, as the other goals are significantly easier IMO, but there's a thin line between underpowered with a chance for a hard fought victory and "balanced" but sometimes frustratingly able to get a lucky win over everyone else in cycle 4. DLE gets a lot of extra brownie points for actually watching Geneshaft after getting this role: that's dedication! Next time you won't be a guinea pig for my crazy ideas, and I'm sorry things didn't work out even when you played an admirable game.
Conclusion
I hope the above adequately explained a lot of the hidden interactions this game and my design philosophy for each individual role as well as for the greater structure. Through gameplay I wanted to showcase a few of the zany flavors of the anime world while adding a little more power and mystery to a standard mafia game. I put a lot of work into this game, and watching everyone play with the roles I gave them made me really happy, especially since things mostly went as expected. This ridiculously overwritten postgame provides nice closure for me and I've gotten a lot of fantastic feedback already. Even if I can be stubborn about things I've thought a great deal about, I want to be a better host and I want to hear honest opinions if you have them.
Thank you Walrein for cohosting! It really helped me out to have someone experienced checking over my setup and making sure I was running things smoothly.
Thank you for playing, everyone!
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cool postgame. thanks for hosting again blazade.
the last thing i will say about the expert killer topic is that the wording ("von will make USER's conversation about Fate/Stay Night and anyone who was going to visit USER will visit you instead.") contradicts reality and is something that I believe should be clarified, whether that is by changing the wording to saying some people, not all, or making it so that the killer is affected by the reverse martyr (as far as im aware decoy = rev mar). i don't know if shubaka got any results about that but yeah. with that wording you're basically lying to shubaka when his role doesn't do what he says it does. and lying to players is no bueno
ok peace friends good gaem
the last thing i will say about the expert killer topic is that the wording ("von will make USER's conversation about Fate/Stay Night and anyone who was going to visit USER will visit you instead.") contradicts reality and is something that I believe should be clarified, whether that is by changing the wording to saying some people, not all, or making it so that the killer is affected by the reverse martyr (as far as im aware decoy = rev mar). i don't know if shubaka got any results about that but yeah. with that wording you're basically lying to shubaka when his role doesn't do what he says it does. and lying to players is no bueno
ok peace friends good gaem