Rampage Out of Space

[Montmorency]

Postmortem

So, OK, not gonna lie, this was one of the worse Town performances in my decade (!) on the Org, despite all the individually-good play. But we'll get to that.

Thanks to everyone who signed up to play or helped me piece together the design or player list, especially Visorslash. Shocked that we got through without needing replacements, that's a rarity and praiseworthy.

For over two weeks I sank a lot of time into feeling anxiety wrangling a full signup sheet. Then there was the obsessive anxiety of managing the game, writing writeups, and monitoring player actions and scenarios. Rolling host is even harder than rolling Mafia.

The overall activity level of the game was adequate (and as promised, relatively-low volume), but to achieve the proper effect and mood of sustained and intense discourse I would have liked the minposters to increase their presence. I hoped for 2K posts, expected 3K, got something in between: the Org 2.0 from 2017 more than classical Org Mafia. In the end it would have been fine if the low-activity players had posted commensurate with the average rate. Several factors may also have contributed to low thread profile for some.

1. Incompatible phase turnover time for many players (at least half of players may be non-American)
2. Having to go offsite for most players
3. Initial postcap scared people?
4. Roster contained a number of typically less-talkative players
5. Thread leaders like Tim and c4 died early

These conditions also seem to have affected the interactions between the Town PRs, who were Neighborized from the beginning. There was minimal communication between the two, which led to mistrust and led to the Detective gambling on solo-actions. Maybe I should have reduced the viability of the solo-scan, and made the decision tree clearer to the player in order to properly incentivize urgent coordination.



The single defining event of the game may have been Zelda and Laurentus' (and Lewwyn's, but Laurentus was the culminating event) inability to achieve full cooperation over the Town parity scan. Indeed, it is my signal regret that Zelda didn't take full advantage of the Detective PR, in part because of mutual paranoia in the Neighborhood, in part because of role info misunderstanding. I mean, I fucked up as host really. From MY experienced perspective it's very easy to know what to do, but Laurentus had probably never used private comms this way. No one in the game, not even Winston, was able to correctly interpret the phrase "submit matching orders." So the cop failed to leverage his PR 4 nights in a row and it guaranteed the Mafia's victory.

My dream was an ultimate showdown between Town and SK, in which Town would ultimately prevail through its grit and determination. That dream came so close to becoming a reality, as I knew that if Zelda partnered N4, Csargo would be outed and ousted, and Vroendal would die at Borg's hand that Night Five. I knew these things to a certainty based on my hidden info as host. That's why I was so desperately insistent while messaging Zelda that day (and it had to be him, I felt at the time I couldn't break neutrality by approaching Laurentus directly).

We were so close to having Borg vs. idk, Winston and Dolby. And that's a confrontation that's genuinely up in the air, no one can predict the ultimate outcome. It would have been awesome to watch, from all sides.

Instead we had a death march to Hell, which carries its own sort of pleasure, but is probably hard to appreciate as a player. But Zelda's basic instinct that night was spot on, and he had solved the game before the Vroendal derp. It's just that I had to obey the rand, which has now tilted every faction in the game.

But at least we can take comfort in knowing what almost was.



Relatedly, why the heck were you townies (and Maf to a lesser extent) so disinterested in mech and writeups, even when I as host told you they were important? It just limited your play. At the very least, figure that the big image of a scary monster may mean something as distinguished from the rest.

I didn't expect this game to reach the setup's full potential of a 5 Serial Killer endgame, but I wanted the scenario to be present; I presume it influenced the slot's play, but only Borg can say (ironically, Argon's alias for this site unknowingly perpetuated his meta of claiming PRs or non-town alignments). We do know that his N3 kills were oriented primarily around killing Dolby voters, which arguably weakened his position subsequently.

One regret I do have is not trying to make the Mafia PRs as flashy and unique as the others (even if that would have required an across-the-board rebalancing).


I designate four Posts of the Game.

Oh yeah by the way I actually did n0 check you Tim. Just be aware of that.

That doesn't seem like town vigi flavor

I am 1000% sure people will be angry [about Zelda's false oracle] when this is over Monty.

I think mafia lost purely because of a bad rand

Specific Player Shoutouts:

Winston & Laurentus: Very high energy. Winston MVP for being the only player reading writeups.

Notably, Winston, Laurent, and Hollow went so apeshit as the game progressed that they made around half of all player posts in the game, with Dolby at their heels in his Discord.

Vroendal: Once he shows up, he posts himself clear. Endgame material.

Borg: Most of his contributions were a combination of soft and hard-claims of SK. Your meta is Rampage-doomed my friend, enjoy your time in the wilderness.