Basic Commentary

This game was not even supposed to happen. You all know the history of the idea popping up after Interficio quod Scurpulosa of a themed game and then being refined after The Midgard Saga. I had even had a place on the host queue but then took a hiatus from the Org (when I came back some of my messages were telling me it was my turn - sorry about that ).

One of the main reasons I was compelled to log back on the Org was sitting in an ancient Near East class listening about early Sumerian temple complex administration by priest rulers. That got me thinking about The Wanax which got me thinking about Mafia games.

When I pulled up the Org webpage for the first time in more than one and a half years I went to the Gameroom and saw The Midgard Saga II. Spent almost half an hour skimming it and was hooked again. I put my unnamed game up on the queue.

Only a couple of months later I realized that I wouldn't really have the time to host and so I posted back on the hosting thread asking to be removed. I thought this was the end of it until shortly after the end of Godfather III when Andres sent me a message reminding me it was my time to host (you are supposed to message a moderator if you want something changed on the hosting queue - they prune the thread from time to time and my withdraw message was probably not read ).

I was going to explain the situation to him and apologize for not messaging him but I just impulsively wanted to host, though I was badly unprepared.

So I began to bust my butt off getting the game ready and refining all those ideas in my head to become tangible. I also had midterm week that week. It took me 8 or 9 days to get the game going from when Andres notified me, so I apologize for that. I did try to trickle out as much game information I could as it got finished so people weren't totally left in the dark.

This was a major reason in the discrepancy of the length (and quality) of some role messages compared to others (will be explained).

Mechanics:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
Voting: Pretty much explained in the intro post. I loved the idea of different people having different voting weights. It was one of the earliest mechanics I had decided on for my game. I think it turned out to be pretty good. It led to roleplaying, speculation, and some tactical voting without being a major difference.

I didn't care about the exact formatting about the votes in this game because I had to read the thread anyway so as long as I could see that you made a vote I would count it (analogously for challenges).

Battle Rating: Given from a scale from -1 to 10. Battle Ratings could never go lower but they could go higher in various ways (though the absolute cap was 10).

The battle rating was incredibly important in the kills though it didn't really manifest itself (a nice little abstraction). I will explain the system because although it does act as a spoiler if I decide to host again, it may lead to more tactical duels and kills.

Kills: Any role that had a kill ability would use the battle rating to determine the success or failure of the attempt.

This was the algorithm for a kill:

If the killer's battle rating plus two was at least two times the killee's battle rating, the kill would be an automatic success.

Otherwise if the killer's battle rating plus two was less than two times the killee's battle rating, the kill would be determined by a runoff which worked as such:

a) keep drawing 0's or 1's (using random.org)
b) a 0 means that the killer strikes and a 1 means that the killee strikes
c) if the killer receives a number of strikes equal to his battle rating plus two he dies
d) if the killee receives a number of strikes equal to his battle rating he dies

(one role had an exception to this)

The mechanism of multiple killers attacking a single target was allowed. In this case all of their battle ratings would be added up and then two would be added to that total. In the case of a runoff there would be a strike variable for each participant and it would continue until all the killers were dead or the killee was dead.

A sample kill (from the game):

The Watcher (6) attacks Pisuf (10):

(6 + 2) < (2 * 10) so runoff: 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 (The Watcher dies)

Duels: The duel mechanics were very similar to the kills except that two was not added to any battle ratings. Otherwise the same algorithm was used.

A sample duel (from the game):

Pisuf (10) duels Iffo (7):

10 < (2 * 7) so runoff: 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 (Iffo dies)

FactionHeir made the point early on that the duel system was not being used at all. I did set it up so that a duel had to be fully consensual. This did lead to no dueling for a while although the late stages of the game saw some duels.

I'm not sure how I would change the system or if I would even change it. On the one hand, I wanted it set up differently as I thought the duel system of Midgard games (and now Swords in the Moon) was too helpful to townies. That being said, the town (led by Sasaki) did go ahead and force pressure duels in this game anyway... I was kinda shocked that the pressured people went along with it, but the town is persuasive.


Writing:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
I thought the role messages were one of the best parts of the game, but I also was disappointed with their inconsistency. The first three I wrote (Pisuf, Psyensil, The Watcher) were the longest and most detailed and some of the best, but others did not live up to that standard for a number of reasons.

The time issue was a big one, that whole week of getting the game going was pretty hectic, and so I had to cut some messages short. Also, some messages were a lot easier to write than others.

Needless to say, while there are role messages I am pleased with (the Scribe and Farmer wrote themselves) there are others that fell short. Some I just had to cut short though a good idea was set (the Priest and Cook). Some were flat out tough to write (the Bureaucrat and Shepherd). Some were awful (the Poet - though khaan did a great job of speaking in verse the entire game and somewhat redeemed the bad role description ). I fel the Usurper role descriptions were the biggest shortcoming. They all had a detailed back story idea for them, but they were cut and kept extremely short because I was already delayed and had to get the game going.

As for the writeups, I thought these were pretty mediocre. I found it really hard to write a coherent story based on the setting and happenings that was also entertaining as compared to sending in kills where a lot more randomness is allowed which allows more creativity. I felt my already mediocre writeups became repetitive too.

Still there were some good points to them. Andres killing scribes allowed for a pretty funny kill tidbit. The Pisuf kills generally turned out well.

I got a few requests from players to influence the writeups. I rejected any major influence from the players though I did put in small tidbits that fit (CountArach wanted to kill Sasaki with a trident which went well with the water carrier and all).

The reason I wanted to keep the writeups to myself was because I wanted to carefully filter any influences. My paradigm was once the game was created, do not interfere more and let it ride the wave. So there were no (intentional) clues that weren't already planned (planned clues mean like giving Ares away after he killed pever and Iffo laughing after The Watcher was killed to signify his freedom and mentioning that investigations may not be enough to catch the last usurper - these were included due to the mechanics of the game). Other things were just flavor tidbits.


Roles:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
Will (hopefully) get to this