Round 0
Mafia:
Reenk Roink and
Seamus Fermanagh
Detective:
Banquo’s Ghost
This would be a good game. When I selected the mafia out of my little hat, I knew that it would be. Seamus was a fairly new addition to the Mafia family, and had so far proven to be a very intelligent, logical player, much like
Kommodus. I wondered how he would be in the mafia role. Reenk was an… interesting character. He would give me some laughs.
Our Detective,
Banquo’s Ghost, had only played once before, in Mafia III, where he was lynched in the first round. Hopefully for the sake of the game he would do a little bit better this time around.
The “realism system” I mentioned had to do with PM timing. In two previous games (Mafia III and Cosa Nuova) the hosts had given the Detective time to post what he knew after they found out that he would die. Hopefully, this system would combat it. The idea was that if such a scenario happened, whoever sent me the first PM would have the edge. (so say, Banquo had revealed and Seamus decided to kill him off. If Banquo PM’d me first, he would get the result before I posted the kills and would have time to say what he knew in the thread. If Seamus sent the first PM, then Banquo would get no result.)
All three players understood the system and PM’d me their selections.
I almost forgot to put
Sasaki in the original status list; he PM’d me informing me of my mistake. I quietly added his name to the list. This would be the first of several minor errors I would make during the course of the game.
Round 1
Reenk kills
UltraWar
Seamus kills
Sir Moody
Banquo investigates
God’s Grace
Throughout the course of the game, the PMs were always sent in the same order: Reenk – Seamus – Banquo. Banquo thought that he was getting them in early, but I didn’t say anything.
Reenk for the most part wrote the kills as they appear in the thread. I made some minor tweaks here and there. The first kill was the only one I really played around with. I had a lot more freedom in writing Seamus’ kills. This is a good example of his usual PM to me:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh PM
Understand timing of system.
Please kill Sir Moody.
Killing should be a drive-by shooting with Tommy gun where he just happens to be the one randomly hacked down from a small group. Fits my selection of him.
The Bible passages didn’t come on until later.
The Wanax thing confused me – I figured out that it was Reenk just being Reenk. Even if he wasn’t, then surely the villagers would provide an origin.
Ignoramus PM’d me early on connecting The Wanax to Craterus and posted his suspicions a couple of rounds later. But Banquo provided an origin in the thread. The villagers, especially Sasaki, thought that it was just Banquo being a newbie mafioso and trying to distract the villagers.
However, as voting went on Reenk got in trouble for abstaining (courteously) (again).
Hepcat also got some votes. Due to timing, I didn’t want this round to go into a tie as I wanted to allow ample time for people to vote over the Thanksgiving weekend. This may have been a little unfair, but it kept the game moving along. In the rush to break the tie, Hepcat came out with the most votes.
Executed:
Hepcat
Round 2
Reenk kills
Pannonian
Seamus kills
Evil_Maniac From Mars
Banquo investigates
Sasaki Kojiro
All three had motives for their targets. Reenk and Seamus thought they were getting rid of the Detective, and Banquo, perhaps not realizing that this was Sasaki’s normal behavior, was suspicious of Sasaki attacking him.
Seamus again didn’t give me much to work with (nothing wrong with that btw) so I added in something I thought EMFM would like – Vogon poetry. It was half-homage to Cosa Nuova, half-filler. This started the speculation of what I put in the kills. For the first few rounds I answered what I could, but after a while I gave up.
This marked my second error in the game. Seamus wanted an “unblinking eye” from EMFM’s corpse. First, I forgot to add it, second of all when I did I cut out the entire eye instead of the eyelid. Seamus informed me of this mistake and I retconned it in a later kill.
This was the long round over Thanksgiving break. Votes were thrown a number of ways, but eventually it came down to Banquo for the Wanax thing, and
Divine Wind for making some suspicious posts early on and then disappearing.
(Oh, btw, props to
Silver Rusher for strongly advocating the lynch of Banquo. Had to get that in, buddy. :tongue:)
After about 4 days of voting, we were (of course) tied, so I called a re-vote and kept the round going for another day. I was rather surprised that nobody picked up on his change of behavior towards Sasaki, whom he had investigated. Banquo got in trouble early, so I was expecting a reveal to save himself. However, he was silent (the culprit: he went away for the weekend), and the votes fell his way. After Round 2, the Detective was gone.
I posted loads of hints in Banquo’s execution scene that he was the Detective. That thing that Beirut whispered in his ear was “why didn’t you reveal?” Kudos to
Crazed Rabbit and later on,
Kommodus for catching it.
Executed:
Banquo’s Ghost
Round 3
Reenk kills
Sasaki Kojiro
Seamus kills
theRTWGuru
Reenk’s kill of Sasaki had me laughing out loud for about 10 minutes. It definitely was the funniest kill I ever received (sorry Kommodus). It also had me wondering why Reenk would effectively prove a huge force of nature innocent, but I figured he had his reasons.
I was kind of sorry that the pains of thinking up and writing the realism system had gone to waste, but evidently the mafia didn’t know that. Seamus went after Guru (who had previously done a weak “reveal” and was quickly called out on its flaws) just to be safe. I finally got the unblinking eye thing right.
I’m kind of glad that Seamus told me what the passages meant, as I am no Bible expert myself. The only one I really got was the
Destroyer of Hope reference, which was the last one he wrote. This definitely fit the kill.
The Bible reference created a furor in the thread, replacing that of The Wanax. Just about everybody got named, but oddly enough, Seamus did not. However, he did not know that the Eye of Sasaki, now proven innocent, was now fixed on him.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro PM
Kagemusha is more likely to be innocent and now I have my eye on Seamus.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro PM
oh man Seamus is acting suspicious. Have to figure out how to confirm though.
(there were a lot of other suspects, but they shall remain anonymous :laugh4:)
However,
Zalmoxis fell under suspicion for odd voting patterns, and ultimately got the lynch this round.
Executed:
Zalmoxis
Round 4
Reenk kills
Kommodus
Seamus kills
Proletariat
Seamus’ kill intrigued me this round. I know he and Prole know each other outside of the Org, and I wondered if something he put in the kill (the fact that she likes sushi, perhaps? I have no idea) would give himself away. However, nothing ever came out.
Divine Wind PM’d me around this time to say that he wouldn’t be able to play anymore. Complying with his request, I killed him off via seppuku. I didn’t want to have to mod-kill too many people in order to keep the game running, and I knew that the Wrath of God would be rearing its ugly head fairly certain.
By killing Kommodus, Reenk earned his wrath thanks to those amazing systems later on. His thoughts have already been stated on this matter. Personally, I was wondering what the heck was up with him. This was the second round in a row where he had a good player proven innocent. I guess the moral here is “never try to figure out a Wanax.” :tongue:
However, the little red herrings he planted in his kill were the most effective since the infamous
AggonyDuck frame-up courtesy of Lemur in Mafia II. The philosophy discourse combined with the schwedentrunk got
Sigurd Fafnesbane to post a strong argument against
Husar. He tried to defend himself as well as start a counter-bandwagon on Csar but came up one vote short.
My progress report on the mafia so far: 4 rounds and everything was humming. Reenk and Seamus had the Detective out of the picture (and believed they did, too, which is a big help), weren’t attracting that much (public) suspicion, and only voted together once. Things were looking good, but as we have seen time and time again eventually the trap would close in on the mafia in the later rounds. This would occur in the next round.
Executed:
Husar
Round 5
Reenk kills
AggonyDuck
Seamus kills
doc_bean
Two safe kills this round. This would be the last quiet round before everything hit the fan. I was annoyed about the lack of activity of some players, and made it known. If certain select people did not vote this round, they would be gone.
Apparently Reenk was so convinced with the success of his last kill that he decided to put The Wanax away for around. But he reassured me that this would be a one-time deal:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reenk Roink PM
Hey GH, The Wanax will lay low this round, employing yet another brilliant stratagem to further obfuscate the villagers... :wink: Don't worry, he'll be back (contingent on my survival next round). :yes:
However, he was nailed by Kommodus’ newest anti-mafia system. K wasn’t as supremely confident in his method as he was in Mafia IV, however, and this caused a split in votes between Csar and
discovery1, who had been making mostly goofy posts in the course of the game.
I didn’t want another re-vote, so just decided to keep the voting open until a tie was broken. So I waited…
…and waited…
…and waited until
Craterus changed his vote from Csar to Reenk, hoping that someone else would vote for The Wanax. However, I was there to quickly end the voting. The game had to keep moving.
All in all, a grand total of 6 people died this round. There were the two kills, one execution,
Masy’s suicide, and the two Wrath of God victims (God’s Grace and Drisos). Hopefully this would have the same effect as in Mafia III, where the WoG suddenly brought activity to previous levels. I didn’t want to have to kill anybody else though, as the mafia had been “given” over a round thanks to suicides and inactivity.
Executed:
discovery1
Round 6
Reenk kills
Csar
Seamus kills
Sigurd Fafnesbane
Between the kills and execution, Reenk “revealed,” confident that the true Detective was out of commission. My initial reaction was that he botched it. The main reason for this was that he gave his evidence peacemeal, even though they were all very well done. I do have to give him credit for using the realism system explanation in his defense, but I wondered why on earth he deleted that Mafia IV post (and just for the record, it was the screenshots of all of his Detective results from that game).
Seamus avoided previous mafia mistakes by siding against Reenk. He would take great pains to make sure that no connection appeared between the two, but yet this would still come back to hurt him.
As a result of Reenk’s reveal, the mafia scrambled and changed their kills to two “innocents” that he had named. It was kind of funny seeing the normally grammar-conscious Seamus PMing me with the title
“CHANGE inn Night #6”. :laugh4:
The two original targets were as follows:
-Seamus to go after
Don Corleone the same way his namesake was wounded in The Godfather (movie that is).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh PM
General:
I wish to murder Don Corleone.
Murder should recreate the buying oranges/shot in the back scene from the 1972 classic with Marlon Brando – couldn’t resist with that name.
If you need to WoG someone else, have them take Freddo’s role but get run down with a car.
In the bag of oranges is found a note, reading: “Matthew 7:19”
-Reenk was to go after
Dutch_guy. He had already written the kill out, so all I had to do was substitute DG’s name in. Normally I would be pretty good at this, but seeing as how this was the third time I did these particular kills (I had already done Sigurd’s death twice, not including the time I accidentally put Don’s original death before realizing my mistake, and did The Wanax kill, complete with adding in a couple of sentences not to mention manually inserting all the underlines and non-italics for
The Analyst and the
phasgana :wall:) I rushed things a little bit.
About three minutes after the kills were posted, Reenk PM’d me saying he caught a Dutch_guy reference. This was my third error. Cursing myself, I quickly edited it out and thought I was safe, but then
Craterus posted his suspicions. I wondered what to say, but eventually decided to just keep quiet.
Despite Sasaki’s best efforts, Reenk was not the overwhelming favorite to get executed. There was a four-way tie with two hours to go, but then Seamus cast the deciding vote on his partner! :dizzy2:
That one threw me for a loop. Reenk wasn’t the sure lynch. Apparently Seamus had decided to cut his losses and go solo.
I put a minor clue in Reenk’s execution, but nobody caught it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeneralHankerchief
He was about to get up but in the pandemonium a bottle of wine fell from somewhere and knocked Reenk out cold.
Wine – grapes – grapes on a wide-brimmed hat/grape watermark – Wanax. Oh well.
Now that his buddy was gone, I was anxious to see how long Seamus would last. In my previous three mafia games, no Mafioso had ever managed to last more than one round without his partner. Seamus had set himself up as Reenk’s enemy, but ultimately this was his downfall.
Executed:
Reenk Roink
Round 7
Seamus kills
Kagemusha and
Destroyer of Hope
Well, The Wanax lived on even though Reenk had died. This was an extremely weird kill (dressing Kage up as the Trix Rabbit and having him eaten by rabid children). If this was earlier on in the game, I probably wouldn’t have accepted it but at this stage, I didn’t care enough to send an additional PM. This probably had something to do with my inbox nearing critical mass, too.
Sasaki used some elaborate stratagems in this round to bring out the mafioso, which kind of annoyed me since I had no control over what was happening (in case you didn’t know from my Godfather 2 commentary, I’m something of a control freak when it comes to these things :grin:). The first of these things was saying that he had “convincing evidence” that
Crazed Rabbit was guilty.
If you remember, he had Seamus pegged from Round 3, and mostly posted Rabbit’s “guilt” to get a reaction out of his suspect. However, Seamus didn’t spring for the quick lynch, which temporarily foiled his plans.
But then Kommodus’ system named Seamus, as did
AggonyDuck’s gut, which is possibly even more reliable. Cue in Reenk desperately trying to shift the attention to Rabbit and
Xiahou. This almost worked, and left us with a seemingly-endless 3-3 tie between Seamus and Rabbit.
It was a noble effort by Reenk, but sadly it was misplaced. The reason: The main effect of it instead raised HIS standing among his buddy. Reenk got placed in a good light, especially among Sasaki, and now the general opinion was that he was in fact the Detective. Obviously this did not bode well for the person who put the deciding lynch vote on him, AKA Seamus.
This brings me to the biggest lesson learned during Mafia V:
If you’re going to use a risky strategy, follow through with it. This has now been the downfall of the mafia in my two biggest games: Mafia III and Mafia V. In Mafia III, Kommodus voted against his buddy,
Gertgregoor, but failed to follow up on it and made the kills look like there were two Mafiosi. Here, the goal should have been to portray Reenk as a mafioso and hail Seamus as the hero and the person who lynched a bad guy. Instead, there was still a Wanax kill, Reenk came off looking innocent, and Seamus was doomed. Eventually Craterus cast the deciding vote, thus saving the Frontroom and ending Mafia V. I put in a fairly obvious clue in the execution (the Job reference) but it didn't matter since the game was over.
Executed:
Seamus Fermanagh
Game end
Well, I’m sure NOBODY was expecting the game to end when it did. I bet that most (all but two) players were pleasantly surprised when the final scene went up. I hate to see a story unfinished so I wrote a final confrontation with a robo-Wanax getting into a showdown with the remaining villagers. Not to mention an ending stolen from Stephen King’s excellent book in the Dark Tower series,
Wolves of the Calla. I highly recommend the book and the series.
A very well-played game to our two mafiosi,
Reenk Roink and
Seamus Fermanagh. You guys almost had it; one more round. Excellent job at covering the connection between the two of you. I really do think that if you had not gone with that strategy at the end that the game would have been yours.
Also, a mention should go to our Detective,
Banquo’s Ghost, for his noble effort. As in the Backroom, he posted with honor and logic at all times. :bow:
Finally, I’d like to give my congratulations to the townspeople. Judging by the last few games, they have become a force to be reckoned with, in my opinion replacing the Detective as the mafia’s biggest threat. You guys are what makes this game so difficult for the mafia, and your interaction is what makes Mafia games great.
So here’s to you, townspeople. You earned this victory. :medievalcheers:
