French Revolution Mafia [Concluded]

[GeneralHankerchief]

Wow, excellent game, choxorn. The only thing that made me doubt you at all was atheotes reporting in the dead thread that you had had a final watch, but you ever said anything about it publicly. The living players couldn't have known. Brilliant.

Hindsight is 20/20, but I think not saying anything publicly was the correct play by Choxorn. As soon as he definitively claims a watch result implicating one of the other players, that day immediately becomes a binary "Choxorn vs. [player implicated]" choice. Granted, he was still likely to prevail in that scenario, but the alternative was him not being on anyone's radar and the day playing out the way it did: Csargo vs. Manasi, with Chox just eating popcorn on the sidelines and coasting to victory.

[GeneralHankerchief]

I think it also needs to be said that, IMO, Choxorn's biggest accomplishment wasn't making it through six lynches without the barest sliver of suspicion so much as him being able to successfully dodge all of the nighttime carnage. There were a lot of vig shots this game, and people used them on a wide variety of targets for a wide variety of reasons - suspicion, playing the factional game, general annoyance, revenge, etc - and yet Choxorn skated by. That's the most impressive part of his victory from my standpoint.

[Jabbz]

GG folks. Sorry for the crap showing early on. I was really just lost on what to do and how to play a game with multiple factions.

[seireikhaan]

Whelp. Nicely done, Choxorn. Not a whole lot to say other than that. Just one person levelling the playing field by themselves after the disastrous first day/night. An excellent and well-deserved victory.

[Fenn]

A little late, but good game everyone, and congratulations to Choxorn for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. I don't have much else to say about the game having been bumped off so quickly, other than that it broke my heart to see my teammates turn against each other at the eleventh hour.

Would love to join another game...maybe in late April.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Okay, what follows are some of my thoughts with regards to balancing in terms of the pre-game stuff and the factions. Later on I'll go more into the happenings that went on during the game itself, but first things first. Commentary from you guys is encouraged.

General:
When designing this game, I was looking to accomplish three goals first and foremost: First of all, I wanted to offer a game that had a high degree of difficulty for all players and sides. Secondly, I wanted to create a game that was self-correcting; i.e. if there were any lopsided factional imbalances I wanted there to be a good chance of these being rectified. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, I wanted the (non-Royalist) players a real choice in how they would go about achieving their win conditions and accomplishing their goals, in a way that I had been trying to do for so long with the various installments of my Pirate Ship Mafia series but never quite getting there. I'll talk more later about these three goals, particularly the third, in my yet-to-come post about game events, but for now just keep these in mind as you continue reading.

The last thing I want to say in this section is that, regarding the factional abilities that were tied to each player, there was a fairly significant correlation between their naming and the player who was secretly attached to that ability. For example, the Montagnards' "Pose For Portrait" ability, their 3x Jailkeeper, was attached to seireikhaan - whose role was Jacques-Louis David, the famous painter. Obviously the entire faction didn't know about this, as there was incentive to keep role names secret, but khaan might have been able to put two and two together and if he was in danger of the lynch, might have subtly hinted to his Montagnard colleagues that he was tied to a power.

Montagnards:
Factional abilities:
1x vigilante shot - each faction has access to this ability
Proscription: 1x additional vigilante shot - assigned to Jabbz (Saint-Just), later reassigned to Lewwyn
Pose for portrait: 3x jailkeeper - assigned to seireikhaan

The Montagnards were the only faction that thematically did not have a "hat". Considering that, historically, they were in power for the greater part of the Reign of Terror, I decided to make them the sort of jack-of-all-trades faction. Their powers weren't sexy, certainly not compared to those of the Populists or Militarists, but they got the job done. In addition, they had Robespierre, the single most powerful non-Royalist role in the game (with two passive bulletproofs the first two nights), on their team, and I generally figured that whoever randed Robespierre would at least add one other Montagnard to the Committee early on.

Populists:
Factional abilities:
1x vigilante shot - each faction has access to this ability
Orator of Justice: 1x jailkeeper - assigned to autolycus
Enemies list: You submit a list of five players during the night. One full day phase later, the political faction of these five players will be publicly revealed (example: If you submitted this list on N1, it would publicly be revealed at the start of D3). You also have the option of waiting an additional full day cycle in order to see how many of the players on the list are Royalists. The person submitting this factional order must remain alive for the duration of the ability’s activation in order for it to work. 1x. - assigned to Arakhor
Wrath of the sans-culottes: This is a fun one. You unleash the power of the peasantry upon your enemies. 1x vig, with a chance of side-effects: 33% chance of an additional random kill (small chance of two additional random kills), 33% chance of additionally killing someone either visiting or visited by the target at night, 33% chance of a random jailkeeping of a variable amount of players depending on how many are left in the game (anywhere from 3-7). - assigned to Zack

The Populists' abilities were designed to be powerful, but scattershot, reflective of the anarchic qualities that the sans-culottes of Paris possessed at the time. They had their 1x Jailkeep just to ensure they didn't only have access to two total unique abilities, but their big two did not have much in the way of precision. The Enemies List ability, if used on any Royalists, would not point precisely to who in the group was the Royalist - if it scanned 5 people and there was only one Royalist in the group, the result given would have said "of these five people there is one Royalist among them" and that would be it. In addition, it had a huge delay, implemented out of paranoia by me that a lucky scan would break the game. In hindsight I think the delay was exactly right in terms of timing.

As far as the dreaded Wrath of the Sans-Culottes, I regret nothing.

Girondins:
Factional abilities:
1x vigilante shot - each faction has access to this ability
Sanctuary: 3x Doctor, cannot use all three protections on the same target (two is fine). - assigned to Kagemusha (later reassigned to atheotes)
Introspection: 2x Watcher (see who targets a person). Target must be a member of the Gironde faction unless there are less than three Girondins remaining. - assigned to NotACop

I always meant for the Girondins to be a defensive faction. They had almost nothing in the way of offensive abilities, but, with proper application, would be dynamite at protecting their own, or, at the very least, taking down their attackers with them. This was nice in theory, but in practice the Girondins were perceived to be underpowered relative to the other three factions, and I can't say that I disagree. I think a part of me knew this and increased the number of times they could use their abilities to compensate, but it wasn't enough. I still like the idea of a "defensive" faction, but in a game with this many vig attempts flying around, I probably would have added a jailkeeper or something, and maybe split their protections between people so they weren't screwed if the member attached to the protections died early.

Militarists:
Factional abilities:
1x vigilante shot - each faction has access to this ability
Ballot stuffing: Can designate two secret votes on any target the night before that will be tallied during the day. Both votes are allowed to be made the same day or separate days. Votes may be rescinded (only by the person who submitted the order) during the day, but may not be changed to a different target. - assigned to Dp101
Conscription: Override a target’s night actions and have them vig, roleblock, or protect a different target of your choice. 2x ability, may not repeat actions. - assigned to Csargo
Secret police: 1x day vigilante shot. First come, first served. Post must be made in the public thread with bold purple text and may not be made in the first two hours of a phase. - assigned to Manasi

Before the game started, I was most worried about the Militarists being overpowered compared to the other factions. Indeed, they had an impressive collection of abilities, but the mitigating factor I put in was that there was a sinister element to each of these abilities. The ballot stuffing, which was never used, would naturally be looked upon with suspicion by the rest of town, and would most likely cause tinfoiling. Much the same with conscription and the overriding of someone else's action. Most prominently, there was the dayvig, which I meant to make as nakedly open as possible - it had to be done in public, and there were no checks and balances in the form of a second Militarist signing off before the action was initiated, etc. The end result was that while the Militarists mechanically had probably the best set of abilities, they came with allowing paranoia to set in both amongst the other factions as well as themselves. A poisoned apple, if you will. Considering the final day's vote came down to two Militarists, this goal would appear to have been achieved on the surface, but I'm not entirely sure it was successful.

Royalists:
Factional abilities:
Factional kill, 1 per night.
Roleblock, cannot target same player consecutive nights.
Additional roleblock, 3x usage.
(Note: Multiple actions cannot be taken by the same player unless that player is the only Royalist remaining)

There was a lot of speculation based on how many Royalists there were, but I had always designed the number to be four. While this number seems light in a 24-player game, there were three things that would make it a more even fight: First, the Royalist infiltration of most (if not all) of the factional Quicktopics - even if they couldn't hijack orders at the last minute they could still report on the goings-on and give their teammates a clearer picture than anybody, thus fulfilling the definition of Mafia at its most basic: a knowledgeable minority vs. an in-the-dark majority. Second, the factional design of the game - since it was hardcoded into people's win conditions that there was no town, per se, people always had other targets at night and were able to justify it as well. Third, the roleblocks. These had priority over all other actions at night (save for the Committee recruitment, which was automatic), which meant that, properly applied, the Royalists could always ensure that one action failed. Choxorn predominantly used his to sideline an entire faction that he happened to target at night, and then, most effectively, blocked Zack from tracking Csargo the very last night, which kept Csargo firmly in the town's crosshairs. All things considered I think the number of roleblocks I allowed the Royalists was right about in the proper range with everything else going on.

Committee of Public Safety:
The Committee's first and foremost goal is to safeguard the Revolution by weeding out and killing the Royalists. Political preference (ostensibly) does not matter. Obviously, the goal here is to keep it free of Royalist infiltration.
Each night, you choose one person to join the Committee. This is an automatic action and is not affected by roleblocks, jailkeeps, having already performed a factional ability, etc. The seniormost member of the Committee has final say on recruitment.
Other Committee factional abilities are:
- Nightly tracker upon 3 members
- Nightly vigilante upon 4 members
The Committee has a maximum limit of five members.

The Committee was, in my opinion, the keystone to balancing the game. I said earlier that I wanted to create a game that was self-correcting; the Committee was my primary tool for achieving this. If the Royalists were dominant and killing off people left and right and avoiding the lynch, the Committee would be a last-ditch weapon for the town to get their act together; for them to pool information and gain an extra track (and maybe vig) and maybe even band together against the threat. If the Royalists were decimated early on (as we saw here), then the Committee would be the primary battleground in the factional game, especially with seniority deciding who gets to submit the orders. If the game state was more even, then the Committee would be somewhere in between.

All things considered, when you strip away the fancy mechanics and the factional politics and everything that made this game what it was, I still wanted it to come down to how well the Royalists could infiltrate and gain the trust of the town, just like in any other mafia game. Choxorn did this successfully and was rewarded with a Committee invite, and used his knowledge of its inner workings to further manipulate the situation to his advantage.

As far as the Committee mechanics go, I think getting a tracker at 3 members and a vig at 4 turned out well - the Committee was only able to get over the hump and get to 4 near the very end of the game. Early on in the development cycle I had them getting a vig at 5, which would not have been as exciting.



So that's the meat of it, the first part anyway. Again, any commentary is greatly appreciated, and I'll go more into the actual gameplay stuff (the added vigs/protections I gave everybody, the Committee in practice rather than theory, etc) in a later post. Possibly tonight, maybe tomorrow.

[Arakhor]

Agreed in theory but you still got to play to win, yeah?

Yes, but in this case that meant actually killing Royalists. As should have been readily apparent, it doesn't matter if your faction is currently the largest if you haven't tracked down all the scum, because if the scum win, everyone else loses. And in the words of Kipling's famous poem, If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, then you deserve to win the game, as Choxorn did. The so-called "town" lost their heads and thus, in my opinion, did not deserve to win.

(Then again, I'm frequently terrible at this and I died early on, so my opinion is probably not worth very much.)

[Montmorency]

Royalist blocks were definitely a significant balancing element. The number of vigs may be too, in a way, but coupling them with opposing blocks was a good decision.

For my early suggestion in the Committee, removing most night powers from the factions would keep the lynches hot but would remove much of the sting from factional dynamics, which you might not desire.

For Committee powers, just to increase choice and variability I still recommend that the 5th member come with some extra power, but exclusive to the vig during the deployment. For example, at 5 members you could use a track and a vig, or a track and a jail/protect/block/etc.

[Monstrdude]

choxorn goat

[Dp101]

I must admit, really the only part of this game that truly frustrated me was my lynch. Sure, I was nowhere near lock clear. But, I was middle of the pack at worse on the towniness scale, and there were multiple people scummier than me, who were all ignored. Now, those people happened to be town, but the point still stands. I just felt like there were processes behind the scenes that I could do nothing to disrupt or fight against, and that my death had very little to do with my own play.

[Choxorn]

I guess my only redeeming factor this game is that Chox pinged me d1 so he was my top suggestion for the faction vig, though we settled for Logic instead. But after that he went of my rader and stayed there until game's end.

I'm glad you didn't vig me, partly because then I couldn't have won and partly because this game would have been a total letdown for everyone if it ended night 1.

I'm now ready to categorise choxorn among players where tone has little value in getting a town lean from me. Gimme something solid or you're a plausible lynch. This is why I was ready to lynch Winston despite his townieness. Cus he can fake dat sh*t.

Every time someone clears me based on tone or just "looking town," I break down in a fit of evil laughter.

Congratulations to Choxorn! I suppose that just goes to show that in a faction game, gamely insisting that you're only playing to your faction is a sure way to lose (unless of course you're the scum).

Well, I made sure to strike a balance between playing to my faction and playing to hunt Royalists (or at least look like I was hunting Royalists), and I was privately waaaaay more pro-Girondin than I was publicly because that was a good way to buddy up to Al and NAC. Going hard after atheotes on Day 2 probably helped me look a bit more trustworthy to some of the other factions, at least more so than the Populists' tendency to seem way more interested in protecting each other than scumhunting. And, to be fair, they legitimately were completely free of Royalists! But it sure didn't look that way to the rest of the town.

My willingness to hunt my faction mates one day might have also made me look better when I strongly insisted on not lynching NAC the following day, because at the time the Girondins were the smallest faction and us insisting on lynching someone else would only make sense.

Hindsight is 20/20, but I think not saying anything publicly was the correct play by Choxorn. As soon as he definitively claims a watch result implicating one of the other players, that day immediately becomes a binary "Choxorn vs. [player implicated]" choice. Granted, he was still likely to prevail in that scenario, but the alternative was him not being on anyone's radar and the day playing out the way it did: Csargo vs. Manasi, with Chox just eating popcorn on the sidelines and coasting to victory.

If I had to, my plan was to say something like "I watched NAC last night, and I didn't see anybody target him. Kind of strange, huh? And Zack couldn't track Csargo last night, for some reason. Also kind of strange, right?" And then I'd try to make it look like Csargo had immunity to tracking and watching powers. That would at least have the advantage of Zack's night actions being able to back up my story a bit.

Like you said, I didn't really want to make it "me vs. Csargo" or "me vs Manasi" if I could avoid it, because I wasn't sure if Csargo or Manasi would so easily turn against their teammate, even if Zack was almost certain to vote for one of them just because that was the only way he could win. And I didn't really want to leave it up to a tie and a coin flip if I could avoid it.

I think it also needs to be said that, IMO, Choxorn's biggest accomplishment wasn't making it through six lynches without the barest sliver of suspicion so much as him being able to successfully dodge all of the nighttime carnage. There were a lot of vig shots this game, and people used them on a wide variety of targets for a wide variety of reasons - suspicion, playing the factional game, general annoyance, revenge, etc - and yet Choxorn skated by. That's the most impressive part of his victory from my standpoint.

I just did my best to seem as cooperative as I possibly could, so that the factional game/revenge vigs would be against other people. When Zack and Monty got into a spat in the Public Safety QT, I was absolutely loving it and munching popcorns from the sidelines, and privately rooting for their factions to kill each other, and they more or less did.

I generally figured that whoever randed Robespierre would at least add one other Montagnard to the Committee early on.

Why would Robespierre start out by adding Montagnards, though? The Committee was more useful for providing cross-faction cooperation and contact, it made a lot more sense to start out by recruiting people outside the Montagnards for information.

In addition, it had a huge delay, implemented out of paranoia by me that a lucky scan would break the game. In hindsight I think the delay was exactly right in terms of timing.

And Autolycus got lots of suspicion early on and the Populists had to come up with ways to defend him without revealing what exactly he was up to. If I was in a better position had more teammates alive, I might have thought "Hmm, maybe I should kill Autolycus and see what happens if the Populists want him alive so badly," and it might have played out a lot different if there was a Royalist in the Populist faction, giving them a chance to influence the scan, know beforehand about it, and mess with the results. As it stands, I only knew about my own faction's abilities until I was recruited to the Public Safety QT, because SOMEONE, OR SHOULD I SAY TWO SOMEONES, DIDN'T BOTHER TELLING ME WHAT THEIR FACTION COULD DO BEFORE THEY HAD TO GO AND DIE ON ME.

I still like the idea of a "defensive" faction, but in a game with this many vig attempts flying around, I probably would have added a jailkeeper or something, and maybe split their protections between people so they weren't screwed if the member attached to the protections died early.

Problem is, while the Watch might help catch a Royalist or two, catching the other factions in the act of vigging wasn't going to do much good- as the game revealed, the response wouldn't have been "You killed him, what the hell dude, time to get lynched" but more "Yeah, I killed him, what are you gonna do about it?" The Girondins having three protections was good, but the other factions had plenty of defensive abilities themselves, and the Girondins were alone in not having a second vig shot, so they had only defense, little offense.

If you wanted to give their defensive abilities something that could have achieved the desired "taking down the attackers with them" effect, you could have gone with something like an Elite Bodyguard, or something like Pizza's individual ability that would have let them hunt down specific people who were trying to kill them.

And the Girondins did lose the protections early, because they were tied to atheotes and he was the Day 2 lynch.

Choxorn predominantly used his to sideline an entire faction that he happened to target at night

I could have been more effective with my uses of this if I had some idea what the other factions were doing, but since I couldn't infiltrate them, I just figured "Well, I can block two people a night at the same time as killing them, at least until I run out of my 3-use blocks" and just went with the brute-force method of "block two people in the faction, kill 1, and hope it works"

It worked well twice, letting me kill seireikhaan despite his protection Night 4, and failed spectacularly Night 2, because I didn't realize that the Militarists could force someone else outside of their faction to protect Renata for them.

All things considered, when you strip away the fancy mechanics and the factional politics and everything that made this game what it was, I still wanted it to come down to how well the Royalists could infiltrate and gain the trust of the town, just like in any other mafia game. Choxorn did this successfully and was rewarded with a Committee invite, and used his knowledge of its inner workings to further manipulate the situation to his advantage.

I think my recruitment helped me more than anything else in the game, because suddenly I had tons of information about the other factions' nefarious deeds and could privately talk to the town leadership and learn what they were up to.

Also, it gave me another way to buddy up to my faction mates- from the moment I was recruited I was constantly leaking info about Monty and Zack's doings to the Girondin QT, because honestly, I would have absolutely done that if I was actually town. At least, I would have done that once NAC was publicly revealed not Royalist, which happened at the same time.

Getting to watch Monty and Zack's feud up close also gave me a perfectly innocent-seeming reason to push my faction to vig Winston Hughes, which was nice.

choxorn goat

[Montmorency]

It worked well twice, letting me kill seireikhaan despite his protection Night 4,

Actually, he wasn't protected. I changed to protect myself, not that it helped. I don't think Khaan surviving would have helped town, because

I think my recruitment helped me more than anything else in the game, because suddenly I had tons of information about the other factions' nefarious deeds and could privately talk to the town leadership and learn what they were up to.

I trusted you more than anyone at that point, and specifically requested that my faction hold you in esteem. So Khaan and Lewwyn surviving D4 to vig, they would have vigged Zack or the surviving Militarist, most likely. It was just too late for the survivors to re-evaluate you, especially with Manasi looking so evil. I think your victory was sealed from D3.

[atheotes]

Thanks for hosting GH. the flavor and details were top notch.

Well played Choxorn.

[Monstrdude]

i believed in you the entire time choxorn

thanks for the carry

[Logic]

Choxorn, let me congratulate you on the win. I have never in my life seen a better wolf performance.

I'm curious Chox: besides the opening of day 2, what moments were you most unsure of?

[Al Sipsclar]

Good game, choxorn, well deserved win.
Thanks GH for hosting, the narration was top notch (still didn't have a chance to read through the last few pages ).

[Jabbz]

As an entertaining addendum to this game, I'm currently reading Discipline and Punish for my last grad class. Parts of it fit in well with this game, and even cite some of the events.

[El Barto]

I'd be a little insulted if I didn't get paranoia-lynched at least once for what I did in this game.

*evilgrin.jpg*

[Choxorn]

Choxorn, let me congratulate you on the win. I have never in my life seen a better wolf performance.

I'm curious Chox: besides the opening of day 2, what moments were you most unsure of?

Beginning of Day 3 also made me a little unsure- While I was firmly townread by most, my nightkill failed.

Beginning of Day 4 was a mixed bag- I was very displeased to see two of the most suspected players publicly declared not Royalist, but getting into the CPS QT was a major turning point in my favor. After that, I was at first a little unsure, because I might end up in a spot where other players were even more clear than I was and I'd be lynched by PoE, but over time, I got more and more confident in my victory- after the bloodbath of Night 4, I was pretty sure I could win this.

[GeneralHankerchief]

Okay, last bit of postgame commentary from me. Earlier I put down my thoughts on game concepts in theory (the factions plus the Committee), now here's my thoughts on the game in practice. Unlike in previous commentaries, I'm making no attempt to make these thoughts flow into a coherent essay; instead they will be strictly organized by section. Clearly I'm losing my touch as I approach my twelfth year hosting these things.

The general gamestate/flow:
So, time to be frank: I was not happy when at the start of Day 2, three of the four Royalists had already bought it. I know, you're supposed to be impartial as a host and everything, but you're always rooting for the game to be interesting - or, barring that, you at least want the damn thing you spent hours designing and balancing and lovingly crafting unique role PMs for to last longer than three total phases. However, after my initial shock and fear subsided, I took a more rational view: Jabbz was lynched because of perceived scummy behavior. Likewise, Kage and Monstr were targeted at night because the people taking the shots (Fenn and Pizza) thought there was a high likelihood of hitting a Royalist. That wasn't a design flaw on my part, that was just good town play. It's not like they were eschewing their win conditions either, since both of those shots were made out-of-faction.

Furthermore, the state of things on D2 allowed me to see if the self-correcting mechanisms I inputted would work - perhaps a little more dramatically than I would have liked, but nonetheless the opportunity was there. I figured that there was a high likelihood of the town putting the scumhunt on the backburner, since if they weren't in the factional lead when the last Royalist flipped, the game would end then and there with their loss. Meanwhile, in the public thread, Choxorn was killing it tonally. The veneer that people used to push lynches on the basis of scumminess but were also factionally convenient (atheotes, Dp101, etc) didn't apply to Chox.

What pleased me the most was that privately, each faction seemed to be taking a different approach to the game. On a sliding scale going from "beat the other factions" to "kill the Royalists", I perceived the order going Populists > Militarists > Girondins > Montagnards with the spacing between each pretty even.

Finally, the one thing I underestimated was how much the factional rivalries and various grudges that formed would play out. I figured that between the Committee, people posting in the thread, and the Populist "Enemies List" ability, who was in which faction would gradually become public knowledge, but I didn't anticipate how far some of the players would take it. Two incidents in particular stick out for me: The Populist/Montagnard (remember, on opposite ends of my spectrum) showdown over how to approach the game, and the Militarists taking up Renata's dying wishes by going all-out on a Monty vig even after he had already been revealed as non-Royalist. Still though, I found this "interesting" and not "perturbing", since this game was all about player choice. In the opening writeup I made for the game, in the "overview" section of the first post (not even under spoilers), I said that "maintaining a perfect balance between these two aims [factionalism and hunting Royalists] will be the key to obtaining victory." This sentence, something I first wrote in the fall of 2008 and lifted from my Pirate Ship Mafia overviews, nonetheless applied here far more and better than it ever did in any of the three Pirate Ship games. The town as a whole did not maintain this balance, Choxorn put himself in a good position to take advantage of it, and came out as the victor.

Montmorency and the Committee:
Monty gets his own section here. The Robespierre role was assigned randomly, but as soon as I saw random.org's decision I realized that I had given probably the most Montmorency role ever created... to Montmorency. Here he had explicit license from the host to network, to pool information, to try and do everything in his power to direct an overall town victory. The problem for him, and the main source of conflict in the second half of the game, was that there was no town in this game.

I feel like Monty's choices to join the Committee with him, while they made sense in theory (pick the player from each faction you most believe is innocent), were on the very idealistic end of the spectrum considering that only one faction could win out in the end. If we break this down further:
- The Renata recruitment on N1 was an obvious choice. She was trusted, capable, and from a faction that was one of his blind spots. In addition, he made this recruitment before Monstr and Kage flipped and while Monty was still under the impression that they had more than one or two holdouts to smoke out. No issues with this one.
- The Zack recruitment on N2 though was more questionable. He was in a different faction from Monty and Renata, and according to the Committee QT Monty thought Zack had a higher chance of playing ball with them than Askthepizzaguy (probably a misread of Zack's personality). The big thing with this though was that by this point the Royalists were on the ropes and the factional game was starting in earnest. I probably would have recruited another Montagnard here and fed Renata the line of "X was pushing hard for this Royalist to be shot privately, he can be trusted" - while in the meantime keeping my faction high on the seniority chart in what was designed to be the main battleground in the late game.
- Choxorn N3 was, obviously, catastrophic, but it removed Monty's last blind spot and he (like literally everyone else) sincerely believed Choxorn was town. It was the wrong decision, but he made it for the right reasons, though my previous point regarding a Montagnard still stands.
- By the recruitment of NotACop N4 and later, the Montagnards were never preserving control of the Committee if Monty died, so by that point it ceased to matter.

The bottom line is that I was expecting Monty to put another Montagnard on the Committee early, probably around N2. While he had good reasons for recruiting who he did, I think this had two major flaws: First, his perceived leadership style didn't match his stated egalitarian intentions, which obviously rubbed some people the wrong way. Second, he ceded the initiative to the other factions, and the Montagnards paid for it.

The Law of 22 Prarial and extra vigs:
Given the fact that the factions could lose access to their abilities at any time, plus human nature, I figured that the players would gravitate towards using their factional abilities sooner rather than later, and I was proven correct by this. However, this posed a problem: I didn't want a factional game to turn essentially vanilla midway through the game, where the only time they could gain an advantage or disadvantage was through the lynch or the Royalists inadvertently playing kingmaker just by trying to stay alive. The Committee's eventual track and vig would mitigate this somewhat, but in the event of the town gaining an early advantage over the Royalists (which was exactly what happened here) I wanted the Committee to be the main battleground between factions as they tried to gain control over it. The problem was, a battleground isn't interesting if nobody on it has any weapons to fire.

So I knew that at some point in the game I was going to have to do a partial refresh of night powers. However, I wanted to be fair to all sides (as well as the Royalists), and also reward those who did not entirely shoot their wad with powers and still had some in reserve. The conclusion I came to was the one that was eventually implemented: Each faction gets one extra kill and protection, to be used on one night only. If you didn't use it, you lost access to it.

The goal of this was to provide the factions with extra firepower, but also give them a way to defend themselves. By N4 (when I had always designed for this to go in effect), I figured there was a high likelihood that 50% if not 75% or more of the players would be aware of the Committee through its members leaking details to the rest of their factions, and that as a result what had previously been private information would be seeping into the realm of semi-public knowledge. People who were aware of thread dynamics, developments made in the Committee, which faction had what actions left, would be tested. If they read their tea leaves right, they could play the situation to their advantage. If not, then they would probably protect the wrong people, and it would blow up in their faces.

In all, I was not expecting six deaths to happen that night. That said, there could have been seven - Choxorn roleblocking the Montagnards meant that the Militarists did not need to use both of their vig attempts to kill Monty (though there was no way they could have known this). I was anticipating that at least one of the hits would not go through due to protection. It was this level of carnage that got some in the dead chat (Arakhor?) questioning this decision on my part and whether it was balanced.

I briefly responded in dead chat and touched on it a little earlier in the postgame, but let me fully defend myself here: First of all, this result was an outlier. There were definitely supposed to be more deaths than usual that night, but not six. Second of all, I wanted a lot in this game to come down to player choice and the N4 actions reflected this. The players had chosen. They chose by voting themselves this power in the first place without even seriously discussing it, knowing full well the implications since I was straight up with them. They chose their targets and they chose their protections; heck, they even chose to take the shots in the first place. The fact that no kills were doubled up or hit a protected target was just an outcome of the choices they had all made. Thirdly, and most importantly, had one of those shots hit Choxorn, the game would have ended. But once again, he was never suspected. In the end, he won because he played a damn good game, not because of any mechanics I cooked up.

Conclusion:
Thanks for bearing with me through everything. This was a different kind of game for me, but you all seemed to like it and I certainly hope you all had fun playing it! I must give one final congratulations to Choxorn for one of the most impressive victories I can remember - he not only pulled off an impossible comeback, but also made it look easy.

In the meantime, I've heard talks of people being interested in running this system in other games, which you're more than welcome to - just make sure to credit me. As for me, while I'm happy that my system was by all accounts successful, I don't think I'll re-use it again - not on this site anyway - as a lot of it depended on the players being in the dark. However, I will certainly take the lessons I learned with this one and see what I can do about applying them towards a certain game that may be hosted in September 2018...

Anyway, thanks for playing and reading, and I hope to see you around!

GH

[Dp101]

Personally, I loved the idea of the Law of 22. It kept the townspeople who had already blown all of their abilities from getting demoralised by not having anything they could do, and it also allowed for those emotionally charged vig shots that feel so good, you know, the ones where you hit the guy who you've been butting heads with all game in one glorious strike of vengeance.

I'm still not entirely sure though how the committee was meant to function effectively. The people within really don't have much of an incentive to help, especially when they don't control it, as they know very well that any and all information about roles can just lead to the leader of the Q/T going after them more. In addition, there's nothing stopping the leader from stuffing the faction full of their own people and using it purely for the additional shots, which would help them achieve both their win conditions better. I just feel that there should have been some way to negotiate a lasting peace via it, or at least some kind of long-term cooperation, as currently it feels about as useful as the main thread in terms of honesty of opinions and intentions. On the other hand, I do understand wanting to have the committee naturally tear itself apart over time, in which case feel free to disregard my suggestions.

[Csargo]

Using both vigs on Monty was definitely a huge mistake, and me revealing it was a terrible choice. If all things fell the same way, I would have wanted to vig Choxorn the last night for obvious reason. I don't know if Manasi would have went for that or not. He might not have blocked Zack the final night either had I not revealed it.

[Montmorency]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

We decided against recruiting Pizza to the Committee because we figured Pizza didn't want any more town responsibility.

[Dp101]

Using both vigs on Monty was definitely a huge mistake, and me revealing it was a terrible choice. If all things fell the same way, I would have wanted to vig Choxorn the last night for obvious reason. I don't know if Manasi would have went for that or not. He might not have blocked Zack the final night either had I not revealed it.

Meh, I think it's acceptable. I mean, Choxorn really couldn't be justified as "Why isn't he dead yet" after we got 3 confirmed townspeople who were by default more important kills. In the end, I think that there just weren't enough mislynches to catch him.

[Choxorn]

Thirdly, and most importantly, had one of those shots hit Choxorn, the game would have ended.

Well, it would have had to have been two, I got the Girondins to protect me.

[Dp101]

Well, it would have had to have been two, I got the Girondins to protect me.

See now that's just not fair.

[GeneralHankerchief]

I'm still not entirely sure though how the committee was meant to function effectively. The people within really don't have much of an incentive to help, especially when they don't control it, as they know very well that any and all information about roles can just lead to the leader of the Q/T going after them more. In addition, there's nothing stopping the leader from stuffing the faction full of their own people and using it purely for the additional shots, which would help them achieve both their win conditions better. I just feel that there should have been some way to negotiate a lasting peace via it, or at least some kind of long-term cooperation, as currently it feels about as useful as the main thread in terms of honesty of opinions and intentions. On the other hand, I do understand wanting to have the committee naturally tear itself apart over time, in which case feel free to disregard my suggestions.

Ideally the Committee would have been this if the Royalists had the upper hand. But because the game swung in the other direction, I figured it was pretty much inevitable that the Committee would eat itself, and it eventually did.

[El Barto]

However, I will certainly take the lessons I learned with this one and see what I can do about applying them towards a certain game that may be hosted in September 2018...

In your last game, the Polandball mafia game, I remember that you had FranceBall have guillotines in his eyes. And I played as Somalia. Clearly these were portents of things to come.